It all started when an audience member shouted out: “Did you like the ending?”
It all started when an audience member shouted out: “Did you like the ending?”
The man who made a career out of nothing has just teased… well, something. Something big. Something huge. Something he referred to as “a little secret”.
Now, it may have previously been a secret, but little? I don’t think so. Not even the cold waters of a swimming pool could cause significant shrinkage to the bombshell comedian Jerry Seinfeld dropped on stage at a theatre in Boston a couple of nights ago.
It all started when an audience member shouted out: “Did you like the ending?”
“The ending of what?” Seinfeld asked, momentarily puzzled, before the question clicked into place. “Oh. The ending of the show.”
Ever since the finale of his legendary sitcom Seinfeld aired back in 1998, both Seinfeld and the show’s co-creator Larry David have faced variations on this question. The show’s finale in its ninth season was a true television event. The hype was huge, all-encompassing. Inescapable. Not that anyone wanted to. All TVs were tuned into the television event of the year.
There may have been some minor grumblings about Seinfeld’s tonal shift from digging into the weeds of everyday annoyances into a more cartoonish absurdism after David departed after the seventh season, but Seinfeld was still very much on top. It was the number-one show on television. Its ending was a big deal.
Seinfeld’s finale captured the world’s attention in a way that was rare then and is non-existent now thanks to the streaming revolution and the death blow dealt by the finale of Game of Thrones in 2019. The ending to the otherwise gripping fantasy series was so disappointing that it soured the whole franchise, and it’s likely going to be the last show ever that the world watches together.
But Seinfeld had disappointed the world first. Its finale was immediately divisive, even if its idea was decent. The show’s self-centred main characters break a “good Samaritan” law when they witness a carjacking and stand around cracking gags about the victim’s weight instead of rushing to help. Their inaction lands them in front of a judge, where a roll call of wronged characters from the show’s nine years on TV testify against them.
Quickly found guilty, the finale ends with the foursome in jail, bickering over the button placement on their shirts - a throwback to the opening lines of the very first episode.
Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes, Jason Alexander as George Costanza and Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer in the finale of Seinfeld. Photo / Getty Images
It was a neat concept. It provided a legitimate reason to have fan-favourite characters show up for a cameo. There was really only one problem with the finale. It wasn’t that funny. And Seinfeld was always funny.
While not as brutal as the commentary surrounding Game of Thrones, Seinfeld’s finale was still immediately panned. When faced with criticism, David, who returned to the show specifically to write the double-episode, regularly groused that no matter what he’d written, he could never have met the public’s sky-high expectations or better the ending people had written inside their own heads.
Perhaps he got sick of talking about it or maybe he wanted to put things right, but in 2007, he made an unofficial finale to Seinfeld within his current show, Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Playing out over the course of Curb’s season, the fictional Larry David convinces Seinfeld’s cast to reunite for a one-off special. On the show, it’s Seinfeld who is the most reluctant, saying, “We already screwed up one finale!”, only to be met by an indignant David insisting, “It was a good finale!”
After David convinces him that “it won’t be lame”, he signs on and a full new Seinfeld episode plays out in snippets throughout the series, its story forming over episodes featuring table reads, rehearsals and, finally, the episode being shot in front of a live audience.
This faux-finale was everything the real one wasn’t. It was meta and whip-smart, its story small and focused and mostly confined to Jerry’s famous apartment and Monk’s coffee shop. It was also incredibly funny. Seinfeld finally had the closure it deserved.
Until now. Because when he was asked if he liked the show’s ending on that stage in Boston a couple of nights ago, Jerry re-opened that closure.
“I have a little secret for you about the ending, but I can’t really tell it because it’s a secret,” he said, as the crowd cheered. “Here’s what I can tell you, but you can’t tell anybody. Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“But what you have been thinking about, Larry and I have also been thinking about. So, you’ll see.”
Sure, it wasn’t a lot, but it was something. And something is better than nothing. Was he hinting at a finale re-do? Or are the pair’s ambitions grander? A full season, perhaps?
Unfortunately, he gave no other hints. So what’s the deal with the Seinfeld finale? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. No matter what, it certainly appears that Seinfeld, in one form or another, is back, baby.
