Every Single Minute of the ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Series Finale Was Perfect
There were times over the course of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s twelve seasons when I thought that Larry David was right about everything he’s ever complained about. Then I’d see the next horrifically hilarious episode, which made me think, All right, you could have easily avoided that one, Larry. But what does Larry David think about when he reflects on Curb? What kind of man does he see when he looks back over his seventy-six years on earth? As he tells a child in Sunday night’s all-encompassing series finale, “I’m seventy-six years old and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life.”
It’s perfect, then, that David’s seeming inclination to rewrite his controversial Seinfeld ending takes center stage in Curb’s final moments. All season, the Seinfeld co-creator hurtled the audience toward a return to the courtroom. This season began with Larry’s arrest for breaking a birdbrained law in Georgia that states you can’t hand out water to people waiting in line to vote. (Unbelievably, it’s a real law.). At the time, David was hinting not just that a Seinfeld reprisal was on the way—but also that he would full-on push his audience back into a jail cell.
Almost every episode in season 12 shows a character reminding David that he famously returned to help pen Seinfeld’s season finale, despite not writing the last two seasons of the hit sitcom. At the courtroom, a rotating cast of David’s enemies appears before us. Mocha Joe, Alexander Vindman, Auntie Rae, Bruce Springsteen (!), and Irma Kostroski all take the witness stand to chastise Larry. Hell, we’re reintroduced to even more niche characters, such as Rachel Heineman, the woman who jumped from the ski lift; Maureen, his former assistant, who saw him accidentally pee on a picture of Jesus Christ; and Tara, the young girl who hugged David and felt a water bottle in his pants. When Mr. Takahashi points at David with two fingers to gesture, I’m watching you, he’s the spitting image of Seinfeld’s Babu Bhatt—who once wagged his long finger and called Jerry Seinfeld a “very bad man.”
Before we reach a verdict, Larry presents a cornucopia of Curb-isms to further prove his point. There’s just one more relationship to ruin for Richard Lewis, one more lie for Susie to uncover and promptly unleash hell upon Jeff, one last dig at longtime rival Ted Danson, one final spat with Cheryl Hines, and one last diner lunch for J.B. Smoove to realize that he’s Curb’s version of Kramer.
So David receives his verdict (guilty!) and ends up in a cell, complaining to the other cell-mates about his pants tent. (It’s a joke taken straight from the pilot.) In this moment, David seemingly proves once and for all that he learned nothing from the Seinfeld finale. Then Jerry arrives. He releases David from his cell, citing a crazy mistrial technicality in which one of the jurors broke his sequester. Both stars throw their hands up in the air in perfect unison and declare, “This is how we should’ve ended the finale!” Even while learning a lesson about the art of the series finale, David still repeats almost everything he did last time. What else did we think Curb would do? Change Larry David?! Impossible.
Going into the finale, I had many theories rattling around in my brain about the nature of David’s final stunt. Would Curb send Larry down to Hell to bicker with the devil for all of eternity? What if the climax sent Larry back to Heaven—the season 5 finale already did!—so that God could tell Larry that everything he did was right? Or would it send a maniacal Jerry Seinfeld on a revenge mission to seal the final lock on Larry’s jail cell?
No, those scenarios are too cartoonish. Too fantastical. Instead, David gifts us a poetic ending for Curb, a show about nothing—which came from the man who created the original show about nothing, Seinfeld. Larry put Jerry in jail to end Seinfeld, so Jerry returns and frees Larry to end Curb. Absolution. I couldn’t think of an ending more perfect than that.
You Might Also Like
