This was in Monday's Globe and Mail (Canada's National Newspaper)
WARM AND FUZZY FINALES -NOT!
by John Haslet Cuff, Globe and Mail television critic
There are at least another half-dozen season and series finales tonight. And many of you will be happy that it's all coming to an end for another year, since a number of last week's parting shots were execessively contrived, sentimental and even sillier than usual.
There was at least one bright spot in the mix, thanx to sitcom chap Seinfeld. For those of you who missed it, the show (as always) refused to play the typical sitcom game of trying to embrace the TV audience in a sappy "we love you, please love us" hug by yanking their collective heartstrings or teasing their tear ducts. George, who was scheduled to get married but desperately hoping to back out, found the perfect solution. True to the shows character and its unchallenged supremacy in the sitcom ratings, the writers found a way to thumb their noses at a predictable sentiments and any expectation of a warm and fuzzy conclusion.
Tight-fistedm neurotic, completely self-centred George, possibly TV's biggest loser and most irritating creation, bought the chearpest envelopes he could find so his fiancee, Susan, could send out wedding invitations. And because the envelopes contained a toxic substance in the glue, Sunsan expired from licking too many of them. Complete jerk that he is, George did not even fake a tear or a moment of regret when the doctor informed heim that his "beloved" was "gone". Instead, immedialtely following the suneral service he phoned actress Marisa Tomei, trying once again to score a date with her. She simply hung up on him, and George, not even the least bit chatised, just shrugged.
Alone amoung the prime-time comedy shows. Seinfled has steered a course that in many respects runs contrary to conventional wisdom. None of the characters are particularly likeable. Kramer is a cartoonish figure, a noisy idiot whose crackbrained schemes and spontaneous intrusion would drive any "normal" friend around the bend. Sienfeld himself is an excessively prissy fellow who speaks mostly in an interrogatory whine and treats his girlfriends like runnings shoes, wearing them once and then throwing them away. Elaine also is a nutbag: witty, capable of appearing sexually desirable, but also competely irrational so often that she cant hang on to a boyfriend. But that, I suspect, is the key to the shows appeal.