Reflecting on the Final Seinfeld

I personally think the final Seinfeld is the worst episode the show's ever had and a very lame way to end the series. Reflecting on what went wrong with this episode, I came up with a list of the mistakes made:

MISTAKE #1: Making The Final Episode > 1 Hour Long --------------------------------------------------- With the exception of "The Boyfriend", all 1 hour episodes have been rather weak and this episode, at 1+ hours was that much weaker. They just haven't been successful at sustaining comic situations for such a long length of time. When I heard the episode was going to be this long, the first thing in my mind was "uh-ohhh".

MISTAKE #2: Bringing Back Larry David To Write It -------------------------------------------------- Although Larry David co-created the show with Seinfeld, he has been off the show for 2 whole years and out-of-touch with the comic flow of the show for that time. This showed in the episode, which felt like one of

those reunion TV-movies that old sitcoms sometimes have which never have the same feeling as the original series.

MISTAKE #3: Taking The Characters Out Of NY --------------------------------------------- The final episode was actually pretty good until they left NY and it bottomed out from that point on. The characters seemed to be out of their element like fish out of water.

MISTAKE #4: Bring Back Too Many Characters ------------------------------------------- They tried to do way too much in the episode, bring back practically every character who's been in the show. A better approach, IMO, would have been to simply make a sequel to one of the popular episodes (eg. The Soup Nazi, Part II).

MISTAKE #5: Treating The Characters As Criminals ------------------------------------------------- The episode looked down upon the characters as reprehensible to society, which is far from the truth. If anything, we strongly identify

with them since they personify what everyone feels about a lot of the ridiculous social customs we all have to deal with.

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And that's my list. Overall, the final episode soured me a bit on the show, which isn't the way to go out for a show that wants to maintain its current success in syndication.

On Thu, 21 May 1998 04:43:01 GMT, [email] (dhmac) wrote:

But the episode where they met the woman who swum topless (the one where, I think, George is caught naked?) was pretty funny. So, they can travel somewhere else together without losing it. But you could tell it was lame when they were deciding where to use the free flight. The dialogue at the cafe table was so dead.

I think that had potential. But they wasted it.

[email] (SloGait) wrote:

True they were out of NYC, but going up to the Hamptons is a very "New Yorker"-type thing to do.

But when they have that many return characters, they lose focus. I think they could have had a classic if they brought back only a few characters from past episodes, one for each of the main characters. Actually, that makes me think of another mistake:

Mistake #6:  Only Having a Single Story Line (Instead of Four)
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The show is best when they have four great storylines for each main
character that cross paths and tripping each other up at the end of the
episode.   What if they only brought back Babu (for his revenge on Jerry),
the Soup Nazi (for his revenge on Elaine), Susan's parents (for their
revenge on George), and a clown (since Kramer's afraid of them), keeping
the storylines separate until they trip each other up in the end.   A much
better idea than a contrived trial for their "crimes" on society, IMO.

On Fri, 22 May 1998 02:38:14 GMT, [email] (dhmac) wrote:

Yeh, I see no particular reason to switch suddenly to a single story line. Remember how Cheers ended with each character having some sort of individual story line, such as Woody going off to city government, Norm going off to his first steady job in years, and the others (which I can't recall right now)? It was consistent with how they'd done the show over the years. It was like a bunch of new beginnings, and out of those new beginnings came the ending (I think the new beginning for Frasier was that Lilith divorced him and he got a job offer out of town).

In article , [email] wrote:

(I think the new beginning for

No that storyline began on Frazier. Lilith and he were still together by the finale of Cheers.:D

If i remember correctly, Frazier and Lilith were already divorced by the finale of Cheers. I fyou remember, she came back from the eco-pode in hopes of getting together with Frazier once again, and Dr, Pascale showed up with a gun etc.... All this to sy that Frazier turned her down and they divored after that.

On Sat, 23 May 1998 15:29:51 -0500, [email] (Andrea and Joshua Barol) wrote:

I just watched the Cheers finale last night. Lillith did not appear.

I thought that during the last season, Lilith left Frasier to be with her lover and live in a biosphere with him. (Bebe Neuwirth's name was then taken out of the opening credits for the rest of the series.) She was gone for a few episodes, but then didn't she come back to Frasier? And then when "Frasier" started, didn't he mention something about his wife leaving him and then coming back to him, and how he still divorced her?

Jaclyn

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The show is best when they have four great storylines for each main
character that cross paths and tripping each other up at the end of the
episode.   What if they only brought back Babu (for his revenge on Jerry),
the Soup Nazi (for his revenge on Elaine), Susan's parents (for their
revenge on George), and a clown (since Kramer's afraid of them), keeping
the storylines separate until they trip each other up in the end.   A much
better idea than a contrived trial for their "crimes" on society, IMO.>>

Yes, this was the creative magic about the show, how they wove these together. This is the best idea fora finale I've seen yet. Too bad you werent on the team. cc

You made some excellent points about the last show's flaws. I feel it kind of "soured" me too for the series as a whole. Oddly enough, the final scene in jail kind of depressed/disturbed me. Do you think they (the writers) were trying to make a statement or moral about the show to American viewers conerning the characters overall behavior? The final episode was just not that funny and it left me with an unsettled feeling.

On Thu, 21 May 1998 01:21:25 -0500, [email] (Patrick Parrish) wrote:

You know, Jackie Chiles comment "You don't have to help nobody. That's what America's about!" is really the fulcrum of the show. That IS what America's about! And they should have satirized that. Instead, they made a potboiler and went out with a thud.

[email] (SloGait) wrote:

Actually, talking about Jackie's case, he was completely right - they did absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, what they did was the right thing to do since the advice from Police Depts on carjacking is to let the robber have the car, since you could get killed trying to stop it and the car can be recovered or replaced. If anything, it was an improper arrest, since the cop misinterpreted the law (not helping someone in a bad car crash is a lot different than not risking your life to stop a carjacking). And all that irrelevant testimony! They would win on appeal easily!!!

On Fri, 22 May 1998 01:58:03 GMT, [email] (dhmac) wrote:

Well, so long as the police are going to ignore "low priority crime", no one should expect civilians to step in to replace them. The most that can be expected is some sort of report, but I've reported crime to police that got no followup (they are short people, they say), so I have doubts about that as a duty. The main reason to report crime is not some "duty", its that if nobody ever reported a crime, the criminals would commit twice as many of them.

[email] (Patrick Parrish) wrote:

I completely agree - the final shot of them in their cell while the camera pulled back was disturbing. I am glad they didn't leave it at that and had the over-the-credits shot of Seinfeld doing his stand-up to the other prisoners, otherwise I wouldn't have known what to think.

dhm

dhmac ([email]) wrote:

Was any reference made to Jerry's ex-fiancee? I didn't see her, but I might have missed a more subtle reference.

[email] (Richard Schultz) wrote:

I don't think they referred to her at all. She was played by Janeanne Garafalo and maybe she was too busy to appear in the episode.

dhm

to society, which is far from the truth. If anything, we strongly identify with them since they personify what everyone feels about a lot of the ridiculous social customs we all have to deal with.>>

This is the key. Other episodes had OTHERS looking down on the characters and we had empathy for them because they were UNJUSTLY accused or misunderstood in some way, or their original intention was not seen.

But in the finale, it's as if the author(s?) just set them up to be despised without showing the falseness of the charges, and viewers who have a short memory seem to be buying the prosecution's absurd presentation. I think this was supposed to really SEEM absurd, with them unjustly jailed, but in the end somehow people didnt get the joke. It wasnt told in a funny way.

Someone on another thread enumerated the examples of the charges all of which were untrue or not the characters' fault. But the public either doesnt remember the episodes or .... what?

And that's my list. Overall, the final episode soured me a bit on the show, which isn't the way to go out for a show that wants to maintain its current success in syndication.>>

I know people who have stopped watching, so this must be true of others too. She found the finale unfunny and also all the analysis of the show got to her. Talk shows, etc.

I found that after reading the hate stuff here about the characters I was momentarily turned off just from seeing it analyzed to death. Humor is more funny if it's spontaneous. But I'm back to watching and laughing an enjoying it again. Works of art, many of these episodes. cc

For completion's sake, here's my last mistake (which I posted earlier in a different thread) in the Seinfeld finale:

MISTAKE #7: Using the Real Geraldo ---------------------------------- I was wondering "What were the writers thinking? - Why didn't they just create a 'Geraldo'-like spoof character?" I mean, which is funnier - Johnny Cockran or Jackie Chiles? the "real-life" J Peterman or the one on Seinfeld? George Steinbrenner or the back of some guy's head? The spoof versions of real-life people have always worked great on the show, so why have the real-life (and very unfunny) Geraldo??? In fact, if I had known ahead of time Geraldo would be on the final show, I would have had good warning that it was going to suck. In fact, I think the final episode died on the vine the moment Geraldo made his first appearance - it was all downhill from there.