Agree. It was like, “Let’s remember all the great skits without creating much new material.”
Other finales of well respected shows?
House—faked his own death, disappeared with Wilson.
Sopranos—was Tony killed by “Members Only” guy?
MASH—everybody EXCEPT Klinger went home
Breaking Bad—Walt went out in a blaze
The show intentionally subverted expectations. Some people aren’t fans of that or think it was poorly executed, but I thought everyone understood what they were trying to do.
… And Monk found that Trudy wasn’t as pure as the driven snow.
I always thought the last episode was backwards, in a way. Jerry and the gang are on trial because they watched a guy getting carjacked and didn’t do anything. Then, all the people whose lives they ruined testify about what awful people they are.
That’s backwards. The best thing that ever happened to that carjacking victim was that, for once in their lives, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer minded their own business.
All those returning characters should have been witnesses for the defense; each one had a story about how the gang tried to help them and wound up ruining their lives.
My idea for the final episode: After they were arrested, Jerry, et al., tell their attorney how awful and incompetent they are. Then the attorney visits all the people whose lives they destroyed, asks them to testify, and all of them refuse.
I have a different view. First off, Jackie Childs would represent Jerry, Elaine, and George but not Kramer because of the bad history he had with him as a client. Instead, Kramer represents himself. Jerry, Elaine, and George are still found guilty but because the jury finds their degrees of involvement in the crime vary, their sentences are different. Jerry just has to pay a fine and do some local shows as community service, Elaine gets a year’s probation and weekend community service (i.e., picking up trash along the highway). George, of course, gets the worst of it and has to spend a year in jail. Kramer is acquitted because as the result of filming the carjacking, the police were able to later identify, apprehend, and convict the thief. (Their fates would’ve been a call back to an earlier episode where Elaine commented that things always evened out for Jerry and while she and George would be up while the other was down.)
I am still favoring the “The plane crashed and they all went to the banal hell they deserved” theory.
I feel like since Seinfeld was the anti-90s sitcom, they should have done an anti-finale. Pretty much every sitcom finale had some big storyline where everyone is going through big changes (new jobs, getting married, moving, etc.) It would’ve been great if they set up like you think all that’s going to happen, but then it’s just another ep like “The Chinese Restaurant” where nothing really happens.
Didn’t Larry David somewhat re-do the finale on Curb Your Enthusiasm?
I saw it just once and thought they showed a decent amount of content from his revised/re-do of the finale. Much more a normal episode, which would have been a better idea.
It was “a show about nothing.” In the end, they got jailed for doing nothing. I thought it was perfect.
Dr. Richard Kimble found the one-armed man and cleared his name.
Thomas Magnum died.*
STTNG echoed the first episode
Brenda Leigh Johnson got promoted and still managed to escape any ramifications for all the crap she pulled. It was almost Seinfeld-ian.
* he got better
My alternate ending is based on something Newman actually said in the finale.
He told Jerry that he would soon reveal himself to Jerry “In all my glory.” But that angle was quietly dropped, and Newman never did a single thing remotely along those lines.
In my revision the final scene unfolds as follows:
NEWMAN enters the cell block, camera following him from behind, image slightly blurry, but you can notice that his head is all red, and he has two bumps on the front top of his head.
NEWMAN: “Hello, everybody! How are we enjoying our ‘stay’, hmm?”
JERRY, a devastated look of shock on his face: “I knew. Deep down, I always knew…”
ELAINE is sobbing underneath her breath, huge tears slowly dripping down her face.
GEORGE has covered his eyes.
KRAMER is looking off to the side, a thousand-yard stare on his face.
The camera shifts to a shot of NEWMAN, in full devilish regalia, horns on his head, with a deep crimson complexion. He begins laughing heartily, a malevolent smile on his face. Slowly FADE to black.
The night it aired, I thought Newman was going to choke on the popcorn he was eating during the trial and they would save his life by performing the heimlich, thus proving they care and help people and also making Newman the one they helped, which would very much bother him.
Sure, but why is that a good thing? As you said, those expectations were that it would be well written and have good comedic timing. So intentionally not using those would just be deciding to write poorly and not be funny. I’m all for twists, but that seems like a bad one.
Personally, I didn’t mind the finale, but I didn’t think too highly of it, either. My main issue was that I felt the artifice, and didn’t think it rose above it. I felt that they needed an excuse to bring back the characters, but I didn’t think it made sense organically. The first time I really enjoyed it was back in the cell, but then it ended too quickly.
No. Nope.
They all died in that plane crash. The trial was their lives being reviewed, flashing before their eyes. Being put in jail together was their going to Purgatory. Not good enough to go to heaven, not evil enough to go to hell. (even if they were pretty much selfish idiots when alive, they were not malevolently evil!)
Agreed. The prime objective of a sitcom is to be funny. They failed.
You would think that such an innovative show they would want to go out with a bang, show just how great a show it was.
Instead they came up with a not-funny series of clips.
All it really showed was that they had run out of steam and it definitely was time to end. On a sad whimper.