‘Seinfeld’ reunion? Jerry Seinfeld has a ‘secret’ that makes it seem prettay, prettay promising
No soup for you? Nah, looks like “Seinfeld” fans might be eating soon.
Jerry Seinfeld recently suggested at a stand-up comedy show in Boston that the hit ’90s show could be returning, 25 years after its original series finale.
At Saturday’s performance, Seinfeld was asked by a crowd member if he liked the ending of “Seinfeld.” The 69-year-old comedian responded, “Well, I have a little secret for you about the ending, but I can’t really tell it because it is a secret.”
Landing “Seinfeld” is a major comeback statement for Netflix, which recently lost the streaming rights to “The Office” and “Friends.”
He continued by adding, “Here’s what I’ll tell you, OK, but you can’t tell anybody. Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending — hasn’t happened yet.”
That tidbit elicited oohs, aahs and cheers from the crowd at Boston’s Wang Theatre. Seinfeld then noted the involvement of “Seinfeld” co-creator and showrunner Larry David.
“And just what you are thinking about, Larry and I have also been thinking about it. So you’ll see, we’ll see,” Seinfeld said.
It’s been 30 years since “Seinfeld” catapulted Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and Michael Richards into superstardom.
At the time of its airing, the “Seinfeld” finale ranked as the sixth most-watched entertainment event (excluding Super Bowl games) of all time, behind the 1983 “MASH” finale (which drew 106 million people), the “Who Shot J.R.?” episode of “Dallas” in 1980 (at 83.6 million), the last “Cheers” (80.5 million) in 1993, the 1983 movie “The Day After” (77.4 million) and the concluding chapter of “Roots” (76.7 million) in 1977.
Advertisers paid what were then record-setting rates of $2 million for commercials within the program, eclipsing the previous high of $1.3 million for a 30-second spot established by the 1998 Super Bowl.
The show’s finale was received with mixed emotions, leaving many viewers feeling unhappy about the fates of the main characters, and others finding their situations fitting given their (im)moral proclivities.
Television: Nielsen says 76.3 million people saw the sitcom finish its run, but NBC claims 108 million watched.
Of the finale, David said in a 2014 Grantland interview, “I think the thing about finales is everybody writes their own finale in their head … They go, ‘Oh, well this should happen to George, and Jerry and Elaine should get together,’ and all that. They’ve already written it, and often they’re disappointed, because it’s not what they wrote. … I was not interested in an emotional ride, and neither was Jerry. No wonder why [people] would dislike it.”
Seinfeld also chimed in on the show’s finale in a 2017 interview at the New Yorker Festival, saying, “I sometimes think we really shouldn’t have even done it. There was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy.”
In 2009, David pulled off a “Seinfeld” reunion of sorts on his HBO comedy series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “We’ve done a faux reunion,” David told The Times in 2009. “I had the idea a few years ago ... but the question was, ‘Can we do it? Can we pull it off? Can we get the actors? Can we get the sets?’”
The original “Seinfeld” quartet — Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards and Jason Alexander — appears in a handful of episodes in the seventh season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” playing fictionalized versions of themselves as the fictionalized version of David attempts to mount a fictional version of a “Seinfeld” reunion.
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