HISTORY's Moment in Media: "Seinfeld's" Finale

It39s also probably the last big everyonegatheredatthesametime series finale in history before an explosion of channels and then the streaming revolution inalterably changed the TV landscape and before ondemand streaming and social media gave us the opportunity to experience these moments and discuss them at our convenienceInitially Seinfeld took a while to catch on Its first season debuted as The Seinfeld Chronicles in the middle of the summer with only a fiveepisode order But there was enough response that NBC executives renewed it for a longer second season and soon enough moved it into the prime Thursday night slot after Cheers That year included classics like quotThe Chinese Restaurantquot a perfect aboutnothing episode in which the characters spend an evening in hilarious frustration unable to get seated for dinnerSoon Seinfeld was a sensation creating catchphrases that we still use today This was before memes And yada yada by Season 6 it was America39s toprated showAt the start of the ninth season Jerry Seinfeld and his castmates Jason Alexander as George Julia LouisDreyfus as Elaine and Michael Richards as Kramer agreed they39d make it their last one The show was still a hit and they wanted to go out on top That gave NBC months to hype the big finale Larry David Seinfeld39s cocreator who left the show after Season 7 came back to write the finale By the time the big moment arrived it felt as big as the Super BowlquotAccording to just about every magazine on every newsstand in the country we are a nation united in inconsolable grief over the impending demise of Seinfeldquot Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales wrote about a month before the big dayAfter the finale finally aired we were also a nation united perhaps appropriately in mild annoyanceThat last episode titled simply quotThe Finalequot ran for 56 minutes It opens with Jerry getting a green light from NBC for the showwithintheshow sitcom called Jerry that he and George had been developing for years To toast the good news NBC loans their new creators the corporate jet and that gang takes off for Paris to celebrate But some Kramer hijinks force an emergency landing in a tiny Massachusetts town and as they wait for the plane to get fixed they witness a carjacking Instead of helping the victim they make typical Seinfeldian jokes all while Kramer records them with his camcorder It turns out they39re in violation of a Good Samaritan law and they go on trial Seemingly every minor character from the past nine years reappears to testify about what terrible people the foursome are The series ends with them in jail with Jerry doing standup for his fellow prisoners and getting heckledViewers found the episode overlong overstuffed and for a show with the longtime antisitcomclichamp233 mantra of quotno hugging no learningquot bearing an unexpected comeuppance at its end Critics were unimpressed In Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker called it quotoffkey and bloatedquot The Boston Globe said it was quotat times a trial to watchquot As Avi Selk recently wrote in The Washington Post it was quotbarely recognizable as Seinfeld with different DNA cartoon logic zany plot twists moral consequencesquotIt was also watched by 763 million people close to that year39s Super Bowl audience of 90 million It was the mostwatched TV broadcast of the previous five years The New York Times reported soon after performing better than even Oscars telecasts Viewership didn39t quite reach the 804 million who39d watched the last call for Cheers in 1993 but there39d been an explosion of new cable channels dividing the audience in the intervening five years And it didn39t come close to the 105 million who watched MASH end its run in 1983 destined to remain the mostwatched TV episode of all timeIn 2004 525 million would watch the final Friends And since that year no other finale even breaks into the Top 20That leaves the Seinfeld finale destined to remain among the most watched of all time It has also earned some reappraisal Seinfeld and David have long defended the show noting how tough it is to pull off a successful finale Many admire how it effectively brought back so many bit players and gave them all meaningful character moments On the other hand Julia LouisDreyfus appeared in David Letterman39s final Top Ten List with a memorable dig quotThanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finalequot And Sopranos creator David Chase in discussing how hard it is to close off a beloved TV run has joked his show and Seinfeld should have swapped endings his characters belonged in jail and theirs in a dinerLarry David is the most committed defender of the ending he wrote But on Curb Your Enthusiasm his next hit series he39s also now revised it twice First Curb39s Season 7 tracked a Seinfeld reunion episode with all the cast members participating that gave him a shot at a new take And then just last month he ended Curb like he39d ended Seinfeld with his alter ego character on trial and then sentenced to jail But this judge is ultimately forced to declare a mistrial and Larry is releasedAll these years later there39s no hecklingClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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HISTORY's Moment in Media: "Seinfeld's" Finale

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