The essential building blocks of comedy are an elegant intertwining of really dumb and really smart. – Jerry Seinfeld
That was from The Tonight Show in 1986. However, I want you to know, and this came as a surprise to me, Jerry Seinfeld isn’t the only one with a complex about Dad’s thermostat. It turns out to be a thing. Dads and thermostats are all over YouTube.
By way of comparison:
Did Seinfeld create this phenomenon? Perhaps he only gave it a boost. Inquiring minds want to know.
The Bit: Dad’s Thermostat
You can’t beat Adult Power.
Unlimited television.
Cookies any time you want.
Plus you can go home tonight and screw around with that thermostat all you like.
We are in charge of it now.
My father got me so crazy with that thing.
I didn’t go near a thermostat until I was 28 years old.
I was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh when I finally got up the guts to move it a little bit.
The whole night I couldn’t sleep.
I was afraid my father was going to burst in the door,
“Who touched the thermostat in here?
You know, I set it there… for a reason.”
For years I waited for my father to take me aside and explain to me the secret of the thermostat.
And then one day he did sit me down,
told me this whole story—
The sperm, the egg, intercourse.
I said, “Dad, who cares?
Get to the part where the thermostat comes in.
What does it really control?”
Now, about Freud
I brought up Freud in discussing another Seinfeld bit, the one about arrogance in naming Life cereal. Like that one, this cries out for a Freudian reading. It’s about: 1) a father’s power, 2) to keep the son away from something the son wants. The joke says it’s access to the thermostat. Freud would say that’s a distraction, a defense mechanism. It’s really about mom. Dad has her and the son wants her but can’t have her.
That’s standard, orthodox, Old School Freudianism. It’s called the Oedipus complex, after the Greek king whom those nasty Greek gods snookered into marrying his mom. The result: plague! I know, it sounds strange; sounded strange to me too when I first read about it. But after awhile it made sense in a weird sort of way.
But wait, you say, right there, at the end, Jerry brings it up – The sperm, the egg, intercourse – and then flat out denies it – “Dad, who cares?” What do you say to that? The orthodox Freudian would respond, That clinches it. Denial, that’s what he’s doing, denying it. Thereby affirming it’s sex and hence sex with mom. You might reply, But isn’t that a little circular? And you’d have a point.
So let’s set the whole Freudian thing aside. I’m won’t ask you to believe it. Don’t quite believe it myself. Still, there are things that need to be explained. Let’s take a look.
Analysis and Comments
You can’t beat Adult Power.
Unlimited television.
Cookies any time you want.
Plus you can go home tonight and screw around with that thermostat all you like.
We are in charge of it now.
What’s his point of view? He announces his topic, adult power. And then gives examples, TV and cookies. That’s a child’s idea of adult power, and so is control of the thermostat – though, to be honest with you, I can’t remember ever being particularly interested in control of the thermostat. I barely remember there being such a thing at all. Anyhow, we’re adults now – the man standing in front of you is clearly an adult – and we now control the thermostat.
My father got me so crazy with that thing.
I didn’t go near a thermostat until I was 28 years old.
I was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh when I finally got up the guts to move it a little bit.
The whole night I couldn’t sleep.
Why 28? That is, why give a specific age?
Specificity is good. What if he’d said “until I was an adult.” That’s kind of vague, no? Just when does one become an adult? Well, the law provides an answer; actually it provides several answers. But in most states in the United States the age of legal majority is 18; in some states it is 21. However, one can get a license to drive a car at 16, which is also the age of sexual consent. Pick whichever of those ages you want, they’re well under 28. Seinfeld could have said, 27 or 29, maybe even 26; what matters is that he makes it clear that this momentous event took place relatively late in life. For that he needed a specific age.
Why Pittsburgh? No particular reason, but I can’t imagine that he’d have located this event in Peoria or Missoula or Osceola. Everyone’s heard of Pittsburgh; they’ve got a football, baseball, and hockey teams. It’s a good all-American city.
And his father still haunts him. That’s the thing. Why? Because this is a joke, and that’s really dumb. It doesn’t make any sense at all. What college kid worries about their father when they change the thermostat in the room? Or a kid who’s working a job in the steel mill, like dad, and has moved out of the family home, which they did back in those days. Seinfeld is making a really big deal out of such a little thing. There must be a reason, no?
I was afraid my father was going to burst in the door,
“Who touched the thermostat in here?
You know, I set it there… for a reason.”
Again, fear of the father. What’s this about bursting in the door? What door? Is the thermostat in a closet or some special secret room? No, it’s right there on the living room or dining room wall or in a hallway. It’s in a very public place where it’s readily accessible. Why’s comedian Jerry pretending he was doing something in secret? Now if he was talking about smoking a joint in his bedroom, that would be something to worry about Dad bursting in on. Anything else like that?
For years I waited for my father to take me aside and explain to me the secret of the thermostat.
And then one day he did sit me down,
told me this whole story—
The sperm, the egg, intercourse.
Really, you were waiting for Dad to tell you about the thermostat? I don’t believe it. Another really dumb thing.
Now, the sperm, the egg, and intercourse, that I’d believe. That’s smart. You find out about it from your friends, maybe you read it in a book you found in a box in the basement, and it sounds strange. It would be nice for Dad to tell you about that stuff. And you were more like 12 or 13 than 28 when you waited for that conversation.
I said, “Dad, who cares?
Get to the part where the thermostat comes in.
What does it really control?”
You mean there’s more to it than controlling the temperature? It’s not what it seems?
That’s a really smart line. It brings the joke to an end without revealing a thing.
How would you explain the pattern?
You may not believe that standard story of orthodox Freudianism. As I’ve said, I’m not so sure myself, and I’m not just saying that because doubts have been mounting about Freud and psychoanalysis for years. I think there’s substantial insight in psychoanalytic thought, but I also think that insight needs to be reformulated in more modern terms. That’s a big job, one we need not worry about here.
But we do need to think about why Seinfeld’s bit works, why it makes us laugh. Why does he make a big fuss about such a little matter as the thermostat, why does Seinfeld mention a specific age, and so forth. There’s a pattern there – that’s the important thing, there’s a pattern – and that pattern requires an explanation. Freud’s story gives us a way of thinking about that pattern and others more or less like it. He invented his theories as a way of explaining such patterns. Has anyone come up with a better story?
* * * * *
From Jerry Seinfeld, Is This Anything? Simon & Schuster, 2020.
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