MIKE BOONE The Gazette
Seinfeld did not save the best for last.
The sitcom's final episode - telecast last night to about 50 million homes in Canada and the U.S. - will not join The Contest, The Outing, The Sponge or any of the other classics on everyone's all-time Seinfeld Top 10 list.
The absurdly over-hyped Seinfeld finale ran 75 minutes - and seemed longer.
There weren't enough laughs to fill that much airtime. And most of the humour was obscurely self-referential - delightful for no-lifers who have memorized every Seinfeld script, annoying (and often dull) for everyone else.
The running gags were cell phones and water in Kramer's ear -thin gruel, even for a show that has turned trivia and minor neurosis into brilliant TV.
Unlike its antecedents, the Seinfeld finale was not a "water-cooler show."
It ended the way the series began, with Jerry Seinfeld doing stand-up comedy.
The audience wasn't his usual club crowd, however. As the final credits of the last Seinfeld rolled last night, Jerry was entertaining a room full of prison inmates - including George,Elaine and Kramer.
"What's with the lockup?" Jerry asks, launching one of his celebrated observational sorties. "You go to prison in prison? Aren't the weightlifting and sodomy enough?"
Stop, my sides are aching. The most eagerly anticipated television broadcast of the 1990 ended with Seinfeld and his pals going from prime time to jail.