Disrupting Flow: Seinfeld, Sopranos Series Finale and the Aesthetic of Anxiety

Abstract

This article examines how the Seinfeld and Sopranos series finales problematize a contemporary televisual ethos that Raymond Williams famously characterized as “flow.” These finales at once question their status as product and, in the case of The Sopranos, offer a direct critique to the nature of televisual flow itself. The emergence of such avant-garde intentionality in network and cable television underscores, moreover, a fundamental tension between art and commerce. These finales draw much of their energy by evoking an aesthetic of disruption and subversion not from the outside of the production process but from within the corporate sphere.