Curb Your Enthusiasm, the series famous for its awkward social situations and misanthropic humor, concluded on April 7, 2024. Across its 12 seasons and 120 episodes, it became a cult favorite, leaving a significant impact on television comedy. It premiered in 2000, a little over two years after Seinfeld ended, giving us another groundbreaking sitcom from one of its creators. Numerous stars were eager to make appearances, including Ted Danson, Meg Ryan, Jon Hamm, David Schwimmer, Mel Brooks, Vince Vaughn, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, among others. The show generated popular catchphrases such as “WWLDD” (What Would Larry David Do), “pig parker,” and the memorable “pretty, pretty, pretty good” (pronounced pre-tay, pre-tay, pre-tay good).
Set in Los Angeles, Curb focused on the day-to-day life of a semi-fictional Larry David and his quirky group of friends. These included his patient wife Cheryl, whom he divorces in the eighth season, his agent Jeff and Jeff’s wife Susie, his comedian friend Richard Lewis, and various other personalities. Building on the innovative style he developed while working on Seinfeld, Larry David elevated it with Curb Your Enthusiasm. His key innovation was to outline each episode roughly, allowing actors the freedom to improvise. This led to unplanned moments of laughter and attempts by actors to contain it. The show thrives on seemingly trivial details, plotlines that most other sitcoms would ignore, which then develop into complex, interconnected stories. Each episode culminates in a well-crafted mix of social blunders, with Larry often facing the consequences of the chaos. Larry emerges as Curb’s antihero. He isn’t particularly sympathetic, nor is he meant to be. “Deep inside you know you’re him,” one of the show’s taglines suggested. We see elements of him in ourselves. He can be morally ambiguous, spiteful, self-centered, and extremely trivial. He resists self-improvement, refuses to evolve, or even show the slightest wish for change.
Larry learns no lessons, as highlighted by the final episode’s title, No Lessons Learned. Susie stands out as a compelling female character. Stand-up comedian Susie Essman portrays her with remarkable verbal skill and comedic timing. Her foul-mouthed tirades were often aimed at Larry, and by the series’ end, it was hard to count how many times she had thrown him out of her home. Curb addressed a variety of taboo topics like gender, sex, and disability, as well as religion, the Holocaust, and antisemitism, which provided some of my favorite moments. When Larry is overheard whistling Wagner (a noted antisemite), his neighbor Walter accuses him of being a self-hating Jew. “I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish,” Larry insists. Or when a Holocaust survivor and a participant from the reality TV show Survivor argue over who had it worse. Or when, while visiting the LA Holocaust Museum, Larry steps in dog mess and, wanting to change his shoes, grabs a pair from a display of victims’ footwear. Curb doesn’t avoid the issue of race either. It allowed Larry to confront the evident lack of diversity present in Seinfeld.
Though Larry’s world is predominantly white and upper middle class, the show features several recurring Black characters, such as Wanda Sykes, who accuses Larry of adopting a racist dog intentionally. “The dog hates Black people,” she exclaims, “it’s a Klan dog.” This becomes more evident with the introduction of Leon (played by JB Smoove) in season six, who becomes Larry’s lodger and sidekick. In their initial meeting, Larry asks, “So your last name is Black? That’s like if my last name was Jew, Larry Jew.” Their conversations continue in this vein. “Every Black person you meet, you say ‘brother’ to?” Larry asks, before explaining, “I don’t do a Jew nod.” The final episode, mainly set in Atlanta, concluded the series gracefully. Echoing the heavily criticized Seinfeld finale, Larry goes on trial, during which various witnesses testify about his flaws. Larry is convicted and sentenced, where he repeats a routine from the first episode of Curb. However, learning from Seinfeld’s finale, he is then acquitted on a technicality. Jerry Seinfeld himself delivers the news: “You don’t want to end up like this. Nobody wants to see it. Trust me.” Larry responds, “This is how we should have ended the finale. How did we not think of that?”