The End

One of the great clichés of the situation comedy is its desperate final attempts to make its mark, or simply regain a portion of its once larger audience, by including gimmicks, having protagonists unexpectedly, or finally, consummate the deep love that’s always been right in front of them, or in some way compromise the integrity of the show in order to regain relevance, what has become known as “jumping the shark” due to a later episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz, on a visit to Hollywood, water-skiing and wearing his leather jacket, jumps over a shark.   For example, Family Matters—which began and ended the same years as Seinfeld—had brought in Steve Urkel, the Winslow’s dorky neighbor played by the comically talented Jaleel White, partway through its first season and he slowly took the focus of the Winslow Family Matters.  And by its eighth season 3J (the streetwise orphan taken in by the Winslow’s) had been introduced along with two additional characters played by White: Stefan Urquelle (Steve Urkel’s smooth alter-ego) and Myrtle Urkel (Urkel’s cousin).  And, by the ninth and final season, which earned the show’s worst ratings, the actress playing Harriette Winslow had left and been replaced, the show was picked up by CBS and left ABC’s TGIF line-up, and Original Gangster Dawg (O.G.D.), again played by White, entered the Winslow’s universe. 

This is one way a situation comedy can go out.  However, Seinfeld managed to go off with the audience wanting more, as any good showman would do, whether it’s Sinatra, a sit com, or a smart ass at an office meeting who makes a well-received comment, as Jerry advises George at the coffeeshop five weeks before the series ends:

George, “I lost them.  I can usually come up with one good comment during a meeting but by the end it's buried under a pile of gaffs and bad puns.”



Jerry, “Showmanship, George. When you hit that high note, you say goodnight and walk off.”


George, “I can't just leave.”



Jerry, “That's the way they do it in Vegas.”

 

The final two seasons are informed by this cliché, and, like the rest of the series, manages to comment on this phenomenon as a self-aware discussion of the show’s descent from it’s peak (Larry David has already left the veritable Vegas stage), at the very moment it is making more money than it ever has while, at the same time, resorting to a more gimmicky and surreal style.

            In the beginning of the series the show existed in a more literal and less allegorical sense than it did in the last two seasons.  This approach lasted up until its characters pitched and created Jerry.   Up to this point attacks on artists and intellectuals are limited to quips made by the characters against them; and the more subtle jabs only reach as far as stand-up comedians and writers of sitcoms.  Everything changes, however, when the pilot episode of their show airs for the entire world to see, even though no more episodes are made—Jerry and George, along with the content of their lives, are both a part of the entertainment business and ostracized from it, and by the end there is absolutely no separation of the characters and any level of celebrity: Kramer is Merv Griffin; George is giving a show in Vegas during an office meeting; Jerry is a big shot Hollywood director bootlegging movies with a handheld camera; and on and on.

            The show jumps jumping the shark by knowing and subverting how shows fail.  By abandoning its realism it admits to its own decline, but by admitting to its own decline it maintains the glory that it never really lost.