Do you think the last episode and the last season of Seinfeld were out character fpr Jerry and friends?

Question

To me Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, and George were self absorbed, self centered, superficial, and obsesed with their own problems. However, they were not mean and cruel.. One of them may have stopped going out w/somone because they had man hands but that's not being outright cruel?
To me as much as those four were all of the above they wouldn't have laughed at a large man getting robbed.
The last season also seemed to be out of sync as far as the characters. George was angry all the time. The episode where Jerry and friends basically drugged the lady with the toy eollection seemed even too far them.. Please tell me what you think. (Plus, FYI - Larry David - co producer left before that last season.

Answer 1

Compared to other series finales, Seinfeld's was a real letdown. Everybody Loves Raymond decided to do a more or less normal episode that had a few nice touches in it. Friends decided to go big, by wrapping up a lot of questions and resolving a lot of issues and relationships. It was almost like the Seinfeld writers couldn't decide which way to go.

Should they just do a normal type of episode and make it as good as possible, or should they do a "special" episode that's out of the ordinary where they go out with a bang? They went down the middle and ended up going out with a whimper. In jail for a year? A trial with everyone showing up to testify against them? How weak! They should have done a normal episode and then ended with the four of them sitting at their booth in the diner just talking about... nothing.

Answer 2

Definitely out of character. The final expisode was a huge disappointment. Looks like they were tring too hard to compete with the finales of other sitcoms and failed. They should have just kept on with what they were doing. Drugging that lady was kind of odd. But not Kramer's setting up that Merv Griffin TV stage. However, most characters from sitcoms change a lot from the first season to the last. Look at Matthew Perry's character from Friends for example.

Answer 3

You obviously see the show and its characters through rose colored glasses. They were very cruel to people and each other on that show. Even Jerry Seinfeld believes that. He and Larry David thought that it would be poetic justice for these characters' inability to see past their own self-interest to be their ultimate downfall. Did you forget about George and his fiance, and how happy he was when she died! He was an ***! Elaine was slutty and mean. Jerry was completely narcissistic and Kramer was just plain crazy. Don't get me wrong, the show was great, one of the best sitcoms ever written, but these weren't good people. That was kind of the point.

Answer 4

I had and have mixed feelings about this episode, but depending on your interpretation, one can actually look at it as a pretty appropriate ending. The book "Seinfeld and Philosophy" had some similar takes on this episode to mine.

If one looks at the show in a philosophical sense (yeah, it's just a show, but work with me here) one could look at the "out of character" episodes of the final seasons, and even the increasing absurdity of the plots, as a sort of progression in the characters spiritual lives. They live lives of pointless triviality and "innocent" superficiality, such as breaking up with women over things like manhands, and this builds up a state of despair in self-denial. All four express it through distractions. Jerry and Elaine similarly dismiss lovers for trivial reasons, George perhaps moreso than both and constantly "lives a lie" (he said so himself once). Kramer's method is more pronounced, as instead of lovers he hops from one distraction to the next in order to escape facing up the the meaninglessness of his life (and aiding it by denying it through things such as make-your-own pizza schemes, Kramerica Industries, and even his brief stint as an "unofficial" worker at a business firm).

As they allow their lives to be meaningless and wallow in their absurdity, so their lives become more absurd and they become more and more corrupt. In these later seasons, one might say that rather than acting "out of character" their characters developed...for the worse. It culminates in an almost shocking display of uncaring for another person (though one could argue Susan Ross's death was maybe worse than this in George's case) and they are made to stand trial by all those they have affected over the years and made to face up. However, they end up in a prison of their own making, and their behavior in the final scenes implies they haven't changed at all; they're their own prisons, still obsessed with trivilaity and pointless detail in a constant repetitive absurdity. One year? Philosophically or spiritually, they may have already been in for life, or condemned to death ultimately.

Interpretation aside, I think it was nice that they found a way to bring back all the one-shot and side-characters, as they added much to the show in it's time and deserve their credit as well. The Soup Nazi's enterance was particularly memorable and, keep in mind, Larry David actually returned for the last episode.

Answer 5

I think the ending was great, but as many other sitcoms go, by the time you get to the 9th season there isn't much left, so the producers have to add other stuff in (stuff that may be out of character).

Answer 6

The only problem I had with "Seinfeld" is that Elaine is the main cause of the groups problems, and 99% of the time she gets off scott-free. I mean, I do not care how many men she slept with.

Answer 7

that last episode was a real sister-kisser. So very dissapointing. Terrible ending. I wish they could re-do a last episode to fix it.

Answer 8

I was so disappointed with the finale....they hyped it up so much and then..............yuk. I agree, I wish they could re-do the finale, cuz they could have done it so much better.

Answer 9

huh