News

“Everybody’s ripping me off!”

That’s what Jerry shouts in Season Nine of Seinfeld when Elaine cons him into buying her lunch. While it fit perfectly within the context of “The Dealership” episode, it may also have been a bit of meta-commentary. This was the first episode to air after it was announced that the show would be ending, and Seinfeld was so popular at the time that other sitcoms were popping up left and right that seemed custom-designed to try to capture some of Seinfeld’s success.

Play

The most obvious Seinfeld clones were the uninspired — and usually unsuccessful — low-premise sitcoms about friends who sit around and talk. But plenty of genuinely good shows that have since become TV classics have also been accused of ripping off Seinfeld.

Here are five such shows, some of which were successful while others struggled to find an audience of their own…...

Here's your daily dose of an indie film in progress; at the end of the week, you'll have the chance to vote for your favorite. In the meantime: Is this a movie you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments. Tweetable Logline: 2 ex-best friends reunite to find $500,000 of mob money buried on a golf course in Wisconsin. A comedy about do-overs. Elevator Pitch: Mulligan tells the story of John Hanson (Jonathan Eliot), a frustrated cartoonist who reluctantly teams up with his ex-best friend Karl (Dean Chekvala) to find $500,000 buried on an abandoned golf course in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. Along the way they cross paths with a dangerous local cop (Vincent Teninty), two beautiful femme fatale camp counselors (Amy Sloan and Kaitlin Doubleday) and some mobsters (Christian Stolte and Paul Dichter), all of whom are after the cash. A buddy comedy/road trip movie along the lines of Bottle Rocket.