I was late getting to the "Seinfeld" party, just like certain NBC executives who almost didn't book the show because they didn't "get it."

When it began as "The Seinfeld Chronicles" in 1989 and segued into "Seinfeld" in 1990, I was interested professionally because I had interviewed the young stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld and liked both him and his sharply observant humor. But I found the show itself empty. Zilch. Nada. No connection.

It didn't make me laugh. It didn't even hold my attention.

I gave it up.

"I think you'd better look back in," said my husband about a year into the run. The show had already taken on some kind of cult status, even as I continued to pass off my own resistance to it to as a Grand Canyon-sized age gap. This bunch of self-absorbed losers missed me by at least a generation, I thought.

I was wrong, of course: You can't classify "Seinfeld" devotees into young vs. old, male vs. female, or urban vs. rural, or super educated vs. not. That was borne out by our "Seinfeld Last Episode" entries.

At our house, we started tuning in Thursday nights, at first more from a sense of duty than anything.

I, whose job it is to spot series' excellence and alert my readers to it, had not a glimmer that "Seinfeld" would become the most popular comedy of the decade. And that I would be at the front of the cheering section, loving it and, come this spring, loathe to see it go.

I still didn't get the series' subtleties, didn't care about these shallow people and their skewed values. Didn't catch the brilliance of the writing and construction. Didn't recognize the sophistication cloaking the slapstick.

I know, I know. Color me humor-impaired.

I couldn't tell you when "Seinfeld," his fellow nitpickers and I began the fairly complex, deeply felt relationship that exists today -- which many of you "Seinfeld" fans can relate to. Not just Thursday night appointment television -- "must see TV," as NBC touts its lineup built around Jerry & Co. -- but an addiction that spilled from prime time into fringe viewing hours at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. weekdays.

Watching reruns of reruns, I noticed myself laughing out loud at the same gags, even as some comedy bit unnoticed before always seemed to surface. Some golden moments:

* Jerry and Mulvah (Dolores).

* George's "shrinkage" in The Hamptons.

* Kramer's cackling rave over the Junior Mints: "They're delicious."

* Elaine's shoving "Get out!"

* The Pez dispenser.

* The puffy shirt.

* Kramer's coffee table book coffee table.

* "The outing" of George and Jerry by the NYU reporter.

* The politically way-incorrect cigar store Indian.

* Elaine's (as Meryl Streep) saying, "Maybe the dingo ate your baby" as party chatter.

* Jerry at the car rental counter.

* The riotous sitcom pitch to NBC.

* Kramer turning his front hallway into a Main Street, USA, front porch.

* "Love the Drake!" (And don't forget the Drakes' Coffee Cakes). Over and over.

Even the more puerile episodes I disliked (1991's "The Dog" and "The Parking Garage" come to mind) got second and third look-ins, just to see where genius couldn't find Olympus.

"Seinfeld" never hit me over the head, which is what I'd been foolishly waiting for. It's far too nuanced for that. Despite its over-the-top slapstick, this is sophisticated stuff. It gets under your skin and grabs you by the throat and dares you to figure out how to beat the writers at their own game of tying outrageous plot filaments together:

* Jon Voight's car with the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

* The rye bread with a gassy horse.

* George's "opposite" routine as Kramer debuts with Regis and Kathie Lee.

* Elaine's "big salad" with the White Bronco spoof.

* Kramer as the Marlboro Man while George and Elaine find sex, or the absence of it, affects their brain cells.

I found I was enjoying shows in rerun more than I ever did as first runs. Then I would watch reruns of reruns, absorbed in the way its outrageous ideas came even more outrageously together.

The audacity and the genius -- until this season -- of the writing that dazzled you with its fancy footwork. So commonplace on the surface but so intricately and unexpectedly webbed.

Admiration turned to love. Could anyone else, another group of writers, have done 22 minutes about masturbation and manage not to offend? The series mastered the art of being vague and explicit at the same time.

But not everyone felt that way, even after it became mainstream. A lot of people just didn't get it.

"How would you like 'Seinfeld' to end?" read our query to readers. "Quickly." "Soon." "Just so it does" were a few bite-backs we got.

Nationally, "Seinfeld" attained the Neilsen's ratings Top 10 in 1993 and stayed and stayed and stayed. It was consistently in the Top 3.

People devoted to it were far in the majority. Some readers of The Morning Call thanked us for giving them an exercise they found so much fun to do. Some correspondents constructed plots two and three pages long. One e-mailed notice that a script was coming by U.S. Mail the next day. And it did!

I think "Seinfeld" could have used some of our entrants as writers this season. Some off-the-mark mean-spiritedness crept into "Seinfeld" scripts this year. Characters were behaving out-of-character. The art-imitates-life gambit was a little too out there in spots, even for a show built on the outrageous. Jerry is right to hang it up this season, much as the thought of life without new "Seinfeld" transfusions pains us.

Everyone talks about the damage done when Jerry's cocreator and former executive producer Larry David left the series in 1996. But "Seinfeld" may have suffered the death blow when writer and coexecutive producer Peter Mehlman, who helped steer the show after David left, departed for Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks at the end of last season.

It was Mehlman who wrote "The Apartment," where George wore a wedding band to better attract women, and Elaine did her shoving "Get out!!" for the first time; "The Implant" with Terry Hatcher as the very stacked Sidra and George double-dipping his chip; "The Smelly Car," where George thinks he has turned Susan to lesbianism; "The Wife," with Jerry and guest girlfriend Courtney Cox pretending to be married to get a drycleaner's discount and end up bickering like old marrieds; "The Hamptons," where everyone but George gets to see his date topless and "shrinkage" enters our vocabulary; "The Sponge" (enough said) and "The Yada Yada."