In case anyone had doubts about the way Seinfeld ended his run (with no hugs, no marriages, no deaths and clearly no lessons learned while all the Fab Four spent their next 12 months in the Gray-Bar Hotel) all you needed to do was watch last night's Murphy Brown finale. A once-cutting-edge comedy went so soft, the finale was nothing BUT hugs, lessons learned, near-death experiences...and even a wedding proposal. By contrast while Seinfeld's exit from TV (at least for now) wasn't perfectly executed, it was funny enough to entertain, and faithful to the tone of the series---bitingly and unsentiment- ally satiric, and certainly unsparing when it came to the main characters, just like it had always been. In short, it was one of the few series-enders that maintained some respect for both the series and its audience.
Bob Smith, afternoons WXXI-AM 1370, Rochester NY