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Review: 'Seinfeld' out with a nice little wave goodbye

Web posted on: Friday, May 15, 1998 4:11:00 PM EDT

From Reviewer Paul Clinton

In comedy, as in life, timing is everything, and Jerry Seinfeld has great timing. After nine years, he knew it was time for his show to go to sitcom heaven.

So, last night, "Seinfeld" slipped into history with an estimated 90 million viewers (NBC's figure) watching as "Seinfeld" skipped, stumbled and rolled down memory lane with the "New York Four."

This final episode was too long (can anybody justify those extra 15 minutes?) and there was no edge to this closing, no brilliance, and no big laughs. There were a lot of self-congratulations in this long goodbye and the ending truly was "about nothing," basically proving that the show has run out of steam. But I still enjoyed saying goodbye, and the plot was a clever way to bring everyone together for one last whine.

Written by "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David, who returned to the show just to write the final episode, the series finale offered a look back at many of the people the four had managed to insult and offend over the last nine years.

The set-up was that NBC finally picks up "Jerry," the show about nothing, that Seinfeld and George pitched to the network five years ago. To celebrate, Jerry and the gang take off to Paris in a private NBC jet. Kramer manages to damage the plane's controls in mid-flight and they're forced to land in the conservative small town of Latham, Massachusetts, where they witness a carjacking. Naturally, our callous heroes only look on, make jokes, and record the whole thing on videotape.

But instead of merely insulting the good people of Latham, this time, the four are jailed and put on trial for their indifference to humanity. Latham has recently passed a Good Samaritan law making it a crime to ignore a fellow human being in trouble. This is news to Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine, who have turned ignoring other people's trouble into a high art form.

Yet endure the trial they must, so they once again employ as their defense attorney Jackie Chiles, the Johnnie Cochran-esque African-American lawyer who's gotten Kramer out of scrapes in earlier shows.

After he presents their defense -- they must have been innocent bystanders, since there's no such thing as guilty bystanders -- the finale slides into a laundry list, complete with flashback clips, of the abuses the gang has inflicted upon guest stars over the last nine years. In effect, the whole show and its selfish attitude is put on trial.

Teri Hatcher, who played a character Jerry suspected of having fake breasts; Jane Leeves, the "virgin" who witnessed the infamous Contest; and Larry Thomas (the "Soup Nazi") were among the witnesses parading up to the stand to condemn the four.

The result? The show kept to its main directive that there would be no hugging and no learning. The four left as they came in, unbowed, selfish, and nitpicking to the very end as they were sentenced to a year in prison.

No new ground was broken here, and the show was more nostalgic then truly funny. An attempt to introduce a few more additions to the Seinfeld lexicon were made: we now have "cell phone walk-and-talk" and "call-waiting face-off."

The finale's beginning harked back to the openings of the series in its early years, with Jerry doing stand-up to introduce the show. And as with the early versions he closed the show on stage, holding a microphone, and telling jokes. Of course his audience is now fellow prisoners, but he's still knocking 'em dead with shtick right to the very end, "and what's with the lock-down? As if the weight lifting and sodomy weren't enough."

There was no big bang here. Just a nice little wave goodbye. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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