TV Blog Buzz: Learning psychiatry with ‘Seinfeld’; lamest last seasons ever

By The Canadian Press

TORONTO – Do “Seinfeld” characters exhibit textbook examples of delusional disorders?

Yes, says Dr. Anthony Tobia of the Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, who is teaching a course called “Psy-feld” based on the seminal sitcom.

The associate professor of psychiatry says students will learn to recognize the symptoms of psychological disorders that Jerry, Kramer, Elaine, George and Newman express, reports the A.V. Club.

Tobia says Jerry seems to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, Kramer has schizoid traits, and Newman is a “very sick” person whose “sense of self, his meaning in life, is to ensure that he frustrates Jerry.”

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It seems HitFix is still a bit cranky about the “How I Met Your Mother” finale.

The website has compiled a list of the shows with the “lamest” final seasons in TV history.

Cracking the dubious list are “The X-Files,” “Dexter,” “Roseanne,” “M*A*S*H,” “Gilmore Girls,” “True Blood” and “Happy Days.”

Among the complaints about the “How I Met Your Mother” final season was the under-utilization of the titular mom, played by Cristin Milioti.

“The show barely used her, even though she quickly became the only part of the show that resembled what it had been in its glory years,” write Alan Sepinwall.

“And (the show ended with) a divisive, anger-inducing finale that killed off the Mother so that Future Ted could finally get permission from his kids to have sex with Aunt Robin — an idea conceived of years before, but that the show had long since rendered a very, very bad idea. It became the strangest of series finales, where the only people who liked it had stopped watching the show many years earlier. And almost all of the season leading up to it was an embarrassing shell of the show those people remembered.”

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As “Parenthood” prepares for a final stretch of four episodes before also wrapping up for good, NPR’s Monkey See blog wonders why sentimental family-based dramas seem to have fallen out of fashion in favour of edgier dramas.

“The golden age of television has been brilliant for the growth of the drama of action, but has struggled to support the drama of emotions to nearly the same degree,” writes Linda Holmes, who wishes there’d be more quality down-to-earth dramas that tug at the heartstrings.

“Walter White’s problems (on ‘Breaking Bad’) are ones I will never have. Don Draper’s problems (on ‘Mad Men’) are ones I will never have. The Bravermans’ problems, on the other hand, whistle uncomfortably closely past my ear.”

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