Did _anyone_ really want to see the fab four go to prison for their misdeeds? (Other than people who hate "Seinfeld," I mean.)
I guess Larry David was operating under the impression that we'd want to see these characters get their comeuppance after years of getting away with everything. That's where he made his fatal mistake.
And ending the show with Jerry bombing in front of a prison crowd? Ugh. At least if he had gotten the convicts to laugh, that would've been somewhat more satisfying.
Or if the show had ended with the gang getting out of prison a year later.
What you're ignoring is that, over the course of nine seasons, the fans have come to like and identify with these characters AS IF THEY WERE REAL PEOPLE. George Steinbrenner reported that people would stop him in the street and tell him not to fire George Costanza. Watching the four main characters go to prison at the end of the episode was like watching your friends go to prison. One can appreciate the supposed "satire" (and what brilliant satire it was -- move over Moliere) on an academic level, but on an emotional level it was about as fun as watching your goldfish die. Watching an episode of "Seinfeld" shouldn't feel like a chore, but this one did. To make matters worse, the jokes in the script were tired and forced, and the acting was listless. The episode, therefore, failed at its primary goal -- entertainment.
But let's get back to that issue of satire. Maybe the episode fails as entertainment, but does it succeed as satire? I say not.
I think a lot of people are defending the final episode simply because they think it makes them sound smart and sophisticated. These people try -- as you just did -- to characterize the people who didn't like the episode as uncultured rubes who didn't "get it."
I got it, all right. I realize that the whole point of the script was to challenge our assumptions about neat, tidy Hollywood endings. The attempted satire was simply a dismal failure. Larry David doesn't have the skill to pull it off. The ending David came up with was so unrealistic, convoluted, and hackneyed that it was easily as phony as the "happy" endings he was supposedly satirizing.
Thus, the "Seinfeld" finale fails on two different levels. I stand by my original claim that the episode was a dud.
I was sort of hoping that the jet would land on a desert island in the middle of the ocean. The cast get out, amazed to find that they're still alive. Then they get greeted by Bob Denver, followed by Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. . .