Fans sharply debate the series finale's quality, with detractors calling it dull and disappointing while defenders claim critics simply lack sophistication to appreciate its genius.
If you liked the episode, and think that those who didn't just have different tastes, you can skip to the next post.
If, however, you REALLY liked the final episode, and think that those who don't just don't "get it", or aren't humor sophisticates, or don't understand "true comic genius", I ask of you the following:
Remove your rectally impacted head, and in the future, use it for something besides a hat-rack.
Me? I hated the episode, and found it dull beyond comprehension, causing a nearly complete cognitive surrender. But I don't think that people who did like it are dullards, idiots, or social defectives. They just have a very different taste.
These same lines about "sophistication", and "genius", and "not getting it" are what people fall back on when they have no rational, tangible arguments to support their positions. "It must be art, because it's so avant gard, so new, so genius". Sometimes, a soup can is JUST a soup can. Allow that while you may have enjoyed it, others may have interpreted what you see as "comic genius" as "coma-inducing".
It reminds me really of delusion - the Emporer's new clothes. It MUST be good, because I want it to be, or it needs to be. It is what deludes masses, passes trash for art, immorality for freedom, elects tyrants as saviors - abandon our own cognitive understanding of good, or beauty, or humor, replaced with ethereal claims of "genius", that must be believed for it's OWN sake. The belief that something is good (or funny) is acquired not by thought but by contagion. Your constant claims that your position that this particular episode is good NOT because you liked it, but because of a transcedant "genius", removes the requirement of PROOF or EVIDENCE for your position. Please, tell me the funny plotline, or irony, or joke...just don't tell me that "I don't get it".
Dude, you didn't get it. Read some more classic literature -- start with the existentialists -- and watch it again. If what you say is true, then there would not be a single episode that the people who liked the finale would trash, because we're "blind" but I can count at least a dozen or two episodes that I didn't like at all, and thought were weak on plot and badly written. That, however, was not the case with the finale. You just had to have the background to appreciate it.
This has to be the weakest argument ever offered. Translated, it means:
"I can't explain it as truth in an adequate manner, therefore I must resort to making a non-verifiable claim regarding your ability to understand."
I also like the claim that we don't have the intellectual background to fully comprehend this genius. My God man, listen to yourself - you are demanding a classical education to understand a TELEVISION SHOW. I wonder, you claim comic genius for the parts of those involved - do you really think they would stand the scrutiny you are requiring for those who disliked the episode? Do you really think Jerry Seinfeld has read Nietzche enough to conceptualize his thinking, or Faust? Really. Let common sense be your guide - is it so beyond your concepts that the ending just may have been bad?
A lack of humor, good acting, timing, coherent plotting, you offer them all as proof of genius. Really, for individuals such as yourself, no episode could have been bad - any defect is explained as genius, any problem is there by intent, any failing is by design...
No, it's the truth. Your complaints about the episode to not indicate that you understood what you saw.
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And listen to YOURSELF -- you are automatically assuming television is a something of a "lesser" medium. Obviously I was right earlier -- Seinfeld DID overestimate the capacities of his audience by delivering this wonderful slice of highbrow humor.
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No, it was excellent; a fine homage to the ideas of Kafka and Sartre.
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Apparently reading comprehension is another one of your intellectual failings -- in the above post, I already said that there are at least a dozen or two episodes that I didn't think were very good at all. Clearly, I'm capable of recognizing a bad Seinfeld episode when I see one. It just happens that the finale definitely was NOT a bad episode.
My complaints have been presented in only the broadest terms - poor acting, bad writing, plot incongruity, etc. Pray tell how do they reveal a lack of understanding? Am I to understand these to be the goals?
I tire of your delusions of personal insight. You clearly, as The Grand Inquisitor did, have assumed yourself to be above we, the masses, and will do us all a mighty favor by explaining to us your insights into what we clearly cannot see...thank you for such a selfless act.
Right. The writers were aiming for just that mark...
"Should we make a funny, witty episode?"
"Nah, let's pay a fine homage to Kafka."
Again, I refer to a single final episode. However, examining your arguments to support the brilliance of said episode, I stand convinced this is correct. For what we simple masses see as unhumourous, you present as the Emporer's new Jokes...
Venger, your argument is very well thought out, especially the referrence to "The Emporer has no clothes". Jerry and friends were completely naked in the final episode. I guess FB who loves classic literature has never read that one. :)
Basically, you're arguing against a position of faith which you can never win against. As you said, they'll believe the final had to be good just because it was Seinfeld and they wanted it to be.
The only answer at the opposite extreme of "you just don't get it" is "it sucked". The show was great but the final was just plain bad. I bet even Jerry and company would laugh like hell at the people who see hidden messages that the rest of us don't get in a tv show. :)
On Sat, 16 May 1998 12:59:01 -0500, "Venger" wrote:
Not only that, but you swallowed a thesaurus and are trying desperately to display your "intellectual" credentials by tossing off $2.00 word after $2.00 word in the most rigidly self-conscious manner possible...jeez, what a pompous, psuedo-intellectual ass..
The finale may have been bloated and self-serving in places, and it certainly didn't make me laugh out loud all the way through, but it had it's moments and ended in probably the only way it could...devices normally used in traditional situation comedies (flashbacks, the "Lifeboat" predicament, fake newscasts using real broadcasters, etc.) WERE used, and I watched in dismay as I saw the show use these vehicles, or so I thought, to send itself off in a disturbingly normal, traditional manner, just like other sitcoms...sitcoms whose values and aesthetic have always been questioned and dismissed by Seinfeld writers. It turns out they WERE being used to send all of these things up by refusing to end in some kind of warm, fuzzy fashion...the show may have been stretched too thin, but the payoff was worth it. As several have written to this group, a second viewing tends to vindicate the episode; the closer look seems to bring out the fact that quite a few bits were as funny as anything else the show has ever offered, and certainly funnier and smarter than 99% of the sitcoms still floating around. The protracted viewing time and excess hype (as well as the clip show preceding the final episode, which was a pretty good "greatest hits" montage) seems to have dulled the show's normal cutting edge, and the dark, ironic ending certainly clouded, what was, in retrospect, a pretty funny episode. Again, I at first felt the same way as many who have posted here; sort of stunned and a little pissed off; "THIS is what all the hype was about?"...but in retrospect the final episode was a perfect sendoff to a remarkable run... Face it, Sparky, you DON'T get it, and all the verbose posturing in the world can't hide that fact...
Perhaps you do not use words containing more than one syllable, or perhaps you confine your reading to the "Mini-Page" child's insert of your local paper, but perhaps you could allow that some people actually speak in a manner concommitant with something of an education. In fact, looking at the post, I cannot find a single word that seems out of place. You complaint actually fits quite nicely with my criticism - that in lieu of providing any real evidence, or data, you resort to ethereal claims, ad hominem attacks, and other feebleminded tactics to justify a position based on nothing more than your own personal whim.
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Your argument takes the longest route to a close point. It seems this finale can be explained by one or two factors:
1> It was bad. 2> It was the result of deep running satire, clearly non-humorous, but by design.
If a man is 5 miles from where he started, we can assume either he:
1> Walked 5 miles. 2> Circumnavigated the globe.
I do not beleive we need any further explanation for the ending of the show. Please, spare us the cosmic genius argument. It is weak on it's face, and requires we suspend too much in the way of cognitive facility to believe. Never chalk up to genius what can be explained by incompetence.
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As even more have written, it simply wasn't very well done, with numerous failures. Your post-episode conversion from doubter to zealot seems to indicate self-delusional convincing. That being said, if you liked it, so be it, but please, spare us your delusions of insight, wit, and knowledge. You get no more nor less than anyone else, you are not brilliant, nor insightful, just another spare sitting on the sofa, making a judgement. Accept your minority status and be done with it.
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Keep telling yourself, and you'll believe. If "getting it" requires severed lobes and cognitive surrender, than I will leave such to you, as you have de monstrated in your post that you are a keen talent for this. I will dislike the episode in blissful "ignorance", not pretending to be in on a joke no one else gets...
Veng, Veng, Veng...Sorry it took me so long to respond, Sparky, but I was out of town on business...glad you took the time to cover June through August in that 1996 "Word-of-the-Day" calender you found at the flea market...
Well, Veng, old man (and if you are a female, please accept my sincere apologies for my sexist assumption...can I blame it on social conditioning?), I never accused you of clumsy syntax or blatant misuse of words; hell, I think you understand what those words mean, and I think you have the ability to use them all, correctly, in real, honest-to-God sentences. The impression I got from your post was that of a man (or woman) so hopelessly insecure in his ability to trust his own mental abilities that he (or she) tends to overcompensate by using needlessly baroque language. Maybe you got beat up a lot as a kid, and you now have a need to prove yourself as some sort of "Intellectual Badass"...call it the "Richard Dawkins Syndrome". Then again, maybe you are a perfectly well-adjusted adult who really does talk like some crank-driven, King Hell English-Lit junkie..face it, Sparky, the real reason for writing is to communicate an idea, and it's pretty tough to do that using language that most of world thinks is damn silly, and superfluous to boot...most people "with something of an education" prefer to impress with communication of real ideas, as opposed to self-centered rants hidden deep within such hideously florid prose...and that whole line about education presents you as not just a psuedo-intellectual ass, but as a wannabe elitist pig as well.
Okay, Sparky, that post was one small paragraph of attacks on your writing style, a longer paragraph explaining my position, and a one-line attack to sign off...now, maybe I didn't explain my position well enought to suit you (not enough four-syllable words?), so I'll take the blame, but let's face it; we're talking about humor, which is purely subjective...some folks think Urkel is a scream, so he is, whether I get it or not. My argument wasn't whether the last episode was funny or not, but a look at other components of this "event" that may have clouded some folk's enjoyment of this episode (mine included), and helped them to look at it in a different light . My beef is all of the "Seinfeld Finale Sucked" posts that seemed to engender a knee-jerk reaction, and point out that even if you didn't think it was funny, it DID contain certain aspects that should be appreciated for what they are...I do agree that a sitcom should be funny above all else, and all of this existential hooey being thrown out as an acceptable alternative to the concept of " making me laugh" certainly gets on my nerves sometimes (I didn't watch the show to feed my mind or increase my appreciation of Camus), but aesthetic enjoyment of anything can be taken on several levels (even if they seem to me or you to be a little forced), and since that is as subjective as humor, it doesn't hurt to remember that fact.. I sure wasn't trying to use that as excuse for what some considered just an unfunny episode of an otherwise funny show, and if it came off that way, it was my fault for expressing it badly...did get a lot of e-mail agreeing with me, though, so maybe there is something to this " uneducated" style of writing...
Now THAT, my friend, is a great line, and nary a polysyllabic pose in the whole sentence...oughtta be on a bumpersticker or fortune cookie or somethin'...seriously, if you had just sent this line instead of the rest of the post (that's right, just one sentence), I'd be praising YOU as a genius right now, instead of writing this rather mean-spirited diatribe...'course, neither one of us seems to able to avoid a certain long-winded fervor...
That Caesar impersonation you just threw out there, now THAT'S funny...you talk like this in everyday life? Trust me, little fella, if you ever get an actual date, that AIN'T gonna impress 'em. Well, first of all, Sparky, I hardly think "zealot" conveys my feelings on the final episode...I just thought it was funnier the second time I watched it, no more, no less...not an uncommon phenomenon, especially in this case, when one is freed from the expectations and factors I mentioned in my first post. And who is this "us" you mention in such a cavalier fashion? You speak for everyone, do ya, Sparky? Maybe I'm not brilliant or insightful, but, hell, I got some book learnin', too; my opinions are mine and have equal validity to anything you spew out, and that was the point you seemed to want to bring out in your initial post...unless, of course, someone disagrees with you, when you resort to the same tactics (albeit with bigger words) you acuse others of using...I mean, whattaya wanna do, Sparky, compare I.Q. scores?
Hell, Sparky, you used the word "cognitive" twice in this post...what's wrong, afraid to tackle the word "cerebral" without your spell-check? Jeez, I never pretended to be in on a joke nobody else gets, and you know it...but then I never had to get my sad little jollies by deluding myself into thinking I knew the score while the unwashed heathen remained in the dark, and had to buttress that belief by making like Robert Cristgau on angel dust...
Why does there have to be some deep message? If it were just another episode and not a finale, you would probably have found it intelligently written. In the end, what comes around, goes around. While we love the Seinfeld gang, they are not the nicest people and "good samaritans" would be an oxymoron when applied to them. The show poked fun at its main characters and showed how truly mean they can be sometimes. It also showed how callous they can really be because they were never really too concerned that they might go to prison.
There certainly does not need to be a deep message - just a coherent, somewhat intelligent plot. Personally, I try to avoid "message" sitcoms, or other programs for that matter, as any message worth hearing can be given without direct revelation.
The show did try to turn the tables on the foursome, they just didn't do it WELL.
Too concerned about prison? They seemed to have the same astonished look as I, the viewer had...total disbelief at what was unfolding. What a stinker of an episode. It strikes me as...lazy.
I think ultimately in the end with so much hype surrounding it, we all went in with these extremely ridiculous high expectations. Some of us were satisfied and others weren't. I wonder if any finale would have satisfied the masses. I enjoyed it, you didn't, nothing wrong with that. We're each entitled to our opinion.
Myself, being a casual fan, actually did get a little annoyed with the hype (I also had the same reaction to Titanic...). I actually didn't have enormous expectations for the thing. As for the rest, I completely concur. To each their own...sometimes you feel like a nut -