`Seinfeld’ finale a video scrapbook> Nostalgic clipshow brings back favorites, but final episode won’t endure

They came ready to celebrate a show about nothing.

“Seinfeld” fans crammed the Speakaway Pub at Paul’s Restaurant Thursday night to bid a fond farewell to the NBC sitcom after nine seasons.

The restaurant, which had been a trivia contest all week, tried to get patrons into the spirit of the evening.

Hosting the party was Glenn “The Guru” Simpson, garbed in the puffy shirt, who came prepared with Junior Mints, Drake’s Coffee Cakes, Pez and other Seinfeldian accoutrements.

The “Seinfeld” lookalike contest failed to fly for lack of contestants (“Get out!”), but a “Dance Like Elaine” contest was substituted. Tom Thebarge of Bangor, who ended up in a three-way tie atop the trivia contest, also won the dance contest for best imitating the Julia Louis-Dreyfus character’s spasmodic style of dancing.

In the crowd was Jonathan Thymius, a Bangor native who is now a California-based actor and who has appeared in 18 “Seinfeld” episode as an extra, either in small speaking parts or in the background. He was home visiting his grandmother, and decided on impulse to check out the party at Paul’s.

NBC started its prime-time schedule off with about 45 minutes of “Seinfeld” highlights and backstage clips. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake, as many patrons failed to notice when the clip show ended and the finale began.

Was the final “Seinfeld” worthy of the hype? No. The second coming wouldn’t have been.

Was it was the memorable final episode of all time? No again. It lacked the pathos of the last episodes of “M*A*S*H” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or the clever twist endings of “Newhart” and “St. Elsewhere.”

No, “Seinfeld” is a show that has always been proud of its shallowness, its mundaneness, and it wasn’t about to change its approach now. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Thursday night’s episode traced the path followed by many previous episode. One or more members of the gang catches a break, in this case, a new NBC president warming to the 5-year-old pilot for Jerry and George’s sitcom about nothing. Yet, once again, in the end, it all falls apart.

The friends hop on the NBC private jet for a trip to Paris. The jet has mechanical problems, and after a couple of true confessions during a scary plunge, the pilot rights the plane and they land in a small Massachusetts town.

The self-involved quartet, won’t-get-involved New Yorkers to the core, stand by and laugh as an obese man gets robbed in broad daylight. They are arrested for violating the town’s good Samaritan law.

What follows is a combination nostalgia trip and sendup of the Simpson case, as Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer get their comeuppance for all the wrongs they have done to others over the past nine years.

One by one, the rich characters from the show’s past come forward to testify for the prosecution — the Bubble Boy, the Soup Nazi, Babu Bhatt — as snippets of past shows roll. Part of the fun is seeing actors that got early exposure on “Seinfeld” and went on to bigger things, including Jane Leeves and Teri Hatcher.

As the evidence mounts against them and even their friends and relatives turn on them, the gang remains wedded to their favorite subject — themselves. As the idea of prison uniforms is broached, Elaine’s biggest concern is “I cannot wear orange.”

For those who taped last night’s show or didn’t watch it, I won’t reveal the verdict. Suffice it to say that the fictional Jerry won’t be touring much soon.

Feelings were mixed among Paul’s patrons about the finale.

Keith Hallett of Bangor, who also tied for first in the trivia contest, cut out early to catch the show on tape.

“I was going to stay at home and watch it on TV with my girlfriend, but I decided to come out to Paul’s,” he said. “There’s nothing finer than watching it in this diner.”

Thebarge thought some of the show’s individual episodes were superior to the finale, but liked it nonetheless.

“I liked how they brought all the different characters in from other episodes,” he said. “They left it open-ended so they could come back.”

Miles Rogals of Belfast, also a trivia-contest winner, was most enthusiastic, saying, “I knew they would tie everything in, and show all the characters, but I wasn’t sure how they’d do it. It was great. They showed all the past episodes, which made it more fun.”

Thymius the “Seinfeld” actor, admitting he was a “little grumpy” about not being invited back for the final episode, liked it nonetheless.

“It was a good show,” he said. “I thought it would be a more dramatic ending.”

In the end, the “Seinfeld” finale had a Peggy Lee-quality to it (“Is that all there is?”). But to try to be more than a little slice of everyday life wouldn’t have been true to its roots. “Seinfeld” ended the way it began, with four friends in a room bitching about the minutiae of the world around them.