Oh God, Don’t Let the ‘Seinfeld’ Finale-Redo Just Be Another Super Bowl Commercial

Jerry Seinfeld hinted on Saturday that he and Larry David are working on a “secret” update to the much-maligned series finale of their hit ’90s sitcom “Seinfeld.” As part of a Q&A segment during his October 7 show, Seinfeld was asked if he liked the ending of “Seinfeld.” Jerry pretty much yada-yada’d his way through the response.

“I have a little secret for you about the ending. But I can’t really tell it, because it’s a secret,” Seinfeld told his Boston audience. “Here’s what I’ll tell you… something is going to happen that has to do with that ending. (It) hasn’t happened yet.”

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“Just what you are thinking about, Larry and I have also been thinking about,” he continued. Seinfeld seemingly left it at that.

Oh God, it’s gonna be another Super Bowl commercial, isn’t it? That’s a shame.

Watch the Seinfeld stand-up clip below.

“Seinfeld,” generally considered to be among the greatest sitcoms of all-time, had what many TV critics and even fans consider to be among the worst series finales of all time. In the two-part finale, Jerry (Seinfeld), George (Jason Alexander), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Kramer (Michael Richards) witness a mugging in a small town in Massachusetts. Instead of helping, the big-city buddies mock the victim, unknowingly running afoul of the local Good Samaritan law.

The gang is jailed after so many of their past doings — represented by former romantic partners and other guests wronged by the foursome — come back to bite them in the butt. Whatever the opposite of a (good-) character witness is, the finale was chock full of them. It was easy, fitting, and also kind of lazy.

But it also wasn’t as bad as people remember. Take the final joke in the series, a debate about the button placement on George’s shirt, for example. That was a callback — one of the most powerful comedians’ tools — to the pilot episode’s very first gag.

Forget the A, B, C (and sometimes D) story arcs converging in the end — this was nine seasons of “Seinfeld” coming full circle. In theory, it was the perfect “Seinfeld” conclusion; in execution, it was an hour of mostly setup with a few cheap punchlines. (And the one very satisfying one for true fans.)

To be fair to Seinfeld and David (the co-creator exited after Season 7 but returned to write the finale), how do you end a show about…nothing? Anything bigger (Jerry and Elaine get married? No thank you.) would have felt out of place, and sticking to the tried-and-true episodic formula would have felt too small for the moment: 76.3 million viewers tuned in live, and commercials cost Super Bowl-ad money.

We just can’t escape this Super Bowl commercial thing. (Even “Mean Girls” fans are currently preparing themselves — or they should be — to be disappointed by the much-hyped reunion likely being just another big game break.)

Plus, we already had a “Seinfeld” reunion — and it was really good. The 2009 seventh-season finale of David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” concluded with Larry, having again quit a “Seinfeld” production, watching Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer run it back.

The whole experience was so meta for David, and for viewers. He and Seinfeld even had an on-set (storyline) argument about how their “Must-See TV” show concluded.

“Larry, we already screwed up one finale, we can’t do another,” Seinfeld says.

“We didn’t screw up a finale,” Larry says. “That was a good finale!”

As it turned out, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” was the perfect way to end “Seinfeld.” Only, it didn’t end there.

Five years after the “Curb” reunion, we got a mini-reunion (Jerry, George, and Newman) in the form of a Super Bowl ad for Seinfeld’s talk show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” at that time on Crackle (which was at that time owned by Sony).

Watch that one here:

Even before 2014 (and probably before Sunday, February 11, 2024), Seinfeld — and “Seinfeld” — had a steady presence at the big game.

Two years earlier, Jerry brought the Soup Nazi (Yev Kassem) to the Super Bowl XLVI telecast for Acura. As Seinfeld says in the commercial, “I own all the characters.”

See that below.

Seinfeld has also starred in Super Bowl ads for American Express, though those did not directly reference his sitcom. There was 1998’s high-profile Amex spot with Superman (voiced by Patrick Warburton, who recurred as David Puddy on “Seinfeld”) and the following year’s “Real Life” commercial.

Tide’s 2021 “Jason Alexander Hoodie” Super Bowl spot, starring Alexander as both a person and a hooded-sweatshirt craze, was backed by the “Great American Hero” theme song, which was perfectly parodied by George Costanza’s answering-machine. It was considered among the best Super Bowl Sunday commercials that year. (Alexander also appeared in a Rold Gold pretzels Super Bowl ad about midway through “Seinfeld’s” run.)

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