Jerry Seinfeld has hinted that a Seinfeld reunion may be on the cards more than 25 years after the hit “show about nothing” aired its divisive finale.
In response to a question from an audience member during his standup show at the Wang Theatre in Boston on Saturday, the comedian teased that a re-envisioned finale may be in the works.
Seinfeld was asked whether he liked the TV sitcom’s finale. “Well, I have a little secret for you about the ending. But I can’t really tell it because it is a secret,” he responded.
“Here’s what I’ll tell you, OK, but you can’t tell anybody. Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending. Hasn’t happened yet,” Seinfeld said to loud gasps and applause.
“And just what you are thinking about, Larry and I have also been thinking about it. So you’ll see, we’ll see.”
Seinfeld ran for nine seasons between July 1989 and May 1998. The two-part finale sees protagonists Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer face the consequences of their tasteless wisecracking, with the foursome put on trial for making jokes and not intervening while a man is mugged in front of them. Past characters are brought into the courtroom to testify against them.
The final scene sees the friends locked up in prison; Elaine, Jerry and George bicker and Kramer tries to look on the bright side of not having to worry about meals or make plans on a Saturday night.
Critics labelled the finale “off-key and bloated” and Seinfeld himself has expressed regret over the show’s ending.
“I sometimes think we really shouldn’t have even done it,” he said during an interview at the New Yorker festival in October 2017. “There was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy.”
He said comedy should be “small and cheap and quick”.
In 2014, Seinfeld co-creator Larry David acknowledged some people “hated” the finale.
“I think the thing about finales is everybody writes their own finale in their head, whereas if they just tune in during the week to a normal show, they’re surprised by what’s going on. They haven’t written it beforehand, they don’t know what the show is,” he said.
“But for a finale, they go, ‘Oh, well this should happen to George, and Jerry and Elaine should get together’, and all that. They’ve already written it and often they’re disappointed, because it’s not what they wrote.”
