MovieChat Forums > Seinfeld (1989) Discussion > Finale was utter crap

Finale was utter crap

posted 6 years ago by Heisenberg (6281)
30 replies | jump to latest

I somehow missed the finale till today, I watched pretty much every other episode before. I know I'm not saying anything new but for me it is new so here I go: what a horrible episode this was!
I guess they were trying for something special here, but they failed miserably. It feels like it was written by somebody that has never watched the series before. Even the acting sucked!
Above all, I have no idea what they were trying to say with this ending.
That they were all bad people and the creators knew it and wanted to address this? Why would that be of any relevance on a show "about nothing"?
The characters never took themselves too seriously, they KNEW it themselves that they were deeply flawed, but they didn't care much about it. This show was a huge success with a cult following, so clearly the audience was fine with this take: they are 4 crappy individuals, but that's fine: they are not awfully bad and they are funny, nobody ever praised them for man of the year.
So what's with this final judgement?

[–] slimone (7996) 5 years ago

Yes, the ending really sucked.

[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 5 years ago

Mixed bag as far as I'm concerned.

What I liked about it was that it took the lack of sentimentality that made Seinfeld great and cranked it way up. It also provided an ending which was atypical and didn't go for the "everything neatly wrapped up" style of a lot of shows where you know the characters are off to a bright future. In this case, you know that they're going to be miserable. That undercutting of expectation, I think, is brilliant. It also allowed the cavalcade of cameos which let us revisit great moments from the show. And, of course, the callous behaviour of the main cast is always darkly amusing.

But I do hear the complaints regarding the main cast not being in the show as much - they're why we watch. I also understand why having them actually go to jail is not desirable to longtime fans. It was a slap in the face, and that's a brave move, but discourteous to fans.

The best complaint against the episode, though, came from the man himself: Larry David. I watched an interview with David where he said that he didn't think the episode was really bad, but what made it weaker was that the rest of the show was about the magnification of petty, small things - tics, idiosyncrasies, foibles - and making mountains out of those molehills. The finale tried to be a "big" plot and so it wasn't really true to the show's comedy style. I agree with that - the finale is a bit off because it was too grandiose.

But, I still think it's funny that the show sent its stars to jail. I also think it's funny that Jerry was doing standup in front of the (clearly angry) prison population, and that - despite going to jail - Jerry and George are still just talking about that shirt button.

A final note: I saw another interview with Jason Alexander (might have been a cast reunion with all of them chatting) where he talked about a possible final scene they kicked around: cut to them getting out of prison and just going, "That was *brutal*..." It would have been a scream.

[–] TheEngineer (199) 4 years ago

The finale is great. Only simpletons dislike it, and usually for arbitrary reasons. It was the perfect outcome for the characters. David got it right. That's what upsets people. He was being honest about the characters and it shattered the simplistic view certain people have of the show and in turn their own self images. It was the real life version of what the fictionalized Larry David does on every episode of Curb. Which just makes it even more perfect.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I hated the finale, because the whole point of the series was to endear us to the characters because of their flaws. All of a sudden, after getting us to embrace them warts and all, the finale pretty much said they were exceptionally horrible human beings and we were supposed to hate them the entire time. If they were nothing short of sociopaths, what was the point of watching them all these years then?

[–] Heisenberg (6281) 4 years ago

Atomicgirl I think you're right on the money!
That's exactly the same way I feel about it.
I do think they were horrible human beings, but they were open about it and that made them likeable. They never claimed to be heroes or geniuses nor to have great morals. But they also were decent, average people, not worse than any of the other characters that surrounded them, including everybody in this finale that wants to take revenge on them.
This episode just unloads on them so much criticism and hate as if the writers wanted to give the viewers a lesson, as if they were explaining us the joke, making clear that these 4 guys are not to be idolized. As if anybody ever actually did!
For instance I owned a Kramer painting poster, I certainly never considered him to be my idol, I just think he's a great funny character but I never felt the need for somebody to tell me "but understand he's an idiot". Gee, I never realized that, thanks for telling me!

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

The finale did more than say he was an idiot. It said he was a cold-blooded opportunist. It showed him wielding a camera and filming a guy getting mugged for his amusement. The show was making him out to be the equivalent of a modern day douche bag who immediately takes out his smartphone to film someone dying rather than help that person. This was not who the character was. Kramer was a goofy free spirit, not a sociopath. Same with all the other characters. They weren't sociopaths. They were neurotic, and a lot of their stupid behavior stemmed from their neuroses. That was part of the charm of the characters. We all have neuroses (hang ups), and because of this, sometimes what the characters did was either relatable or understandable, albeit at times shameful, awkward or embarrassing.

I feel as if the finale was also being anti-New Yorker. Note that it takes place in a small town outside of NYC. The whole point of that was to say that the reason why the characters were terrible people is that they were New Yorkers. To put it another way, their behavior was only funny within a NYC context, but outside of NYC, they were just assholes.