Curb Your Enthusiasm concluded with its series finale, “No Lessons Learned”, on Sunday night (April 7th).
This review will discuss the final episode in detail, including specific, ending-relevant plot-points, the twelfth season overall and the series as a whole (in addition to Seinfeld’s series finale, just for good measure).
If you’ve yet to see the episode? Please consider this your spoiler warning.
As always, thank you for reading Off-Balance!
Ryan.
The moment Curb Your Enthusiasm introduced the plot-line that ultimately defined its twelfth and final season, it brought with it, a feeling you couldn’t shake.
Enough so, that you’d be forgiven for cueing up an anguished Aaron Paul as Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman:
And yes, for a minute there on Sunday night, during Curb’s series finale?
TV Larry David: noted asshole, swan killer, respecter of wood, four-eyed-f——— and a man known for enjoying the comfort of women’s underwear, did indeed end up behind bars.
It seemed a natural conclusion to his season-long legal troubles, which began by way of a rare act of genuine altruism in the premiere: Larry, handing out water, illegally, in a Georgia voting line. Something that quickly, as expected, spiralled out of control, as he was found guilty of violating the Elections Integrity Act and sentenced to a year in prison.
That is, before an unlikely assist from his old friend Jerry Seinfeld himself turned the tables.
Jerry, catching a juror not following his sequestering guidelines and thereby causing a mistrial. It leaves Larry a free man, set loose on society once agin to continue sewing his unique brand of comedic chaos… right as the series concludes.
The misadventures of television’s most misanthropic millionaire, brought to a satisfying, if somewhat predictable end.
Because ultimately, as the pieces fell into place over the past few weeks, it became pretty, pretty, pretty clear where Curb was heading, last minute swerve notwithstanding.
With David, just like he did on his previous sitcom, Seinfeld, gleefully sending his protagonists (or in this case, himself, “TV Larry”) to prison… but only after being judged by a murderer’s row of character witnesses and a rehashing of his antics: the countless people that he slighted, belittled or otherwise brought havoc upon over the past twenty-four years.
Through it all, you could almost hear David snickering as the curtain came down.
Seinfeld’s ending was notoriously polarizing in 1998 and the inherent “oh, you didn’t like it? Then I’ll do it again!” energy was very much apparent.
Whether it was plane troubles, callbacks to dialogue past or the montage/clip show packaging from the various witnesses highlighting Larry’s innumerable counts of shenanigans.
In a way, he both stood by his “first” finale, while also acknowledging that Curb wouldn’t be completely beholden to it, either.
At least, to some extent: “This is how we should have ended the show!” Jerry and Larry slyly mug near the end, as Larry goes free: that cooled reception, something they previously poked at during Curb’s seventh season, where the main story arc (you might remember) was the duo organizing a Seinfeld reunion special.
It tracks, though.
Try as it might, it was always going to be a big part of Curb’s DNA.
There were the obvious parallels, of course.
While he was very much a co-creator, had the show carry his name and starred as the lead, the sitcom was never truly Jerry Seinfeld’s in totality - no, creatively, it belonged to David, even after he left following the seventh season (before returning to write that after-mentioned finale).
Co-creator, show-runner, the real-world George Constanza (per George actor Jason Alexander’s own admission) various one-off characters (“I’m Frank Constanza’s lawyer!”), the voice of George Steinbrenner and the impetus behind virtually all of the show’s best remembered storylines, as he actively pulled from his real-life experiences.
But when starting his next creative endeavour?
As the story goes, he wanted to keep expectations low (hence the name - get it?) but even from the very beginning of Curb’s pilot episode, you can tell that what you’re witnessing is David unleashed at both his best and most driven comedic impulses.
Though the bigger question, I think, is just how should we evaluate the series as a whole as it formally concludes.
Like any long-running television show, it wasn’t immune to artistic peaks and valleys but given its rather inconsistent broadcast schedule, its “eras” as it were, became much more pronounced, as the creative fabric underwent some substantial shifts.
Yet at its peak, relatively, the first eight seasons?
Curb wasn’t just Seinfeld 2.0 - it was, on its own, if not in the same class, then a cut above: one of the greatest television comedies ever made.
The elevator pitch was simple enough.
David, playing an exaggerated version of himself, now tremendously rich and successful post-Seinfeld but still forever fixated on the minutiae of everyday life, albeit, in a far darker way - and on HBO no less, where he was no longer bound by primetime network restrictions.
Curb operated on a face-value premise, directly and with a sharp undercurrent of tackling the risqué head on, with an edge Seinfeld could only dream of, the show’s characters, vile, vulgar, violently profane and lacking any sort of redeemable moral code.
Curb famously, was almost entirely improvised, save for a general plot outline for each episode, bringing a tremendous sense of lived-in verisimilitude - when the actors laughed, for example, you believed it (although it undeniably felt far more scripted in its final four seasons).
Comedy in daily absurdities, the only true goal with Larry often presented as a champion of saying the quiet things out loud: from dinner party and waiting-in-line etiquette to his scheming and vendettas both with complete strangers and friends alike.
All the while, he fumbled through a variety of societal niceties, from sports, race relations, sex, politics and religion (Larry’s own complex relationship with Judaism, specifically) to unspoken social constructs, often of his own making.
Each season involved a loose, over-arching story arc, from Larry working to open a restaurant (twice, once out of spite), trying to weasel his way out of donating a kidney to lifelong frenemy Richard Lewis or taking his act back to New York to purposely avoid simple social obligations in Los Angeles.
But through it all?
There were the individual moments that have become iconic all their own, to the point that listing only a few favourites without their larger context seems like a disservice to the brilliance of the off-handed, taboo-pushing comedy Curb made its calling card.
From the recurring gags (the staring contests, the musical cues, the casual catchphrases: “No good?”), to everything else - Larry, eating edible underwear as he forced a woman to jump off a ski lift, prioritizing removing a stain from his bedroom carpet over sex or picking up a prostitute to use the carpool lane.
There was fraternizing at the Playboy Mansion with a Make-A-Wish kid, in search of authentic smoking jackets.
Baseball player Bill Buckner, redeeming his infamous 1986 World Series error, the conundrum of helping a blind man move or drawing the ire of women shelters and incest survivor groups both.
Maybe it was tripping Shaq court-side, reading “The Freak Book” with John McEnroe, the moral dilemma of people of Jewish faith dining at a Palestinian eatery, good chicken be damned or, perhaps, in the most collective burst of profanity ever shown on television - an entire restaurant, prompted by Larry, launching into a verbose tirade in response to a chef with apparent Tourette's Syndrome cursing them out.
It was a sense of memorability that extended to the show’s cast as well, from the mainstays to the recurring characters, many of whom, played fictional versions of themselves.
From Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes and Michael J. Fox, to the ever-reluctant chauffeur, Ben Stiller, with many of David’s Seinfeld collaborators involved too (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus both, never missing an opportunity to call Larry out, will always be funny).
There was Ashly Holloway, who played the long-tormented-by-Larry Sammie Greene in the first nine seasons, from childhood to adulthood, too often at the receiving end of his BS (before finally, memorably, turning the tables on the self-proclaimed social assassin).
Ted Danson, who played a version of himself from the second episode onwards - smug, self-serving and friend-turned-foe to Larry, much to LD’s outrage.
There was Cheryl Hines as Larry’s in-show wife Cheryl, who often acted as his slightly-more-grounded counterpart before she left him in the sixth season and struck out on her own afterwards.
Albeit, not without her own narcissistic hilarity, even as stray pubic hair and an all-time botched newspaper obituary forever alienated Larry from her family (“It was supposed to say Aunt!”).
The late Bob Einstein as Larry’s not-quite best friend Marty Funkhouser whose deadpan delivery and a penance for filthy, off-colour humour, he brought forth with a quiet intensity. (in later seasons, following Einstein’s death, the resident Funkhouser was lothario cousin Freddie, played with ease by Vince Vaughn).
There was too, the late comedian Richard Lewis, playing a fictionalized version of himself.
Lewis, having known Larry, like in real-life, since childhood, as they alternated between long-time friendship to seething, incessant backstabbing - with Lewis, playing to perfection, a constant rage at his friend for stymying his love life, to Larry’s never-ending amusement.
And of course, there was J.B Smoove as Leon Black, who, upon debuting in the sixth season, immediately became Curb’s most memorable character.
When his family moved in with Larry and Cheryl following Hurricane Katrina? Leon already lived in LA. But why not, he moved in too.
Yet even after Cheryl and the Blacks both left Larry, in a series of exasperation and misunderstandings? Leon? He simply stuck around, becoming the most unexpected ally to our most unwilling protagonist.
Never paying rent and content to coast by on finical success he hadn’t earned but always having his buddy’s back, the best kinda-sorta confidant and mentor there ever was.
Smoove brought a downright wacky, unbeatable energy to the character that his co-stars, given the show’s improvisational framework, could only hope to match.
Leon’s non-sequiturs regarding everything from race to his sexual escapades, providing many of Curb’s greatest single lines and one-on-one character interactions from his introduction to the very end.
Maybe it was grilling Jerry in Sunday’s finale, regarding Seinfeld actually being a showcase of the comedian’s sexual deviancy, driving Larry’s car cross-country on a whim or his advice to his house-mate on how to deal with a suspected white supremacist.
And on the same hand?
The show’s other constants, there from the very beginning next to Larry, were the two people he both rallied against but begrudgingly appreciated in equal measure: Jeff Garlin and Susie Essman, as Jeff Greene, Larry’s friend-slash-manager and Susie, his short-tempered, wildly-dressed wife.
Jeff and Larry, constantly finding themselves caught up in the type of absurd antics you would think would be above two very wealthy men, including one millionaire - right up until Susie would immediately see through their nonsense, white lies and blatant deceit.
Yet to pick just one example? It is a sequence from the second season, one that will forever live rent-free in my head.
Stealing dolls from children, decapitating said dolls, irritated crotches and Essman’s totally unbridled, profane fury at the whole bizarre situation, with a delivery that remains utterly pitch-perfect.
Curb though? It isn’t entirely without criticism.
The show’s eighth season concluded with Larry and Leon, to great comedic effect, escaping to Paris to avoid a charity engagement with Michael J. Fox and then… for six years?
That was it.
It would return in 2017 but the “revival-Curb” era often felt, in my opinion, like it was trying to capture something that no longer existed, at least, not to the same level.
And sure, for any long-running creative endeavour, that’ll happen.
To genuinely expect the show to return without skipping a beat would have been foolhardy but in its final four seasons, Curb felt heavier.
More scripted, more constrained, more bound by a framework it would have laughed at in its earlier years.
Of note too, was the material - from seemingly dropped storylines (whatever happened to the Young Larry TV show, following the beginning of Larry’s legal troubles?) or the attempts at “easy” humour, in the final season in particular, which no longer felt satirical but more bluntly insensitive, in the worst of ways (even if the show cut its teeth in that department? The delivery matters).
From everything regarding non-”American” accents, religion, to the same-old jokes regarding the LGBTQIA2S+ community that felt both played and at their lowest, purposely disrespectful.
The creative team, at their most visible - losing steam.
On the whole, though?
There is no question - Curb stuck the landing.
The show’s final scene, as the gang flies home to Los Angeles, encapsulates everything that made the show, at its height, one of the best and most acclaimed projects on television.
Susie, looking to read, rolls up her blind, casting light across the aisle. The ire begins, Larry, in particular.
So cue the argument over triviality.
And cue the music.
So long, Curb.
Until next time.