Was the Seinfeld finale really that bad? Revisiting TV's most argued-about ending
On May 14, 1998, 76 million people tuned in to watch the final episode of Seinfeld. Within hours, most of them were disappointed.
Nearly three decades later, "The Finale " remains one of the most debated endings in television history — regularly topping "worst series finales" lists right alongside Lost, Game of Thrones, and Dexter.
But was it actually that bad, or just that impossible?
What happens in the finale
The setup: Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer witness a carjacking in the fictional town of Latham, Massachusetts. Instead of helping, they mock the victim. This violates a local Good Samaritan law, and all four are arrested. What follows is essentially a trial of the entire series — a parade of returning characters (the Soup Nazi, Bubble Boy, Babu Bhatt, and dozens more) who testify to the group's long history of selfish, callous behaviour. The jury convicts them. The final scene is the four of them sharing a jail cell, bickering exactly the way they always have.
Written by co-creator Larry David, who had returned specifically for the finale after leaving the show at the end of season 7, the episode was meant to bring the story full circle. The very first scene of the pilot was Jerry and George having a meaningless conversation. The very last scene is the same — just behind bars.
Why people hated it
Several reasons came up again and again in the years since.
- The structure felt like a clip show — and it directly followed a retrospective clip episode, making the repetition even more glaring.
- At 75 minutes, it ran double the normal length without enough fresh material to justify the runtime.
- The cameos, while fun as an idea, turned the episode into a nostalgia victory lap rather than a story.
And the central premise — that the four leads are being punished for being terrible people — struck many viewers as both preachy and redundant.
The whole show was built on the idea that these people were awful. Spelling it out in a courtroom didn't add anything new.
Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker wrote at the time that the finale's moralizing tone undermined the show's essence: characters already paid for their selfishness within each episode through embarrassment and failure. A formal conviction felt like a different show altogether.
Jerry Seinfeld himself has admitted the ending bothers him "a little bit," telling GQ he doesn't believe in regret but acknowledging the episode didn't fully work.
He told Vulture in 2017 that "there was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy. "
The case for the defence
That said, the finale has its defenders — and their argument is simple: how else do you end a show about nothing? A happy ending would have betrayed the premise. A sad ending would have been sentimental. What Larry David delivered was the logical conclusion of nine seasons of "no hugging, no learning."
These characters don't grow, don't change, and don't learn. Prison is just a new setting for the same conversation.
Larry David himself clearly believed in the concept enough to revisit it. The series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2024) recreates the Seinfeld trial nearly beat for beat — only this time, David's character gets acquitted and walks free.