`SEINFELD' SETS RECORD FOR LONGEST GOODBYE.

Byline: Caryn James The New York Times

It's as if we've all tacitly agreed to go crazy. On Thursday night, the cable channel TV Land will stop regular programming for an hour and hang out a sign saying it'll be back after the ``Seinfeld'' finale. In tonight's episode of ``Dharma and Greg,'' the couple decide to have sex in public and chooses the perfect time: when the rest of the world is watching the last ``Seinfeld.'' And that's just the hype NBC for which is not responsible.

Since Jerry Seinfeld decided at Christmastime that this season would be his show's last, ``Seinfeld'' has been at the center of the longest, most carefully orchestrated goodbye in television history. The hype has become excruciating. The tone of this farewell suggests manufactured hysteria, not an outpouring of affection, despite the show's immense popularity. With a wink, the public has willingly bought into this game leading up to the final episode, whose story is shrouded in a top secrecy that is the most attention-getting gimmick of all.

Like it or not, the end of ``Seinfeld'' has become an inescapable communal experience. And in a deceptively lighthearted way, ``Seinfeld'' mania reveals a longing for community that highlights television's unifying social role. That longing echoes the series' content, with its tight group of characters and the shorthand communication of friendship. Knowing a ``Seinfeld'' catch phrase like ``master of your domain'' makes you an insider, even if you're one of millions.

``Seinfeld'' is the defining comedy of manners for the '90s, and the best, but it is not unique. The ``Seinfeld'' frenzy has all but buried three other series that are also ending for good, with hourlong guest-laden finales. They also left enduring marks.

There were moments when ``Murphy Brown'' and ``Ellen'' set the terms of the national conversation. There was no escaping headlines about Dan Quayle's attack on Murphy's single motherhood in May 1992, or, just last year, headlines about Ellen DeGeneres's coming out as a lesbian in her sitcom and real life. On HBO, Garry Shandling's ``The Larry Sanders Show'' has a lower profile, but its behind-the-scenes view of a talk show epitomizes an era in which entertainment news shares the spotlight with Bosnia.

Like ``Seinfeld,'' these series (with the conspicuous exception of ``Ellen'') focus on neurotic, cynical, cerebral heroes. Speaking to a sophisticated audience, they suit the '90s, an era that has come to accept a flawed president, a period whose strong economy allows time for navel gazing.

The lack of sentiment about the last ``Seinfeld'' reflects the show's own dry-eyed attitude and its era. (The finale will begin on NBC at 8 p.m. with a selection of ``Seinfeld'' clips scheduled to run about 45 minutes; the actual last episode runs about an hour and a quarter.)

Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason and Mary Tyler Moore gave us characters who are still beloved. ``Seinfeld'' gave us hilarious but essentially unlikable, petty characters who would be annoying in real life: Kramer (Michael Richards), the goofball savant; George (Jason Alexander) and Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), each caught in a revolving door of relationships and jobs; Jerry, the droll bystander, observing and commenting on it all, refusing to take life seriously.

The meaning of life

Like all comedies of manners, ``Seinfeld'' insisted that the meaning of life is in the silly details. (A Pez dispenser is important in a plot about a recovering drug addict.) But the show's comic exaggeration hit plenty of nerves and revealed much about society.

``Seinfeld'' was a virtual Miss Manners about sexual and emotional decorum. (How many dates do you get before you have to break up in person, not on the phone?)

And when George's fiancee, Susan, dies after licking toxic envelopes for her wedding invitations, his relief suggests a deep fear of being trapped in marriage and ending up like his parents, fighting about a loaf of marble rye. In another classic episode, ``The Rye,'' his middle-class parents are insulted when Susan's posh parents fail to serve the bread the guests brought to dinner. Furthermore, ``You're supposed to serve cake,'' George's humiliated mother screams on her way back to Queens, N.Y. ``We're sitting there like idiots drinking coffee without a piece of cake!''

Such subtexts don't have to be intentional. They rise from the series' astute observations and from its elevation of sharp dialogue to an honored position.

Language becomes action in ``Seinfeld,'' an approach that suits a show about a stand-up comic. It shouldn't be surprising that Jerry Seinfeld's best-selling humor book was called ``Seinlanguage,'' or that the show has propelled phrases like ``yada, yada, yada'' into ordinary conversation.

Past its prime?

``Seinfeld'' is leaving a bit past its prime. This season it has shown signs of losing its edge. Egged on by George, Jerry makes fun of a dermatologist he is dating, claiming she is not a real doctor, only to be embarrassed when a man she has treated for skin cancer thanks her for saving his life. Jerry is not supposed to be stupid and crass; that's George's role.

`Murphy Brown'

``Murphy Brown,'' choosing to go after 10 years, stayed on well past its prime, but it leaves Monday at 9 p.m. on CBS (Channel 2) with a guest cast that is a tribute to its impact. Julia Roberts, Bette Midler and George Clooney appear, along with Alan King as the God in Murphy's dreams. (Like ``Seinfeld,'' ``Murphy Brown'' is not releasing its final episode in advance.)

At its height, the show was a natural lightning rod for Quayle, because Murphy (Candice Bergen) was a shrewd half-step ahead of her time. A tough journalist in the network news world dominated by men, a self-sufficient woman in her 40s obsessed with work and prone to disastrous personal relationships, she reflected the lives of many woman and blazed a trail for other television heroines. (Where would ``Ally McBeal'' be without her?) The flap about Murphy's pregnancy would not have taken off if the character had not already hit a responsive chord with the public.

Maybe a show can have only one peak moment, never to be equaled. And cynical heroes always have a limited life span. At the start, Murphy was cranky, aggressively hiding her soft side. Over the years, viewers came to take the soft side for granted. When she got breast cancer this season, the personal saga turned out to be another wrong turn. The best targets on ``Murphy Brown'' were always political; the show could mock Newt Gingrich one week and have him as a guest the next.

`Ellen'

But ``Murphy Brown'' earned and deserved its moment of importance. ``Ellen'' has floundered its way into history. Rarely funny and marginally successful during its five-year run, it was recently canceled by ABC.

Since coming out near the end of last season, ``Ellen'' has had one hilarious episode (with Emma Thompson playing a gay, fictional version of herself), some desperately unfunny scenes (Ellen in a chicken suit) and many heavy-handed moments (DeGeneres's real-life love, Anne Heche, appearing as the ex-girlfriend of the Ellen character's current girlfriend).

Her character's ongoing love affair with a woman was the cause of much tension between DeGeneres and the network, but to viewers the reason for the loss of interest was simpler. ``Ellen'' wasn't much funnier out of the closet. The final episode, called ``Ellen: A Hollywood Tribute,'' tonight at 9 on KABC (Channel 7) demonstrates all the worst aspects of the show this year: It is annoyingly self-important and preachy.

The illogical conceit is that the character of Ellen Morgan is being celebrated for 50 years in show business. Linda Ellerbee plays host, while guests including Glenn Close and Phil Donahue pay tribute to the fictional Ellen's accomplishments. In a parody of ``I Love Lucy,'' Ellen avoids saying the word ``pregnant'' on television. Being gay on a television series today is ``no more groundbreaking than it was to say `pregnant' on television'' back then, Ellen Morgan tells Ellerbee. However cloaked in satire, DeGeneres can't disguise how strenuously she is patting herself on the back.

`Larry Sanders'

Of all the shows ending this season, the only one to regret is ``Larry Sanders,'' which seems to have life left. Though Shandling has chosen to end his series after six seasons, ``Larry Sanders'' has been gaining in cachet in the last few years and has been able to thrive on the explosion of entertainment gossip. The fictional backstage maneuvers and Hollywood back stabbing of ``Sanders'' allows viewers the sense of sharing the ultimate Hollywood in-joke.

The fictional Larry's love affairs (from Roseanne to Laura Dern) and neuroses (he shares a psychiatrist with Chevy Chase) are at the center of a dizzy blurring of art and life, as the stars play themselves in compromising positions. In recent weeks, Larry has announced on the air that he is ending his show, amid rumors that Jon Stewart (in reality a ``Sanders'' consultant and frequent guest) was being groomed to replace him.

Blurring the lines even more, after Shandling decided to go, HBO gave serious thought to continuing ``Sanders'' with Stewart, but decided not to. The guest list for the series finale, May 31 at 10 p.m. on HBO, includes Warren Beatty, Jim Carrey, David Duchovny and the newly unemployed Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres.

The way these shows are ending says much about their lives: the dignified, high-powered send-off of ``Murphy Brown,'' the sly, self-referential exit of ``Larry Sanders,'' the whiny confusion of ``Ellen.'' Then there is the inescapable. The ending of ``Seinfeld'' insists on television's crucial role in culture, however absurd the contagious hysteria may seem. As the off-screen Seinfeld wrote in ``Seinlanguage'': ``TV has so much power. I know it does. Because I bought the Ginsu knife.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos, box

Photo: (1 -- color) `SEINFELD'

(2 -- color) `ELLEN'

(3 -- color) `MURPHY BROWN'

(4 -- color) `THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW'

BOX: Seinfeld

The Finale