Season 6, Episode 23, "The Understudy"
It's possible that the terrific finales to seasons 3, 4 and 5 set the bar a little too high. After all, season 6 wasn't as strong as the previous ones, but it still had some terrific episode. "The Understudy", though, is a weak season finale by any standard. Guests stars playing themselves were used before with intelligence and creativity (Keith Hernandez) but this episode feels more like a Bette Midler vehicle than anything else.
Like any Seinfeld episode, this one has its highlights; mostly they're the scenes featuring Jerry Stiller. Everything else is pretty mediocre, and serve as a poor conclusion to the season, a conclusion that might have been better off giving some closure to the Tim Whatley or David Puddy characters. The only consequential thing it does is introducing the J. Peterman character, but at this point it feels like a one time gag. We just had to wait and see if season 7 had something more up its sleeve.
It's possible that the terrific finales to seasons 3, 4 and 5 set the bar a little too high. After all, season 6 wasn't as strong as the previous ones, but it still had some terrific episode. "The Understudy", though, is a weak season finale by any standard. Guests stars playing themselves were used before with intelligence and creativity (Keith Hernandez) but this episode feels more like a Bette Midler vehicle than anything else.
Like any Seinfeld episode, this one has its highlights; mostly they're the scenes featuring Jerry Stiller. Everything else is pretty mediocre, and serve as a poor conclusion to the season, a conclusion that might have been better off giving some closure to the Tim Whatley or David Puddy characters. The only consequential thing it does is introducing the J. Peterman character, but at this point it feels like a one time gag. We just had to wait and see if season 7 had something more up its sleeve.