Applying his ideas to today's culture, he explained how the nihilistic humor in the show comments on modern relationships and family life, as well as society in general. The role of the modern family also comes under nihilistic analysis, he said. While older shows concentrate on the family unit, Seinfeld focuses primarily on single individuals. Whenever a familial situation is addressed, it is usually with a feeling of impossibility or unfeasibility. Homer is more a child than a father figure.
Love becomes sadomasochistic.
The goal, Hibbs said, is to attain the advantages of an adult while retaining the responsibilities of a child. The characters can never achieve this, or anything else they want, which leads to the show's overwhelming skepticism about the pursuit of happiness, he said. There's a medley of rules with no seeming relation to one another. They are doomed to a life of repetition. The characters are stuck in a life of eternal recurrence a situation that Hibbs said the show applies to the real world.