Besides being adopted by the marketing for the show, "show about nothing" was never really accurate. It was lifted from when George pitched the show-in-a-show (

Besides being adopted by the marketing for the show, "show about nothing" was never really accurate. It was lifted from when George pitched the show-in-a-show (season 4's running plot). Especially in the earlier seasons, what Seinfeld is about should be apparent: There's a little standup skit performed by Jerry Seinfeld, with the usual ridiculous circumstances you'd hear in a standup skit. The episode that follows shows exactly how Jerry "came up with" the idea for the standup the episode opened with. Instead of "about nothing," Seinfeld was really about answering the question people often ask: "How did you come up with that?" Of course, as the show developed and real-life inspirations started to be exhausted, the show adopted more and more outlandish sitcom ideas that weren't rooted in the real-life experiences of the writers. The standup openings were abandoned as well.