I'm Telling You for the Last Time
HBO · 1998 · 75 min
A live farewell to the material that made him famous.
Two months after wrapping his sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld decided to officially retire his act. I’m Telling You for the Last Time was pitched as a funeral for twenty years of material. He promised to take his jokes about scuba diving, airplane travel, and public restrooms and lock them away forever, forcing himself to write an entirely new set from scratch.
The show was broadcast live on HBO from the Broadhurst Theatre in New York. It functions as a final lap for the observational bits he honed from his early club days through the peak of his television fame. He works through routines about grocery stores, cab drivers, and the Olympics, executing the premises with the exact timing that made him wealthy. The broadcast earned an Emmy nomination and produced a Grammy-nominated album. Despite the central premise of the special, audiences who buy tickets to see him today will still recognize a fair amount of the jokes.
The set list
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Burial of Jerry's old material in a cemetery with comic mourners
A pre-taped funeral sketch opening the special featuring fellow comedians like George Carlin, Garry Shandling, Jay Leno, and Robert Klein attending a burial for his jokes.
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Supermarkets and check writing
Compares supermarkets to casinos and lampoons shoppers who hold up the line by writing a paper check for small amounts.
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Pharmacists
Questions why pharmacists are elevated on platforms two and a half feet higher than everyone else in the store.
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Skydivers wearing helmets
Ruminates on the absurdity and futility of sky divers bothering to wear protective helmets.
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Wanted posters and criminals
Ponders how law-enforcement officers manage to detain criminals long enough to take clear photographs for Wanted posters yet still let them escape.
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Halloween and candy
Examines children's obsession with trick-or-treating and their willingness to do whatever it takes to receive candy.
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The closer (spoiler). Show it
Encore Q&A session
Seinfeld freshens up his set by taking spontaneous questions directly from the audience as part of his encore.
How it plays
- Tone
- Observational, witty, genial, with an infectious mixture of mystification and scorn.
- On stage
- Observational, self-deprecating, and poised; traded his standard stand-up uniform of a sports jacket and slacks for a formal sharp black suit, solid tie, and white shirt.
- Pace
- Low-key rhythm and cadence, talking into the microphone while manipulating the mic stand and gesticulating wildly.
- About
- air travel, supermarkets and drugstores, doctors and medicine, gender differences and dating, childhood and Halloween, everyday trivia and public behavior
What the critics said
Variety praised Seinfeld's observational comedy and faultless delivery as honed to a virtuoso pitch, though critics like Tom Shales and The A.V. Club characterized the show as warmed-over and redundant given how extensively the jokes had aired on television.
In the room: High-energy, celebrity-packed capacity Broadway crowd paying premium scalped prices of up to $1,500, greeting Seinfeld with instant standing ovations.
Backstory
Taped live on Broadway during a five-day run at the Broadhurst Theatre following an international tour, serving as a high-profile media spectacle where Seinfeld vowed to permanently retire his classic stand-up material.
Details
- Released
- Taped
- Broadhurst Theatre, New York City
- Runtime
- 75 min
- Where
- HBO
- Director
- Marty Callner
- Honors
- Nominated for 1999 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy AlbumNominated for 2 Primetime Emmy Awards (Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special; Outstanding Technical Direction/Camera/Video for a Special)American Comedy Awards nomination for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Special and 1 more
- Topics
- After
- Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017)
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