Finale was utter crap

My impression is the cast, crew, and showrunners wanted to poke fun at themselves, a form of self-mockery and a sense of surrealism due to how contrived the whole affair plays out. It's like the finale wanted to deconstruct the show so everyone would have an excuse to reflect the gang's funniest and most memorable moments of the series, kind of a love letter to the fans for a last hurrah. Perhaps Seinfeld himself was intent on keeping the ending as subtle as possible to keep in grounded it its premise of being the show "about nothing", finishing how it started.

deeply flawed?
no, not at all

They were bad people. They show why it is they were bad in the trial. I admit I felt the way you did when first watching it as a teen but as an adult I now realize what jerks they were.

I agree with you that the finale was a huge disappointment considering all the hype I've received and had high hopes for it.

There was an interview with Larry David and he said that through all their ideas, none of them would have been satisfying to everyone, and while I agree, they certainly could have done something better.

I thought it sucked as well, most people do. But it doesn't really matter because the show didn't really have that sort of character and story building as something like friends did, it could have ended with a normal episode and it would have been fine, where as something like friends needed an end type story.

Either way, doesn't matter to me because s9 overall is just so good.

I didn't like the finale for 2 reasons:

1. It was out of character for them to not help the guy being mugged. They often tried to help people out - which usually backfired, but at least they tried. It might have worked better if they'd stood there procrastinating about helping out but never getting round to it. Then getting arrested for that.

2. The court case meant that Gerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were hardly used or seen for a large part of the episode (other than in the flashbacks). I wanted to see the main cast getting into various scrapes and shenanigans, not everyone else, and not an endless stream of flashbacks and other characters.

I don't think it was that bad but not very realistic.

The GREAT thing about the finale was that after they put all four in jail they went to commercial and when they came back for the ending credits Jerry was there doing standup in the jailhouse cafeteria. That last minute EVER is HILARIOUS!