The Chronicle

When you watch season 9 you fully understand that Jerry Seinfeld's heart just wasn't into the show anymore. After Larry David left Seinfeld had to try to run the show on his own and season 8 reflects his uncertainty with a lot of hit and misses where he's trying to find his voice, Seinfeld has commented how he wasn't sure he could even do the show without Larry, when you get to season 9 you can tell it just ran its course with him and he wasn't interested anymore. This clip show episode is evidence of that, rather than write two episodes for the season they mailed it in with a clip show, something that would never happen today because fans would go insane.

This is the second part of the final clip show before the last episode. While folks might just say, ah these are just clip shows, both of them are so much more than that. There is a reason I choose this second part over the first but the both of them are together on the DVD set as 1 program.

What is great about both part of these is that they use clips to review all the major themes of the show. This first part hits the Superman theme that was mentioned more than once during the series. This last part hits my favorite theme.

Jerry Seinfeld, a big Abbott & Costello fan, does a section of this with set photos set to the song "I Hope You've Had The Time of Your Life". To me, this sums up quite nicely Jerry's A&C ties as one of their better films has the same theme. This sequence has a sentiment that to me hits the correct cord for ending the series. In a way, I think these 2 clips shows should have been run after the Finale which followed it.

This was the first time I had ever heard this particular song, but it is exactly right as it illustrates going out at the top. These folks had the time of their life doing this show & they took their audience along for the ride. While they have found some work since they ended this, the fact still remains that for the cast of Seinfeld, this is the time of their lives.

What a waste of 45 minutes.

Nobody likes seeing clip show episodes, they are always boring and just annoys the viewer.

And who the hell makes it a double episode just before the finale. Surely Jerry and Larry had it in them to make 2 proper episodes? Talk about walking it in.

Such a shame this episode was every made and just embarrassing that it took up the space of 2 episodes just before the finale.

My goodness, people get so testy. If a compilation episode comes along, don't watch it. It's not as if you were Malcolm MacDowell with your eyes propped open, force to watch. Just skip it. My wife and I just finished watching the entire series from beginning to end over a period of about a year. I don't know when I've had such fun. Obviously, not everything on this look back was of sublime quality, but it brought back memories of some of my favorites. The four principle characters were so much fun to watch (along with Newman), and while they were often rude and sexist and outrageous, it was always done with style. I am amazed at the anger people direct toward forms of entertainment which is always an option to watch.

This episode gets a ton of hate now a days because people have YouTube, Netflix, and various other ways to watch clips and rewatch episodes. But go back to 1998 this episode offered a convenient way to relive the other episodes and look back on the show because people didn't have many options outside of waiting for them to roll back around in a 7:00 time slot. So for that reason it makes no sense to review bomb this episode. Just skip it and move on.

Regarding the episode itself there is nothing wrong with it nor does it really push or grow the show in anyway. I think maybe this one would have sat better with people as well if the finale wasn't so controversial.