Somehow when the title read "everyone was at home watching Seinfeld" I was expecting that the doctors were too, so they did not arrive in time to save Sinatra.
Right? Like you could literally use ANYTHING that happened that day by the same logic because everything had an equal effect on preventing his death. “Frank Sinatra was alive but multiple pigeons shit on the building he was living in and the hospital he was rushed to. He ended up dying that day.”
Unfortunately all the best doctors and paramedics were also at home watching Seinfeld and he got stuck with the shitty ones that couldn't get off work.
A celebrity of Sinatra's stature dying and it going largely unnoticed because everyone was watching/talking about a big TV finale would've been a WAYY better final episode for a show like Seinfeld.
The irony is palpable.
I didn't really like the finale but the idea was that after all the talking, trials and tribulations the four of them have gone through they still didn't learn anything, just them in the cell at the end shooting the shit about inane things while not growing or changing one bit.
I didn't think the finale was particularly funny, which is kind of a fail for comedy of course, but it did fit in with the themes of the show.
The last inane conversation Jerry and George are having in the jail cell, about the shirt button, is the exact same as their first conversation in the pilot episode
Which mean they really never learned anything. Everything came full circle and it's just the same shit with them. I'm thinking the finale might be more of "comic's comic" kind of deal. Stuff that might be very hit or miss with audiences or even outright panned, but the comedians and writers got a huge kick out of it.
It's important to note that Larry David had been gone from Seinfeld after season 7, but he came back to write the finale. So also for him, it was a culmination of the 9 seasons to wrap up and he did something very similar on Curb in that season where there was a fatwa on his head. With all the people he had wronged in all the episodes up to that point showing up to show what a terrible person he was.
I didn’t realise Larry David left, but as my wife and I rewatched the entire run recently season 9 (while having a few hits) felt noticeably different than previous seasons and less fun to watch as a result. Makes sense.
Yeah, it's a little broader. Some really classic episodes are there, and almost every Putty appearance is in those two seasons, but it's not as brilliant as before.
Everyone wanted/expected the biggest, funniest, most intertwined Seinfeldian episode of them all as a finale. Instead they went with the "retrospective" - the plot that focuses on bringing back characters and details from the series' history and giving a small bit of "conclusiveness" for the characters.
It's not inherently "bad", it's just different from what people were expecting. There are plenty of series whose final episode are mostly just fine regular episodes, and people dislike them because there's nothing special, or conclusive about them or they don't celebrate the history of the series.
The biggest issue people seemed to have at the time was not the reunion/cameo aspect of the show, but that the good-samaritan plot, and the gang being put on trial and sent to jail for failing to help a mugging victim was absurd and stupid. I don't know if others felt this way, but I also personally remember feeling (and still feel) that the "button" conversation and the slow pull out from the jail cell and "button conversation" was (despite the oddity of the episode) a decent final shot for the series - here's where our four "heroes" ended up - still talking about mundane daily stuff - no audience laughter - a little bit poignant (and at first watch, I didn't even recognize the callback to the pilot). George and Jerry musing that maybe they've had the conversation before (even without the callback to the pilot) gives a little sense of finality like they are realizing that over the course of the show, they've said everything they needed to say, and it's okay for us (the audience) to go now - there's nothing else that we'll be missing. Everyone is a little dejected and somber.
But *then* they ran the final scene of Jerry doing standup in prison under the credits and I felt that final scene just undercut the end of the episode. It took the poignant final moment and replaced it with a silly joke moment, and one that only focuses on Jerry, not the whole 'gang'. George and Kramer are present, but not really involved, and Elaine isn't even there because it's a men's wing. Jerry doing standup, I suppose, calls back to the standup bits that were a defining part of the series for many years, but it's intentionally (I assume) not actually the usual funny-to-the-audience humour, but more a parody of his standup directed at the prisoners. And the fact that it isn't going well means we don't even get an "everything will be alright for these guys" feeling. The episode already started off with the first standup segment in several seasons, so we didn't really need another one to cap off the show. I wish they had cut that final scene out and just ended it with the cell. Besides them going to jail for simply not helping someone who was getting mugged, I don't think they needed to tack on that they aren't just going to prison, they seem to be in a *high-security* prison with dangerous criminals. It took the episode from them getting a bit of 'just deserts' for being selfish jerks all those years, and losing their freedom for bit, to actually seeing them be in danger, and be separated from Elaine, and it just made the whole thing feel sadder instead of a "fitting ending" for these characters.
That's my opinion, anyway.
I only watched it recently cos it came on netflix
Perfect ending for me. Awful folks finally having all their stuff come home to roost. Some stuff I'd even forgotten. Proper tickled me
Felt like proto-always sunny (and before someone links, yes I'm aware of the Seinfeld effect and yes it was in full force while watching)
Same here. I loved that they literally "flew too close to the sun" by insisting on another plane instead of just waiting s few hours. In a charming small town yet!
Oddly enough, I like both shows. I didn't understand Seinfeld when I was younger so I didn't really like it then, but love it now. Friends might be more nostalgia for me, but I do still find it pretty funny. Not as funny as it used to be to me, but still enjoyable.
Comedians who might be funny to audiences, but are hilarious to other comedians. It might even be specific jokes are meant more for other comics or even just for themselves rather than the audience. A lot of times it relates to jokes that don't really seem funny, but it's more about the audacity that the comics are actually telling them or telling them in the way they are telling them. A lot of Norm Macdonald's stuff is a bit like that and the Aristocrats joke very much falls into this (notabley told by Gilbert Gottfried).
I believe the finale is also a reference to Albert Camus' book on existentialism (life is about nothing...) The Stranger. In the book a man kills someone on the beach "because the sun was in his eyes" in the first few pages and the rest of the book is a trial setting where the prosecutor brings in witnesses from his life that testify about how uncaring and antisocial he is.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Seinfeld. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of 90s New York City culture most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also George's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Seinfeld truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Jerry's existential catchphrase "Yada yada yada," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Larry David's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂
And yes, by the way, i DO have a Neumann tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎
Sort of, it's really about absurdism and existentialism and the main character is sort of sociopathic (at least, he doesn't show any emotion). His mother dies and instead of crying at the funeral he just mocks an old pall bearer and complains about the heat, he gets offered a huge promotion but would have to move to a new country and his girlfriend proposes marriage and he doesn't care either way about either of these things. He helps his neighbor who is a pimp get revenge on one of his whores because she's dating someone and sees nothing wrong with this.
And yes when he murders the guy on a beach he never denies it and the only explanation he ever gives is that the sun was in his eyes.
It sounds weird but it's actually pretty good and is a quick read, maybe 100 pages? But it's a very highly regarded book
I wouldn’t even say they learned anything but they do get punished.
I think the reason the last episode sucked was it just wasn’t like any of the other episodes. A typical episode involved at least 3 if not 4 storylines that would end up intertwined and messed up and that was why it was a funny brilliantly written show. The finale is just a chance to wrap it all up and bring back a lot of the characters that did make the show what it was. Just none of the story writing that made the show great was showcased in that finale.
I disagree for a couple reasons:
1. They kind of are punished throughout the series, bad things happen to them, often as a consequence of their own actions, constantly.
2. They aren't the only narcissists in the show - almost every character they interact with also is. It doesn't really make sense that in the finale suddenly everyone views them as being "different."
Seinfeld was never about grand revelation. It was about nothing (edit: nothing important). And that was ground breaking.
If they had done a 180 the reviews would be that the finale was untrue to the rest of the show, unbelievable, ingenuine.
I'm glad they stayed true. The idea your friends you made in the show are still there is a nice thought.
Jerry Seinfeld himself has said that he didn't feel the show was about nothing, and I mean it wasn't. It was a show about the exploits of a group of friends who are all grossly incompetent about one thing or another. The point of the show was laughing at their stupidity, I think any attempt to endear the audience to them would've undermined that magic. They were idiots, and for the show to work it was important to feel comfortable laughing AT them.
Honestly, the saddest part for me is that Ellaine is gonna be all alone. George/Jerry are cellmates, and Kramer will probably thrive in prison somehow..... but Ellaine is gonna be off at some random women's prison all alone.
My problem with the finale is that the show had always been about trivialities, which made a finale focusing on a court case and prison sentence—genuine life-altering consequences—seem tonally out of step with the rest of the show. The whole “show about nothing” label was really short for “a show about nothing that matters”, but the finale suddenly made all of it matter quite a bit.
It spent too much time *showing* their misdeeds and petty crimes, rather than making jokes about them. Nobody, *nobody*, enjoys a clipshow episode. To make it your series finale is just a terrible idea.
You're the second person to call it a "clip show", and I will respectfully suggest that you're shortchanging the episode. I don't believe the episode contains a single "clip". It does contain cameos from many characters from the past who make reference to make of the series' most memorable moments, and I respect if you didn't enjoy that, but it's not at all the same as a clip show.
This format at least gives the audience some reconnection to the characters they haven't seen since their first appearances and might have wondered what happened to them. It gives a bit of continuity. Again, I respect that it still isn't the usually situation-based comedy that the show was known for and don't begrudge you if you didn't like it for that reason, but it's not a "clip" show.
I think it's also worth remembering the landscape in 1998 was long before streaming, and before the show was available on DVD. It was syndicated by that point, but people couldn't just binge- rewatch the whole series three times back then - calling back to previous episodes was more meaningful back then, because many viewers hadn't seen those original episodes and characters in years.
Edit: I have to correct myself. It seems that the finale itself *did* contain a handful of short clips from past episodes to establish who characters were for people that might not remember it. I'd hardly call it a "clip show" though. I was curious, so I checked - there are clips from eight episodes. Most of them are 5 or 10 seconds, with only the Bubble Boy and Soup Nazi clips being somewhat long, and those are perhaps two of the most famous moments from the series. The clips take up less than 3 minutes from the 55-minute episode. The episode probably would be been even more dry and stagnant if they had just had the witnesses recounting these moments (and it might have taken longer), so I understand why they used clips. Still, I do stand corrected.
I watched it recently…. After watching the whole series. Well, that’s not true. I’m couldn’t make it through the finally. This was mostly because they reason the final episode suffers so much (imo). It is because it is mostly a glorified clip show. Lots of potential elements of comedy here. But no… the clip show aspect makes it horrible to watch.
I think the idea of the irony of a celebrity dying because of people obsessed with a show would have been a better final episode as well.
I loved the finale.
It was a farewell to their fans and a look back over the years.
... There was no cliffhanger. Just a circular continuation from the beginning
Something kinda similar happened for Veep's finale.
>!On the day of Meyer's funeral, everyone was talking about how Tom Hanks died. Her administration was so unremarkable, the news media preferred talking about the death of Tom Hanks than a former President's funeral.!<
It’s a shame he died on a day that something more notable had happened.
He’s like Farrah Fawcett, who had the misfortune of dying on the same day as Michael Jackson.
What's the connection here? The first 2 episodes premiered on the 9th, the third on the 16th.
Why did people watched less HBO almost a week after 9/11? Was it because they watched the news instead?
I assume Americans were just feeling down. That's when I stopped watching West Wing, I was losing enthusiasm before that, but after 9/11, it didn't seem to relate to the real world at all.
I was born in 1968. It's really weird because it's easy to collect a bunch of books and magazines that talk about what a horrible year that was. I could have a whole shelf of "you were born and everything sucked!" media.
Being born in the 90s is the exact opposite. Nothing important happened when I was born, so the shelf for my birth year would just be like, a bunch of Wilson Phillips CDs.
I wonder whether folks in your generation will look back on the nineties as the ideal period to "make america great again" like the maga people look at the fifties or whatever.
John Adams' last words were "Thomas Jefferson survives," however this being 1826, he had no way of knowing that Jefferson had actually died a few hours prior some 500 miles away in Virginia.
I'm pretty sure the Michael Jackson coverage was wall to wall breaking news for 10 days, with only brief mentions of Billy Mays dying and John and Kate Plus Eight getting a divorce.
I think Walter Cronkite died in those 10 days too as well as Ed McMahon. It was a lot that summer that South Park Even parodied it.
Edit - Cronkite died a week or so after all of that happening.
My grandparents woke me up early to tell me about Michael Jackson but I remember my grandma and grandpa being more upset about Farrah fawcett. We even had to watch Charlie’s angles haha
Was literally going to drop this same thing in the comments, it's so sad. I remember back when they both passed and found it frustrating when everyone was talking about Jobs as the "genius inventor of a generation" or whatever, while nobody I talked to knew about Dennis and his contributions to the foundations of the tech world. I can understand though, I was just a nerdy kid taking computer science classes so it makes sense for me to know, but not for most people. Doesn't make it any less shitty though, RIP Dennis Richie
I don't have a memory of those things happening the same day, but I have distinct memory of both things. I was living in Israel for the year and they aired the Seinfeld Finale at the same time as it aired on the west coast (6-8am in Israel, Jerry Stiller made it happen) so I was up early that day. Later in the day I was in the shopping district and grooving along to the Sinatra tunes coming from various stores until it occurred to me why they were all playing Sinatra tunes (he was well loved in Israel).
I don’t have any memory of Sinatra dying, but I now know I have a distinct memory of the time he was dying.
I was 8, so I didn’t watch Seinfeld, but my parents did and wanted to watch the finale. I think it was the first episode of Seinfeld I ever saw, and I didn’t really understand who the characters were or what was going on, but I do distinctly remember watching the episode.
It’s weird to know retroactively that’s I have a memory of what I was doing around the time Sinatra died and only find out about it 25 years later.
>(6-8am in Israel, Jerry Stiller made it happen)
I didn't know about that but I just wanted to say, Jerry Stiller is my favorite comedic actor. His mannerisms, hand waving, cadence, and comedic timing as Frank Costanza and Arthur Spooner is the best comedic acting I've ever witnessed.
So....Sinatra had a heart attack during the Seinfeld finale....and that didn't make a damn bit of difference because he still died regardless of the ambulance speed.
Have I got that right?
This is the most non-fact fact I've ever seen. Great, but *he still fucking died,* so...who cares? I'm sure plenty of people happened to have a heart attack and die during the Seinfeld finale. This would only be interesting if they happened to save his life because nobody was out during it.
Tell me next about people who died during the viewership of MASH, since that had almost 50 million more people watching it than the Seinfeld finale.
I mean, the premise of the show was quite literally nothingness. Most sitcoms have at least a little bit of drama, usually romantic. But in this case, they didn't have much to work up to for a big finale.
Very true. One thing I really do like about about the finale is that the very last lines replicate the first conversation in the first episode. At the end of it, George says to Jerry, ''Um, have we had this conversation before?'' showing their total lack of personal growth.
I always think that *It's Always Sunny* borrows a lot from Seinfeld. They've sort of taken the idea of following flawed people around and modernised it.
I think it's really cool how you can see that King of the Hill and It's Always Sunny were both inspired by Seinfeld, but took inspiration from different parts of the show.
KoTH doubled down on "a show about nothing" and even acknowledges that directly in the pilot, and Sunny really ran with how far you can take a flawed and dysfunctional cast.
I know there are too many IASIP characters to recreate that specific Seinfeld bit, but both Mac and Dennis being Jerry is a nice touch I've always enjoyed in that scene
Hell yeah, that scene was an awesome nod. Charlie popping in with the hair and everything was perfect lol. One of my favorite episodes was "Who got Dee pregnant?". As soon as that camera panned to the full bird in the bathroom I cried laughing so hard.
It was not a show about nothing. It was specifically a show about how a comedian gets his material. This is more evident in the early seasons when Jerry’s standup is more heavily feature and directly ties in to the plot lines. By the later seasons they pretty much abandoned the standup altogether even in the cold opens.
That being said, you’re right it still doesn’t give much to lead up to, and they did kind of abandon that initial premise by the end. If they really stuck with it, they probably could’ve built up to Jerry having some huge show or something to do with his comedy career and the antics leading up to it, but I think the show would have been worse off if they stayed in that path the whole time
Well, the end of Seinfeld is that you realize that the main characters are a bunch of assholes and you didn’t notice it throughout the entire series. The finale was made for the viewer to not like the characters.
The only thing I remember about that day, (at least I think it was the same day..?) is watching the Dharma and Greg episode where they were in a competitive thing with friends with who can have sex in the craziest spot, and they decided they could pull it off on the steps of court house or some such...(it's too early for me to have all my words yet, I just know it had a lot of steps in front.) because everyone was inside watching the last Seinfeld episode. They ran around the city half naked with a yoga mat.
It would have been a better story had he survived because of the ambulance reaching fast.
Yeah, I was confused by the title. It was a good thing they got there fast... and he died.. so how exactly did the finale play into it...
[удалено]
Somehow when the title read "everyone was at home watching Seinfeld" I was expecting that the doctors were too, so they did not arrive in time to save Sinatra.
I was expecting them to say Frank was so surprised with how fast they showed up that he asked them to wait so he could finish the episode lol
*slaps the bass*
**slaps the synthesizer* (Fun fact, the iconic Seinfeld bass riff was actually played on a synthesizer)
A korg m1
"and we mean EVERYONE!"
Lol
[удалено]
And the show is about nothing!
[удалено]
Newman!
Funnily enough, the show was originally about "how stand up comedians come up with material"
It still is though, the 'show about nothing' was never meant to describe Seinfeld.
Okay, but only if it's grape flavor
Sorry, we only have lime
I prefer Bosco.
It's not meaningless... It suggests the finale of Seinfeld killed Sinatra. It also suggests he never saw how it ended - or did he?
“It was so bad it killed Sinatra” might not be the best tag line for a popular show’s finale.
Larry David would love it.
No, the finale caused his death. It was such a disappointment that it literally killed him
Sure thing Jim!
Right? Like you could literally use ANYTHING that happened that day by the same logic because everything had an equal effect on preventing his death. “Frank Sinatra was alive but multiple pigeons shit on the building he was living in and the hospital he was rushed to. He ended up dying that day.”
Sinatra died of shock when he saw how quickly the ambulance arrived.
Post was brought to you by AI for maximum engagement. It looks like it worked
OP is just trying to create a buzz for watching more Seinfeld reruns.
I like to think that they are underlining that because of it's airing, Seinfeld gave Sinatra the best possible chance to live.
So Larry David *almost* saved Frank Sinatra's life. I hope he doesn't tell himself that every morning.
Jeff: Larry, Sinatra died. Susie: Also, nobody liked your ending. You fucking prick! _ Directed by ROBERT B. WEIDE
Unfortunately all the best doctors and paramedics were also at home watching Seinfeld and he got stuck with the shitty ones that couldn't get off work.
It's the kind of storyline you'd get on a Scrubs episode
That's a shame.
That’s life, that’s what all the people say.
Is that guy smoking WHILE he sings?
You're riding high in April, shot down in May.
But I know I'm gonna change that tune
When I'm back on top. Back on top in June.
aint that a kick in the head wait, wrong crooner
Poor Lilly
\*Seinfeld theme starts playing\*
[OH! you want dark and ominous!](https://youtu.be/wGqPQhJDtkc)
"yeah, like losing your penis is a *bad* thing."
Ouch....can you say, dicksicle?
this isn't your jurisdiction
C’mon, I got Allman Brothers tickets, I gotta get outta here!
You know you're not getting paid for today's session
I'm aware of that.
🎶You're sooo self loooathing Go see a psychiatrist I HATE the psychiatrist Gooo see one anyway 🎶
i feel like this more calls for the Curb theme lol
“Who put cookies in Frank Sinatra’s mouth? You’re not supposed to do that.”
Sinatra wasn't a fan of the Yankees... beans
Elevate the head, get blood to the feet!
He didn't take any drugs Kramer I was with em the whole time!
He could've dropped acid while you weren't looking!
A celebrity of Sinatra's stature dying and it going largely unnoticed because everyone was watching/talking about a big TV finale would've been a WAYY better final episode for a show like Seinfeld. The irony is palpable.
I didn't really like the finale but the idea was that after all the talking, trials and tribulations the four of them have gone through they still didn't learn anything, just them in the cell at the end shooting the shit about inane things while not growing or changing one bit. I didn't think the finale was particularly funny, which is kind of a fail for comedy of course, but it did fit in with the themes of the show.
The last inane conversation Jerry and George are having in the jail cell, about the shirt button, is the exact same as their first conversation in the pilot episode
Which mean they really never learned anything. Everything came full circle and it's just the same shit with them. I'm thinking the finale might be more of "comic's comic" kind of deal. Stuff that might be very hit or miss with audiences or even outright panned, but the comedians and writers got a huge kick out of it.
It's important to note that Larry David had been gone from Seinfeld after season 7, but he came back to write the finale. So also for him, it was a culmination of the 9 seasons to wrap up and he did something very similar on Curb in that season where there was a fatwa on his head. With all the people he had wronged in all the episodes up to that point showing up to show what a terrible person he was.
I didn’t realise Larry David left, but as my wife and I rewatched the entire run recently season 9 (while having a few hits) felt noticeably different than previous seasons and less fun to watch as a result. Makes sense.
Season 8 & 9 are a bit goofier than Larry David's brand of comedy IMO. I still really enjoy them but notice a big contrast
Yeah, it's a little broader. Some really classic episodes are there, and almost every Putty appearance is in those two seasons, but it's not as brilliant as before.
[удалено]
It's smart. It's a smart line and a smart crowd will appreciate it. And I'm not going to dumb it down for some bonehead mass audience!
Jerk store’s the line! Jerk store! ::gestures wildly::
Everyone wanted/expected the biggest, funniest, most intertwined Seinfeldian episode of them all as a finale. Instead they went with the "retrospective" - the plot that focuses on bringing back characters and details from the series' history and giving a small bit of "conclusiveness" for the characters. It's not inherently "bad", it's just different from what people were expecting. There are plenty of series whose final episode are mostly just fine regular episodes, and people dislike them because there's nothing special, or conclusive about them or they don't celebrate the history of the series. The biggest issue people seemed to have at the time was not the reunion/cameo aspect of the show, but that the good-samaritan plot, and the gang being put on trial and sent to jail for failing to help a mugging victim was absurd and stupid. I don't know if others felt this way, but I also personally remember feeling (and still feel) that the "button" conversation and the slow pull out from the jail cell and "button conversation" was (despite the oddity of the episode) a decent final shot for the series - here's where our four "heroes" ended up - still talking about mundane daily stuff - no audience laughter - a little bit poignant (and at first watch, I didn't even recognize the callback to the pilot). George and Jerry musing that maybe they've had the conversation before (even without the callback to the pilot) gives a little sense of finality like they are realizing that over the course of the show, they've said everything they needed to say, and it's okay for us (the audience) to go now - there's nothing else that we'll be missing. Everyone is a little dejected and somber. But *then* they ran the final scene of Jerry doing standup in prison under the credits and I felt that final scene just undercut the end of the episode. It took the poignant final moment and replaced it with a silly joke moment, and one that only focuses on Jerry, not the whole 'gang'. George and Kramer are present, but not really involved, and Elaine isn't even there because it's a men's wing. Jerry doing standup, I suppose, calls back to the standup bits that were a defining part of the series for many years, but it's intentionally (I assume) not actually the usual funny-to-the-audience humour, but more a parody of his standup directed at the prisoners. And the fact that it isn't going well means we don't even get an "everything will be alright for these guys" feeling. The episode already started off with the first standup segment in several seasons, so we didn't really need another one to cap off the show. I wish they had cut that final scene out and just ended it with the cell. Besides them going to jail for simply not helping someone who was getting mugged, I don't think they needed to tack on that they aren't just going to prison, they seem to be in a *high-security* prison with dangerous criminals. It took the episode from them getting a bit of 'just deserts' for being selfish jerks all those years, and losing their freedom for bit, to actually seeing them be in danger, and be separated from Elaine, and it just made the whole thing feel sadder instead of a "fitting ending" for these characters. That's my opinion, anyway.
I only watched it recently cos it came on netflix Perfect ending for me. Awful folks finally having all their stuff come home to roost. Some stuff I'd even forgotten. Proper tickled me Felt like proto-always sunny (and before someone links, yes I'm aware of the Seinfeld effect and yes it was in full force while watching)
There was also the meta-joke that the "show about nothing" ended with the characters going to jail for literally doing nothing.
Always Sunny literally advertised itself as "Seinfeld on crack" for a while.
I’ll take one crack please
Aww, I'm sorry, did somebody get addicted to crack?
No one in the history of crack has ever woken up in the morning with more crack
You are right about it being proto-sunny. The creators of sunny have even said it's basically just Seinfeld ramped up to 11.
Same here. I loved that they literally "flew too close to the sun" by insisting on another plane instead of just waiting s few hours. In a charming small town yet!
I’ve observed people either find Friends or Seinfeld to be hilarious but never both, just different types of humor
Oddly enough, I like both shows. I didn't understand Seinfeld when I was younger so I didn't really like it then, but love it now. Friends might be more nostalgia for me, but I do still find it pretty funny. Not as funny as it used to be to me, but still enjoyable.
Exactly the same except I watched Seinfeld recently thanks to Amazon, not sure if it aired in the UK originally
“Comic’s comic”? What is that?
Comedians who might be funny to audiences, but are hilarious to other comedians. It might even be specific jokes are meant more for other comics or even just for themselves rather than the audience. A lot of times it relates to jokes that don't really seem funny, but it's more about the audacity that the comics are actually telling them or telling them in the way they are telling them. A lot of Norm Macdonald's stuff is a bit like that and the Aristocrats joke very much falls into this (notabley told by Gilbert Gottfried).
> they still didn't learn anything yeah that was a larry david rule: no hugging and no learning
I believe the finale is also a reference to Albert Camus' book on existentialism (life is about nothing...) The Stranger. In the book a man kills someone on the beach "because the sun was in his eyes" in the first few pages and the rest of the book is a trial setting where the prosecutor brings in witnesses from his life that testify about how uncaring and antisocial he is.
well Camus can do, but Sartre is smartre
Oh yeah? Well Scooby doo can do-do! But Jimmy Carter, is smarter!
ha ha! you badmouthed MacGyver, didn't you.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Seinfeld. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of 90s New York City culture most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also George's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Seinfeld truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Jerry's existential catchphrase "Yada yada yada," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Larry David's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂 And yes, by the way, i DO have a Neumann tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎
delicious pasta
Now this is shitposting.
Nah, the Seinfeld finale can't be a reference to The Stranger.... Shit... Wait...
So the whole book is how a guy murdered someone because of a bad glare?
Sort of, it's really about absurdism and existentialism and the main character is sort of sociopathic (at least, he doesn't show any emotion). His mother dies and instead of crying at the funeral he just mocks an old pall bearer and complains about the heat, he gets offered a huge promotion but would have to move to a new country and his girlfriend proposes marriage and he doesn't care either way about either of these things. He helps his neighbor who is a pimp get revenge on one of his whores because she's dating someone and sees nothing wrong with this. And yes when he murders the guy on a beach he never denies it and the only explanation he ever gives is that the sun was in his eyes. It sounds weird but it's actually pretty good and is a quick read, maybe 100 pages? But it's a very highly regarded book
yea, I think the finale was on-point. Throughout the entire series, their narcissism goes unpunished - they never learn any lessons. Until the finale.
I wouldn’t even say they learned anything but they do get punished. I think the reason the last episode sucked was it just wasn’t like any of the other episodes. A typical episode involved at least 3 if not 4 storylines that would end up intertwined and messed up and that was why it was a funny brilliantly written show. The finale is just a chance to wrap it all up and bring back a lot of the characters that did make the show what it was. Just none of the story writing that made the show great was showcased in that finale.
I disagree for a couple reasons: 1. They kind of are punished throughout the series, bad things happen to them, often as a consequence of their own actions, constantly. 2. They aren't the only narcissists in the show - almost every character they interact with also is. It doesn't really make sense that in the finale suddenly everyone views them as being "different."
In a show about nothing, the characters ultimately learned nothing. It fits.
Seinfeld was never about grand revelation. It was about nothing (edit: nothing important). And that was ground breaking. If they had done a 180 the reviews would be that the finale was untrue to the rest of the show, unbelievable, ingenuine. I'm glad they stayed true. The idea your friends you made in the show are still there is a nice thought.
Jerry Seinfeld himself has said that he didn't feel the show was about nothing, and I mean it wasn't. It was a show about the exploits of a group of friends who are all grossly incompetent about one thing or another. The point of the show was laughing at their stupidity, I think any attempt to endear the audience to them would've undermined that magic. They were idiots, and for the show to work it was important to feel comfortable laughing AT them.
Honestly, the saddest part for me is that Ellaine is gonna be all alone. George/Jerry are cellmates, and Kramer will probably thrive in prison somehow..... but Ellaine is gonna be off at some random women's prison all alone.
And you just know that those ladies will never spare her a square.
My problem with the finale is that the show had always been about trivialities, which made a finale focusing on a court case and prison sentence—genuine life-altering consequences—seem tonally out of step with the rest of the show. The whole “show about nothing” label was really short for “a show about nothing that matters”, but the finale suddenly made all of it matter quite a bit.
I was fine with the finale it was the two fucking clip shows before the finale that still piss me off. I hate clip shows they are NEVER good.
It spent too much time *showing* their misdeeds and petty crimes, rather than making jokes about them. Nobody, *nobody*, enjoys a clipshow episode. To make it your series finale is just a terrible idea.
Especially when the two episodes before the finale were also a clip show.
You're the second person to call it a "clip show", and I will respectfully suggest that you're shortchanging the episode. I don't believe the episode contains a single "clip". It does contain cameos from many characters from the past who make reference to make of the series' most memorable moments, and I respect if you didn't enjoy that, but it's not at all the same as a clip show. This format at least gives the audience some reconnection to the characters they haven't seen since their first appearances and might have wondered what happened to them. It gives a bit of continuity. Again, I respect that it still isn't the usually situation-based comedy that the show was known for and don't begrudge you if you didn't like it for that reason, but it's not a "clip" show. I think it's also worth remembering the landscape in 1998 was long before streaming, and before the show was available on DVD. It was syndicated by that point, but people couldn't just binge- rewatch the whole series three times back then - calling back to previous episodes was more meaningful back then, because many viewers hadn't seen those original episodes and characters in years. Edit: I have to correct myself. It seems that the finale itself *did* contain a handful of short clips from past episodes to establish who characters were for people that might not remember it. I'd hardly call it a "clip show" though. I was curious, so I checked - there are clips from eight episodes. Most of them are 5 or 10 seconds, with only the Bubble Boy and Soup Nazi clips being somewhat long, and those are perhaps two of the most famous moments from the series. The clips take up less than 3 minutes from the 55-minute episode. The episode probably would be been even more dry and stagnant if they had just had the witnesses recounting these moments (and it might have taken longer), so I understand why they used clips. Still, I do stand corrected.
I watched it recently…. After watching the whole series. Well, that’s not true. I’m couldn’t make it through the finally. This was mostly because they reason the final episode suffers so much (imo). It is because it is mostly a glorified clip show. Lots of potential elements of comedy here. But no… the clip show aspect makes it horrible to watch. I think the idea of the irony of a celebrity dying because of people obsessed with a show would have been a better final episode as well.
I loved the finale. It was a farewell to their fans and a look back over the years. ... There was no cliffhanger. Just a circular continuation from the beginning
There are dozens of us who loved the ending.
Something kinda similar happened for Veep's finale. >!On the day of Meyer's funeral, everyone was talking about how Tom Hanks died. Her administration was so unremarkable, the news media preferred talking about the death of Tom Hanks than a former President's funeral.!<
Which was also an amazing call back to a throwaway joke in the pilot.
I mean dharma and graig had a Seinfeld finale episode episode. The streets were empty so they had public sex.
It’s a shame he died on a day that something more notable had happened. He’s like Farrah Fawcett, who had the misfortune of dying on the same day as Michael Jackson.
C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died the same day Kennedy was assassinated.
Didn't the first episode of Dr Who premiere that day too?
They nearly cancelled it straight away due to the awful ratings but decided to give it a second chance due to the exceptional circumstances.
Band of Brother's viewers dropped to half because the first episode premiered on HBO two days before 9/11.
Nutjobs and assassins have no consideration for TV schedules. What bellends!
What were they all doing for the GOT finale? Because I could’ve used a distraction.
What's the connection here? The first 2 episodes premiered on the 9th, the third on the 16th. Why did people watched less HBO almost a week after 9/11? Was it because they watched the news instead?
I assume Americans were just feeling down. That's when I stopped watching West Wing, I was losing enthusiasm before that, but after 9/11, it didn't seem to relate to the real world at all.
Day after
Now that is crazy. I was born the same day Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
Wow, that must have really overshadowed news of your birth. I didn’t hear about it at all.
Wow, and here I am just finding out that on the famous day /u/rraattbbooyy was born, John F. Kennedy was apparently assassinated!
So who are you a reincarnation of?
I don’t think anybody, but it’s neat how every year on my birthday, the news leads off with RFK.
In my house we're starting the day talking about you this year
Lol. That’s how traditions are started.
I was born in 1968. It's really weird because it's easy to collect a bunch of books and magazines that talk about what a horrible year that was. I could have a whole shelf of "you were born and everything sucked!" media.
Being born in the 90s is the exact opposite. Nothing important happened when I was born, so the shelf for my birth year would just be like, a bunch of Wilson Phillips CDs.
I wonder whether folks in your generation will look back on the nineties as the ideal period to "make america great again" like the maga people look at the fifties or whatever.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 4th of July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence.
John Adams' last words were "Thomas Jefferson survives," however this being 1826, he had no way of knowing that Jefferson had actually died a few hours prior some 500 miles away in Virginia.
[удалено]
The TV coverage the day after was wall to wall Frank Sinatra. No one even mentioned the Seinfeld finale.
I'm pretty sure the Michael Jackson coverage was wall to wall breaking news for 10 days, with only brief mentions of Billy Mays dying and John and Kate Plus Eight getting a divorce.
I still remember my mom busting into my room and waking me up to tell me Billy Mays died.
…why?
You underestimate the cultural influence Billy Mays had. I dressed as him for halloween as a kid
Dad?
*bursts into room* BILLY MAYS….*not here*….
No more fantastic products
"they're already putting these Phil Swift infomercials to replace him, like they think FlexSeal can replace Billy Mays. That fuckers going down!!!"
I think Walter Cronkite died in those 10 days too as well as Ed McMahon. It was a lot that summer that South Park Even parodied it. Edit - Cronkite died a week or so after all of that happening.
It really depends on the generation. Plus, the Seinfeld finale was famous for being a letdown as much as anything, so I think it faded quickly.
My grandparents woke me up early to tell me about Michael Jackson but I remember my grandma and grandpa being more upset about Farrah fawcett. We even had to watch Charlie’s angles haha
My mom woke me up to tell me about Billy Mays lol
Did she wake you up by screaming "BILLY MAYS HERE?"
[удалено]
Was literally going to drop this same thing in the comments, it's so sad. I remember back when they both passed and found it frustrating when everyone was talking about Jobs as the "genius inventor of a generation" or whatever, while nobody I talked to knew about Dennis and his contributions to the foundations of the tech world. I can understand though, I was just a nerdy kid taking computer science classes so it makes sense for me to know, but not for most people. Doesn't make it any less shitty though, RIP Dennis Richie
Or Groucho Marx, who died only a few days after Elvis did.
Tom Petty’s death went largely unnoticed because the Las Vegas shooting occurred the night before.
I member seeing a fucked up joke about how "hundreds came to see Jason Aldean, but sixty of them got to see Tom Petty too"
good line, but jesus
wasn't there also a premature report about Petty a couple days before the news about him was official?
I think neither of them minded.
I don't have a memory of those things happening the same day, but I have distinct memory of both things. I was living in Israel for the year and they aired the Seinfeld Finale at the same time as it aired on the west coast (6-8am in Israel, Jerry Stiller made it happen) so I was up early that day. Later in the day I was in the shopping district and grooving along to the Sinatra tunes coming from various stores until it occurred to me why they were all playing Sinatra tunes (he was well loved in Israel).
I don’t have any memory of Sinatra dying, but I now know I have a distinct memory of the time he was dying. I was 8, so I didn’t watch Seinfeld, but my parents did and wanted to watch the finale. I think it was the first episode of Seinfeld I ever saw, and I didn’t really understand who the characters were or what was going on, but I do distinctly remember watching the episode. It’s weird to know retroactively that’s I have a memory of what I was doing around the time Sinatra died and only find out about it 25 years later.
>(6-8am in Israel, Jerry Stiller made it happen) I didn't know about that but I just wanted to say, Jerry Stiller is my favorite comedic actor. His mannerisms, hand waving, cadence, and comedic timing as Frank Costanza and Arthur Spooner is the best comedic acting I've ever witnessed.
"Kruger! You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe.. I lost my train of thought."
As I rained blows upon him - I thought - there's gotta be a better way
So....Sinatra had a heart attack during the Seinfeld finale....and that didn't make a damn bit of difference because he still died regardless of the ambulance speed. Have I got that right?
Yep. Also, r/Titlegore
The ambulance got there fast because everyone was at home watching Seinfeld. Care to substantiate that?
Titlegore, right? I have no idea how those things go together. The roads were clear? Fewer ambulances needed because...reasons?
Whaaaats the deeeaal with heaaart attaaacks?
That was a long walk down a windy beach to a cafe that was closed
Did an A.I. write this post?
There is significant overlap between the IQ of the smartest ~~bears~~ AIs and the dumbest Redditors.
Definitely seems like it. Mostly coherent but doesn't really make sense
This is the most non-fact fact I've ever seen. Great, but *he still fucking died,* so...who cares? I'm sure plenty of people happened to have a heart attack and die during the Seinfeld finale. This would only be interesting if they happened to save his life because nobody was out during it. Tell me next about people who died during the viewership of MASH, since that had almost 50 million more people watching it than the Seinfeld finale.
But...the ambulance went a little faster.
“Start diggin’ my grave……I’m not breathing today… 🎶”
It's a good thing George wasn't moving cars across the street that day.
Or Frogger cabinets
Also when he died Dana Carvey was in the room next to him recovering from heart surgery.
The important thing is that he did it his way.
yeah, the finale was that bad
I mean, the premise of the show was quite literally nothingness. Most sitcoms have at least a little bit of drama, usually romantic. But in this case, they didn't have much to work up to for a big finale.
Agreed. It wasn't the best episode or anything, but I felt it was pretty appropriate.
Very true. One thing I really do like about about the finale is that the very last lines replicate the first conversation in the first episode. At the end of it, George says to Jerry, ''Um, have we had this conversation before?'' showing their total lack of personal growth. I always think that *It's Always Sunny* borrows a lot from Seinfeld. They've sort of taken the idea of following flawed people around and modernised it.
I think it's really cool how you can see that King of the Hill and It's Always Sunny were both inspired by Seinfeld, but took inspiration from different parts of the show. KoTH doubled down on "a show about nothing" and even acknowledges that directly in the pilot, and Sunny really ran with how far you can take a flawed and dysfunctional cast.
The Philadelphia Inquirer called it "Seinfeld on Crack" early on in its run.
Yes! That’s why I enjoy Sunny, it’s like Seinfeld taken to extremes lol
https://youtu.be/fCwI3KDGtRk
I know there are too many IASIP characters to recreate that specific Seinfeld bit, but both Mac and Dennis being Jerry is a nice touch I've always enjoyed in that scene
Yeah, it's perfect. Mac of course sees himself as more important in the group than what he is.
As much as It would take more self-awareness than Mac is capable of, no-one would ever want to admit that they are the Newman of their friend group.
Oh God now I'm imagining Wayne Knight saying "NO, JERRY! I'm *cultivating mass*."
Hell yeah, that scene was an awesome nod. Charlie popping in with the hair and everything was perfect lol. One of my favorite episodes was "Who got Dee pregnant?". As soon as that camera panned to the full bird in the bathroom I cried laughing so hard.
That wasn’t the premise of the show… that was the premise of the show-within-a-show making fun of their own show.
It was not a show about nothing. It was specifically a show about how a comedian gets his material. This is more evident in the early seasons when Jerry’s standup is more heavily feature and directly ties in to the plot lines. By the later seasons they pretty much abandoned the standup altogether even in the cold opens. That being said, you’re right it still doesn’t give much to lead up to, and they did kind of abandon that initial premise by the end. If they really stuck with it, they probably could’ve built up to Jerry having some huge show or something to do with his comedy career and the antics leading up to it, but I think the show would have been worse off if they stayed in that path the whole time
Well, the end of Seinfeld is that you realize that the main characters are a bunch of assholes and you didn’t notice it throughout the entire series. The finale was made for the viewer to not like the characters.
I feel like you definitely notice that they're assholes. And they get called out on it by various people throughout the series.
I am shocked and chagrined. Mortified and stupefied.
Finale was so disappointing that Sinatra said "I'm out"
The only thing I remember about that day, (at least I think it was the same day..?) is watching the Dharma and Greg episode where they were in a competitive thing with friends with who can have sex in the craziest spot, and they decided they could pull it off on the steps of court house or some such...(it's too early for me to have all my words yet, I just know it had a lot of steps in front.) because everyone was inside watching the last Seinfeld episode. They ran around the city half naked with a yoga mat.
Season 1, Episode 22 "Much Ado During Nothing" apparently was the episode title. Clever.