(source)
So, I remember watching the series finale of Mad About You that night, but I haven’t watched it again since it originally aired. I do remember feeling let down at the end however. This is what I remember from 20 years ago, maybe I’ll remember some forgotten details once I re watch it…which I will after I make this list:
– Janeane Garofolo was Paul & Jamie’s daughter Mabel all grown up and she had come out with a documentary about her life? Her dad’s life? The film was everything after 1999?
-Paul & Jamie bought the apartment across from them and merged it into theirs? Which didn’t make any sense. Everybody had to walk through P&J’s bedroom to get to the expansion?
-Paul & Jamie were pregnant again with twins but she lost the babies? I just remember the scene where Paul rushes into the apartment with a double stroller excited that he found one. He sees the message light on the answering machine and it’s Jamie. I was trying to figure out if this was early on when Mabel was still a one year old, and one seat in the stroller was for her, or Jamie was pregnant with twins.
-Paul’s dad died real early on in the episode.
-Paul and Jamie wonder who should give her the birds and the bees talk when Mabel is a teenager, but turns out they waited too long. When Paul sits down with her to discuss it, she interrupts him and says that she’s already had sex, or she was already on the pill. Paul decides to take Mabel out for bagels every Saturday morning so he can remain closer to her. I just remember them eating bagels and sitting on a stoop.
– Paul and Jamie separate for realz this time. Remember when they temporarily separated but then got back together and Jamie got pregnant with Mabel?
[That episode is titled “The Finale”, please don’t confuse it for this one like I almost did. In case you’re wondering about my bitmoji dressed like a snail, our power went on and off the entire time I was writing this. I went ahead and used that save video me website so I could watch the clips offline.]
– Jamie had become really cold at that point in her life and Paul had it.
-The last scene was everybody watching Mabel’s documentary in a movie theater and P&J were a little embarrassed. Paul (almost crying) asks Jamie if she would like to go out for pie.
-Clearly they hadn’t shot enough because the last five minutes were “home movies” of the two and Mabel in central park. The montage seemed to last for-ever.
-Before I re-watch, I also wanted to mention that I hate the theme song!
I found the episode on DailyMotion, and the username of the uploader is “Magic School Bus” … ms. frizzle is that you? It also appears that Ms. Frizzle recorded this episode from syndication, so there might be a tiny scene or two missing.
(part 1, part 2)
(Apparently it’s on the internet archive too, but it took forever to get the vid to play on my iPad. It has commercials though!) https://archive.org/details/MelrosePlaceHomeImprovementFinales1999
So, Mabel’s film was titled “The reason why I am this way”. Maybe a grad school project?. Janeane looks grad school age here.
The film starts with Paul & Jamie’s anniversary when Mabel was 1 in 1999. I was right!
A bird pooped on Paul! Nah, it was just Lyle Lovett the construction worker spilling paint. He married Jamie n Paul 7 years ago, but turns out he’s NOT an ordained minster, so they’re not officially married. This is so dumb. Such a trope, right?
Jamie is freaking out that they’re not really husband and wife. Paul is the rational one here, he says just go to city hall next week! Jamie is all “no, we gotta do it today, its our anniversary!” So they go, there’s a chapel at city hall, there’s a lady named Phyllis there as a witness and who throws rice (25¢ a throw!)
Stupidly, however, Jamie runs away. I do remember this freeze frame from the episode.
There’s lots of jumping around through time while all this is going on, I forgot about that, I just thought it was a straight up timeline.
We jump to 2005 where P&J are in therapy for the thousandth time, also when Paul goes in for a vasectomy. At first, I didn’t realize that Jamie was talking to her sister, Lisa in the waiting room since she had short hair. Jamie tries to explain to her that Mabel doesn’t need a sister, but Lisa guilt trips her. Jamie tells Paul that she thinks they made a mistake. They Michael Scott-eded it:
It’s 2011 and P&J are trying to give 11 year old Mabel the sex talk.
In 2004 Murray (remember, the dog? Yeah, the dog got forgotten somewhere in the series) got a girlfriend and they had puppies! There is the best scene ever where Paul teaches Mabel how to shoot video and Nat the dog walker (played by Helen Hunt’s then husband, Hank Azaria) does a play talk show with the puppies. IT’S TOO CUTE, I put it on instagram. I forgot that Hank was on the show. I still remember how heartbroken I was though when Hank and Helen broke up, though.
There’s a real quick scene in the sports shop that Paul’s family owns (which I forgot about in the series). Jeff Garlin (who I like to call “Daddy Goldberg” since I love him on The Goldbergs) is teasing Paul for all his vasectomies. blah blah. You know what I noticed? That old Sketchers shoebox! Those ugly chunky metallic shoes they made in ’95 ’96 used to come in those boxes. aw. ugliest shoes I ever had, they were most def. Airwalk Jim knockoffs. ANYWAY.
Mabel’s first film “Stabbing Bob” comes out in late 2021 when she’s 23. The whole family is there, including Cyndi Lauper who married Paul’s brother Ira. The whole family tries to get Paul and Jamie to sit together, so obviously something went DOWN between 2011 and 2021. This is when the syndicated version cuts off.
Part 2 begins again with Mabel’s documentary and her asking “Who do you think was responsible for my parents breakup? The one who ran away from the altar and changed her mind three times about whether or not her partner should have painful private surgery … or the other guy?” So when this film was made, Jamie and Paul were still broken up? Mabel is really tearing Jamie up a new one here. Jamie is the devil.
Back to 2005 and Jamie is pregnant, because Paul didn’t get that vasectomy. This is where everything is back on track with my memories of the episode. Except for those ugly ass pajamas. wow. Jamie is only supposed to be 42 here, the pajamas and glasses made her look 60.
2012, Mabel is 14 and she never did get that sex talk…perfect tribute to Whitney though, considering she had recently died.
Oh, no here comes the stroller scene in 2006. Paul is so happy, he says, “I found it! Last one in the city, and I found it! One big seat one little seat! 2 kids, one carriage! One big happy family. ” Uh, Mabel is 9. The “one big seat, one little seat!” makes me wonder if the writers forgot what year it was? Why would there be a big seat and a little seat?” Twins are the same size. Those stroller seats look the same size. Paul finds a note left by Jamie, so it wasn’t an answering machine message.
In early 2021 we see Jamie’s bff Fran, FINALLY. I was wondering where Fran was! She was married to Richard Kind and he left her so he could ride motorcycles like “Easy Rider”, (remember when Fran kept calling the movie “The Easy Rider” and it drove Richard crazy, he was like, “the name of the movie is EASY RIDER, NOT ‘THE EASY RIDER!”). Riffs is somehow still open, martini glasses are taller, forks have clear spiral handles, and Fran be looking like something that walked off the Enterprise.
Oh, and Paul left Jamie. Jamie now is wearing reading glasses around her neck. Oh, honey noo, you’re only 58. Here is Helen Hunt in 2018:
Paul said that Jamie is unkind and that was why he was leaving.
Aw, there’s my fozzie bear!
Costume and Makeup got Paul Reiser exactly right though!
After that, Paul & Jamie had to be straight with Mabel at all times. Ok, whatever:
So I was also wrong about Paul’s died dying when Mabel was little.
On the way to the funeral, Paul’s mom encourages the two to pay a bribe so they can buy the apartment across the hall. She says, “Then Mabel can have a room.” …. Mabel didn’t have a room? She was 13 in the Murray’s not real scene. Where did she sleep?! Now I remember thinking way back then that the episode left a lot of plot holes open, this being one!
I remember feeling kind of turned off by this elevator scene with the sad music after the funeral. I didn’t know the phrase back then, but now I know that it feels so forced. We get it. Paul’s mom is alone.
Casting didn’t do a good job with teenage Mabel, she’s supposed to be 18 in 2015 and it’s still the girl who played her when she was 12. w2g. I didn’t make a screen grab but I was right about Mabel having to cross her parents bedroom, and bathroom to get to her room. I was also right about the bagels!
It’s back to the scene in late 2021 where everybody is watching the end of Mabel’s movie, “Stabbing Bob”. I guess she was trying to be a lil Tarintino. Why did I think they were watching the documentary? Ha, at the end, Paul’s sister asks the family if they want to go out for pie. Yesss, the pie scene!
I did remember this from the pilot episode where Jamie kisses Paul on their first date when he turns to her. Jamie asks “buy me some pie?”, not Paul! I swore for 20 years I heard Paul Reiser tearfully saying, “I would like some pie” in my head!
Oh, one plot point that did get patched up was that Paul & Jamie asked the guy from city hall to come over and marry them in their apartment six seconds to midnight.
RIP, Murray the dog.
UGH, I was right about the long montage of the end that is just pretend home movies of the cast. It’s nearly four minutes long, and its set to country music. It’s hell. I remember actually leaving the room during this part 20 years ago instead of just you know, muting the TV. It completely ruins the quietness of the episode. It’s total filler.
The ending credits are on Youtube, it’s adult Mabel giving a rundown of what happened to who.
Related:
More from the series finale series: https://saleintothe90s.tumblr.com/search/Series%20finale%20series
/edit/
I was curious and went hunting around in google groups (which houses newsgroup archives) to see what people said about it online right after it aired:
Someone wondered too about where on earth Mabel slept until they expanded the apartment:
>2) Where did Mabel sleep before they got the second apartment and
>turned it into a room?
Shared with mommy and daddy?? Or maybe that little space before the
bedroom. Did they convert the appartments into one or move to the
other side? I was a bit confused about that.
>>I wish I had watched Ally (but that’s just my
>opinion).<<
Trust me, if you’ve watched the show at all this season, you’ve seen this
episode. Ally is depressed about no man, elaine whips out the video camera,
the biscuit bobs his head to Barry White, does a gymnastic dismount from the
toilet stall, stutters like Porky Pig, and all of the same fucking things he
does every single fucking episode. I really liked this show at first, but
I’m about to give up on it because the same shit happens week after week
after week. If David Kelley cannot think of anything new to do with this
show, he should hire a writing team, because it it going nowhere fast!Brian
To know that Paul and Jamie’s genes resulted in that shrewish frump Janeane
Garofalo was one thing. But to be “previewed” twenty years of their misery
resulting in Mabel’s therapy for bad parenting was pretty unbearable.
Crap. Not quite as crap as the Rosanne finale, but more crap than the last
Seinfeld episode. I knew they were in trouble in the very first scene where
they set up the premise for the episode. Lyle Lovett tells them that he
wasn’t really an ordained minister when he performed their wedding ceremony
and that he was drunk when he said he was. (now there’s an original plot)
One problem: Lyle isn’t the one who told them he was a minister and everyone
was sober at the time.
Then they have Jannene Garofolo as their grown up daughter, recounting
everything thing that went wrong in their marriage, another lame plot
device.There’re also a few little slips, like Paul buying a double baby carriage in
2005, when their daughter would be 8 or so.But, to get to the root of why the episode (and the last two seasons for
that matter) failed: The whole permise of the show was that these two
likable, but occasionally goofy or even stupid, people were so much in love
that they would always be together no matter what. Corny, naive, romantic,
but also endearing. It made for a nice, comforting 4 seasons or so, but
after a while the formula gets old. So they started making the characters a
lot less likeable. Paul Reiser turned into Homer Simpson and Helen Hunt
became a neurotic version of Lucy Ricardo, until I had no idea why these two
people were staying together.They got back to the original idea of the series in the last ten minutes,
but it was too little, too late. In the previous 50 minutes, their whole
marriage went to hell. Not only didn’t those two people belong together,
they didn’t even seem to care about each other. They did something similar a
few years back (marriage goes wrong, they still love each other and stay
together) but it was convincing and they didn’t do the gimmicky jumping back
and forth over 25 years thing. That was the perfect moment to end the
series.
I agree. I watched with the series finale of MAY with the morbid
fascination that I would have while watching a car wreck. I didn’t
*want* to do it, but I was drawn to it. And what a car wreck it was.The plot of the finale should have insulted every thinking person. Did
anyone accept the premise that two sophisticated New Yorkers could
believe they were legally married without having a marriage license and
certificate? For those of you who have never been married, you
absolutely need such documentation for your bank accounts, health
insurance, social security, credit cards, mortgages etc. The
retroactive vitiation of the Buchman’s marriage is akin to the Bobby’s
dream sequence on Dallas a few years ago.Jaime’s jilting of Paul at the “altar” was vapid. Tim Conway’s gag in
being both the marriage clerk and the justice of the peace was
predictable, and as predictably stupid as Conway’s similar gags on the
now ancient Carol Burnett show. The pronunciation of “Buchman” to
explain why Paul and Jaime had the same last name may have been amusing
to a ten year old, but I doubt it was funny to anyone more mature. A
justice of the peace would not play the wedding march with a dime store
cassette recorder while demanding that a prospective bride walk down
the courtroom “aisle.” Couldn’t they have done something interesting
with the marriage witness instead of using a stock character such as
the disinterested, magazine-reading rice-thrower? From a legal
standpoint, Paul and Jaime’s marriage at midnight was as ineffective
as “first” marriage because there was no witness (contrary to the
dialogue, a baby simply cannot be a legal witness to a marriage). Why
would a justice of the peace make a house call to perform a civil
marriage?The whole vasectomy gag was asinine. Have either HH or PR been in a
hosptial? Did they do *any* research before they wrote this gag? Its
pretty safe to conclude that a surgical nurse would *not* lead a post-
operative vasectomy patient through a waiting room while he was wearing
nothing but a robe. Moreover, given Paul’s obvious pain from the first
vasectomy, don’t you think that Jaime would have known that Paul did
not go through with the second one? Wouldn’t Jaime have asked Paul if
he went through with the vasectomy before she purchased and used a
pregnancy test kit? Jaime’s miscarriage was telegraphed from the
beginning of the vasectomy gag.The makeup aging of the characters was amateurish at best. The sex
talk difficulty with Mabel has been done by every sitcom since Leave It
To Beaver, and most have done it better. What was the point of the
puppy urination scene?The breakup and reconciliation was sentimental tripe. In the real
world, people that fight as much as Paul and Jaime do not get divorced
and then, with one magic kiss, make everything OK.Was it necessary to introduce a new character in the finale to narrate
the Buchmans’ life story? (As an aside, I hated the casting of Janeane
Garofolo (sp?). She looked like complete crap. Can’t that woman ever
look presentable? Someone should have given her a mirror and a comb
before they began filming the episode. She is a second rate Roseanne
knock off, and, judging from last night’s appearance, she is now
attempting to catch Roseanne in the weight department as well.)The closing montage attempted to simulate a home movie circa 1960s such
as that used in the Wonder Years. But why would Paul and Jaime, a
1990s couple, have used such a medium for their home movies? Also,
even assuming the choice of medium was justified, why did they wave in
quick, jerky movements at the movie camera? Has anyone done that since
the 1960s?In the end analysis, the MAY finale was incredibly lame. I got home in
time to catch the end of the Melrose Place finale, and, IMO, even that
show – as bad as it is – has more entertainment value than MAY. At
least they don’t take themselves seriously. I am delighted that MAY is
now over. I hope that the poor ratings associated with the show will
cause some retooling at NBC, especially in its high profile slots.
acebook | Etsy | Retail History Blog | Twitter | snapchat (thelastvcr) |YouTube Playlist| Random Post | digital tip jar | Instagram @ thelastvcr |other tumblr | Ko-fi donation |
saleintothe90s 