Wednesday is a big day for Seinfeld fans: rather than rely on late-night reruns to get their fix of the beloved sitcom, they can now binge watch the whole thing on Hulu.
It’s been more than 25 years since the show premiered in 1989, but interest in Jerry & co. shows no sign of flagging—something that TIME’s critic Richard Zoglin might not have predicted when he reviewed the show back in 1992. (Yes, it took more than a year for TIME to give Seinfeld more than a blurb review, but in fairness it took a while for the show to find its footing, too.) The characters’ tendency not to talk about their deeper feelings or concerns—one of the show’s signatures—meant, Zoglin guessed, that even viewers who loved to tune in for a half-hour a week wouldn’t really get attached.
Still, even when it wasn’t clear that Seinfeld would become a classic, it was obvious that something was working:
Stand-up comics can get chewed up fast in TV. First they are squeezed dry of material by Letterman, Leno and the other talk-show bloodsuckers. Then, if they grow popular enough, they are plucked from their solo job and awarded a sitcom. There, major pitfalls await them. Some are exposed as Johnny-one-notes (Kevin Meaney in Uncle Buck); others are simply unable to make the transition from joke telling to character building (Richard Lewis in Anything but Love). Only a few — Roseanne Arnold, Tim Allen — succeed without selling out. One of the brightest members of that small club is Jerry Seinfeld. The Long Island native was perhaps the quintessential yuppie comic of the ’80s: his larky, laid-back observations about the trivial pursuits of modern life — buying candy at a movie theater, riding with your dog in the front seat of the car — were funny, recognizable, nonthreatening. Now he is the centerpiece of NBC’s hottest sitcom.
Read the full review, here in the TIME Vault: Comedian on the Make
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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com