The series finale for “Seinfeld” almost went a completely different way.
The Hollywood Reporter recently unveiled hidden tales from the “Seinfeld” world after collecting nearly 70 hours of interviews with the creators, cast and crew to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the show's finale, which aired May 14, 1998.
One of the hidden tales includes the show’s finale having a much different ending.
As fans of the show will remember, the final episode — called, fittingly, “The Finale” — included the entire group — Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), George (Jason Alexander), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Kramer (Michael Richards) — on trial for being bad people.
As Uproxx reported, the group found themselves on trial and in jail after they gave an elderly woman a broken wheelchair, stole a loaf of bread from another old woman and failed to bring back library books.
So yes, it was ridiculous.
But, according to THR, the finale almost went another direction, thanks to comedy writer Larry David, who returned to write the show’s final episode.
Here’s what THR reported:
“Ideas were passed around. In one, they wouldn't do a final episode. Another involved having them at the coffee shop with nothing to say. In a third, Jerry would say, ‘That's it,’ and they'd go their separate ways.
"In the end, David got his inspiration from a good Samaritan law in France in which people could get in trouble for not pitching in during moments of crises. He liked the idea of applying that to the four self-obsessed characters. Then he came upon the idea to redo the pilot's opening dialogue as the closing scene. The only difference, of course, being that they would be in jail.”
You can watch a scene from the finale below.
In another celebration of the finale, Yahoo TV writer Ken Tucker reviewed “The Finale” 20 years later, saying, among other things, that the episode “was almost pure pleasure all the way through” upon watching it 20 years later.