"Seinfeld" is the perfect example of how a show's popularity can break through the pop culture barrier in surprising ways. The groundbreaking NBC sitcom, which appears on /Film's best sitcoms of all time list, featured all sorts of hilarious weekly scenarios for its comedic ensemble to navigate, but unlike most of those other shows, these protagonists rarely ever learned their lesson by the end of an episode. This kind of approach to comedic television would eventually lead to similar shows with morally flexible characters like "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," but it's easy to forget that, at the time, this was the exception, not the norm.

Like some of the best sitcoms, the best thing about "Seinfeld" is that you can turn on just about any episode and understand exactly who these characters are. There's plenty of great choices to recommend to newcomers like "The Soup Nazi," "The Parking Garage,...