As We Near the CURB Finale...

…I’ve heard a lot of things over the many years since about why the Seinfeld finale left a sour taste in so many mouths, and haven't really thought about any of those things one way or another, but this is new/interesting to me:

Before “The Finale,” NBC aired “The Chronicle,” a clip show retrospective that was essentially a collection of Seinfeld’s funniest moments. 58.5 million people watched it.

The problem was that the finale also did plenty of rehashing. “The Chronicle” was like a highlight reel of Michael Jordan in his prime. The risk was that watching it first would make “The Finale” feel like a compilation of MJ’s time as a Washington Wizard.

“At some point, I remember we talked about, ‘Can we stop the clip show? Could the clip show air the following week?’” Mandel says. “And there was no getting out of it that night. And I can’t [say] how hard anyone actually tried, but we were not unaware that you were watching a great clip show, and then you were watching an episode that had a real clip show element to it. I’m not sure anyone in the audience would identify that as a problem, but I will go to my grave believing that was a problem—that it threw people because it just felt like more of the same and not unto itself. That’s my own little theory.”

I'm 1000000% certain I had my beady little eyeballs glued to the tv for all of this but I don't really remember it affecting me as I watched the finale, but hey who knows?