Review of the final episode of Seinfeld

By The Plaid Adder

Comments: plaidder@mindspring.com

Well, it could've been better, but it could've been a lot worse.

GOOD POINTS:

* WHOLE LOTTA META: I guess what I liked best about this episode was how self-consciously self-referential it was. Up to the point where they got arrested, the entire thing was about yanking the audience's collective chains by changing their expectations about how the show was finally going to end. It started with the "Quaker Oats Box Finale About The Pilot" ending, which made one think they were going to end by having Jerry and George try to turn their lives into the show of their lives which are really a show about other peoples' lives... Then we moved to the "final blowout on location in Paris" ending, which segued almost immediately into the "Blackadder Memorial Everyone Dies" ending with the pseudo-plane crash, and finally into the *real* ending, the trial. This is one of the things I liked about the show, which is that it used the structures and conventions of other pop-culture genres to make the real-life stuff more absurd and surreal. Kramer was always the leader there (so much of his shtick was about living out some bizarre piece of pop culture, like buying the Merv Griffin set and putting it in his apartment, or installing a screen door and pretending to be in the suburbs) but it was also often encoded into the structure of the episode itself, like the one where Jerry eventually becomes the Wolfman...anyway, I'll stop now.

* I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU FOUR PEOPLE FOUND EACH OTHER...: There was also a lot of self-referentiality to the whole "trial" concept, since when people critique Seinfeld this is exactly the argument: that all 4 of these people are essentially 30-something two-year-olds who are too immature, self-absorbed and self-involved to care about. And indeed, that was my problem with it for the past couple of years. On NPR this morning their TV critic was saying that the real innovation with *Seinfeld* was that they broke the rule that sitcoms have to be based around sympathetic characters. Liza and I decided that actually this isn't true; shows like *All in the Family,* *The Jeffersons,* and even *The Simpsons* broke that rule too. The difference is that on those shows, the bastard around which they were centered (Archie, George, Homer) eventually became a lovable bastard, getting more sympathetic as the show aged. On *Seinfeld* the characters got worse. So the innovation, really, was the creators saying, "Yeah, we're selfish bastards, but we make you laugh. You wanna laugh? WALLOW IN IT!" Which, in its way, is maybe more socially subversive than *All in the Family*...

* NO EXIT: That long shot of them sitting in the cell starting to do their shtick as the episode ends must represent the nightmare that the writers and actors all have to have had at some point--being trapped in the same situation and the same idiom for the rest of their lives, doing the same jokes over and over. Seinfeld In Hell!! MOOHOOHAHAHA!!! It also underscored one of the less explicit commentaries this episode made on the series, which was, "you can't make these people happy." No matter where they were--Jerry's apartment, the restaurant, the NBC private jet, Latham massachusetts, prison--they were doing the same stuff. Kramer's trying to get water out of his ear, George is complaining, Elaine's worried about her phone call to Jill, and Jerry is just sort of sitting there reacting to everyone.

So, some interesting stuff there. However...

BAD POINTS:

* THE STATE CALLS...: ONce the trial started, things went downhill fast. Each witness was funny for the one second it took you to recognize whatever minor character had been dredged up from one of the old episodes. After that, it was just an excuse to play an old clip. And sure, the clips are funny, but since they'd just spent 45 minutes playing clips on the pre-episode nostalgiafest, it was a bit much.

* THIS WHOLE TRIAL IS PREPOSTEROUS: Well, Jackie Chiles is right: legally, the whole parade of character witnesses just doesn't work. I was watching this in a roomful of lawyers, who not only spent the commercial break arguing about the constitutional viability of the Good Samaritan law but were unanimous in their opinion that no judge would have allowed this endless stream of character witnesses. Let alone the complete lack of either cross-examination or a defense. I suppose they didn't have time, and really anything that dragged out that part of the episode would have made it a bigger problem, but still...

* WHERE'S Q WHEN YOU NEED HIM?: Then the whole "X on trial" genre has always seemed unpalatably cheesy to me. That was what made me hate "Encounter at Farpoint" so bad that I didn't watch TNG for 4 solid years, and I didn't really like it much better in this context. Also, the "Rivera Live" stuff never seemed that funny to me. I guess there is a difference between reporters and actors...

* YOU DATED *HER?*: Liza noticed that with the exception of the marble rye lady, all the women called at the trial were girlfriends of Jerry's. Which is another thing that has pissed me off about this show the whole time I've been watching it--that Jerry and George dated an endless stream of good-looking women who they never appreciated and who should, by any laws of dating justice I'm familiar with, never have wasted their time on them. But there we go, this is TV land...

Anyhow, it's over, and I won't miss it that much. But the party was fun--and chocolate babka really is tasty, when done right.