Seinfeld Reunion on CYE

The long awaited Seinfeld reunion is finally going to happen...sort of. In true Larry David TV-groundbreaking fashion, it will be done in a unique, creative way—and (in case they don't pull it off) without doing any damage to the original series, since it won't be under the Seinfeld banner, but will occur on Larry David's Emmy-winning series Curb Your Enthusiasm, which returns for its seventh season on September. 20.

According to CYE's Wikipedia page, Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, Wayne Knight, Len Lesser, Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller will all return for the "reunion." They even dug out the old sets of Jerry's apartment and Monk's Cafe for the episodes, which will cover five of the ten shows slated for the new season.

This sounds like pure genius to me, similar to the show-within-a-show that Seinfeld did during the classic episodes when Jerry and George were writing, then filming the failed pilot for Jerry. I can just imagine the Curb Your Enthusiasm arc, with Larry trying to round up the old gang for a reunion, and the bickering he and Jerry will get into as they try to write the reunion show. Not to mention seeing the actors portraying both themselves, and their Seinfeld characters. And don't forget this is HBO. We may get to hear them curse! Fucking Newman!

11 years and the finale still sucks

Fox 5, which runs Seinfeld repeats in New York at 7:30 weeknights, last night once again aired the final episode. I caught part of it, but really, I can't watch this episode anymore for a couple of reasons: 1) they play it too often, 2) it still sucks.

Originally aired by NBC on May 14, 1998 (the day Frank Sinatra died), the episode was watched by 76 million viewers (58 percent of all viewers that night), and was the third most watched finale in TV history behind M*A*S*H (don't even get me started on that finale. It took me 20 years to get over that fiasco. Guess I have another 9 years to go for Seinfeld) and Cheers.

The challenge of writing a finale is, How do you make it good? If a show has been on a long time, you've basically milked it dry of ideas. It's not as good anymore. Writers, producers, directors, even actors have come and gone. The show is running on fumes. How do you recapture the original spark, get the edge back? Sadly, most shows can't. For a show as great and groundbreaking as Seinfeld, it was even more of a challenge. That's what co-creator Larry David faced when he sat down to write the final episode.

The finale's basic plot has the four central characters on a private NBC jet headed for Paris. Kramer, who has water in his ear, hops up and down to get it out, which somehow causes engine trouble, forcing the plane to make an unexpected stop in a small town in Massachusetts. While the plane is being repaired, the four take to the streets, and witness an obese man getting carjacked. Instead of helping him, they make jokes and video tape the crime. They are then arrested for violating a Good Samaritan law, and soon are put on trial. The joke being that they were charged for "doing nothing," when that was the whole idea of the show, a sitcom about "nothing." Sound funny yet?

During the trial, seemingly every minor character from throughout the series takes the stand to testify how horrible and self-centered the four are. Each character repeats his/her signature catch phrase ("You are a very bad man") as they recap how the four did them wrong. Now does it sound funny? There are also little inside jokes, like the judge being named Arthur Vandelay (a nod to Art Vandelay, George's architect alter ego). But the jokes aren't funny, and come off flat.

The trial ends with them found guilty, and sentenced to a year in jail. While they are all sitting in the jail cell together, Jerry and George have a conversation about shirt buttons, which is the way the series' first episode began.

For me, the road to the final episode was long. I was a fan of Jerry Seinfeld before the sitcom that beared his name, back when he used to appear regularly on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. When NBC gave Seinfeld a series (first called the Seinfeld Chronicles) I couldn't wait to watch it. Then in the early days of Seinfeld I saw him perform at Carnegie Hall. So I was a big fan right from the get-go.

Which all leads to the anticipation I felt for the finale. What would they do? How would it end? Would Larry David totally reinvent the concept of series finales? To my horror, I wasn't laughing, and as the clock ticked I kept hoping against hope that somehow it would turn around. I was waiting for it to get funny, or that in the very least, the end would be so fantastic and original, that the first horrible hour wouldn't matter.

I'm still waiting.

Seinfeld is a jerk

So I tuned into David Letterman on Monday night because former Yankees manager Joe Torre was a scheduled guest. As an added bonus, Jerry Seinfeld was also on the show. Wow, I thought, this is great! I've been a fan of Seinfeld since the beginning. Since before the beginning—when he was just a stand-up comedian on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Seinfeld was there to promote his new animated movie, Bee Movie, about a Seinfeld-esque bee who leaves the hive and has adventure in the human world.

At one point during the interview, I was surprised that the subject of Jerry's wife's alleged plagiarism came up. Jessica Seinfeld has a cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, just published by HarperCollins, that gives recipes on how to slip healthy food into your childrens diets by mashing up veggies and such and putting them into other foods that a child is more inclined to eat, like a brownie. The problem is that The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals, a very similar book by an author named Missy Chase Lapine is already in print, published by Running Press in April 2007. At one point Lapine even submitted the book to HarperCollins, who rejected it. So when Jessica Seinfeld's book hit the shelves with a big splashy promotion budget and an appearance on Oprah, Lapine cried foul. Or more accurately, plagiarism. Which is understandable.

But on Letterman, Seinfeld explained the situation by repeatedly calling Lapine (who he didn't mention by name) a "wacko." He said "So this woman says, `I sense this could be my wacko moment.' So she comes out ... and she accuses my wife. She says, `You stole my mushed-up carrots. You can't put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. I put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. It's vegetable plagiarism.'" He even compared her to the "wackos" who have stalked David Letterman. It was actually uncomfortable to watch.

What an asshole. I realize he was going for the easy laughs, and that most people watching probably weren't aware of the specifics of the case. So they took him at his word. But fuck shit, if I submitted a book that was rejected, and then Seinfeld's wife published a very similar one with the same publisher that had rejected mine—I'd definitely point it out too. Unfortunately, that's how publishing works. People steal ideas, and yes, people also come up with the same ideas independently. But it doesn't make you a "wacko" if you want the situation looked into.

Lapine didn't deserve to be attacked so viscously on such a public platform. Isn't it enough that her idea was (allegedly) stolen by a celebrity's wife? That her book will never match the sales of someone who had the good sense to dump her husband right after the honeymoon to marry Jerry Seinfeld? Does she deserve to be labeled a "wacko"? I don't think so.

"It was painful to be called names on national TV," Lapine said, "when I am just a mom who wrote a cookbook to help parents get their kids to eat well."