‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Is Limping To The Finish Line In Its Final Season

People like to pretend that Larry David hasn’t changed. This constancy of character must make them feel like the world is a stable place, but it’s not the truth. Everything changes. They say he doesn’t age. They see only the baldness and the glasses, and they ignore how David’s hair, once gray with remnants of black, is now pure white. They miss that his shoulders are hunched like your grandfather’s were, and that his face, appropriately, is the face of a man in his mid-seventies. 

They’ll say that Curb Your Enthusiasm hasn’t changed either, and they’re wrong about that, too. The first season, which premiered a quarter century ago, arrived like a bolt of lightning. David’s comic voice felt familiar—it’s the same one that was responsible for Seinfeld’s darker undercurrents—but with a rawness and authenticity that made viewers viscerally and hilariously uncomfortable. Curb’s early seasons found Larry dealing with minor inconveniences that turned into major crises, like pants that bunch up at the crotch, an illogical waiting room policy at a doctor’s office, and an aborted stop-and-chat with a local maitre’d that resulted in Larry being arrested for stealing silverware. Crucially, the show balanced Larry’s relatable complaints with his more formidable faux pas, keeping the character sympathetic even when he was at his worst. Making an affirmative action joke to a Black doctor and posing as an incest survivor somehow didn’t cause viewers to jump ship. 

The presence of Cheryl surely helped. At heart, season one was a marriage comedy, with Larry getting into trouble with his better half in nearly every episode. Whether refusing to turn off a football game when she returned home from a trip or getting caught calling his wife “Hitler” on a call with his manager, Larry’s accountability to another person kept the show grounded, as did the occasional moments of actual romance. One of my favorite scenes in the whole series came in an early episode titled “Porno Gil.” Cheryl is furious at Larry for bringing her to a former adult film star’s party, and on the walk back to their car, he negotiates with her a temporary truce so they can have “a very pleasant ride home” with the stipulation that she return to her previous level of anger when they get there. She laughs at his creativity. They kiss. If Cheryl could forgive him, so could we.

The show not only set the thematic and narrative parameters of cringe comedy, it also codified the genre’s style. The one-hour special that aired in 1999—entitled simply Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm—and served as the series’ de facto pilot was structured as a mockumentary about Larry returning to stand-up comedy after the success of Seinfeld. It came complete with testimonials to camera from his real-life friends, as well as his fictional manager Jeff Green (Jeff Garlin). When it came time to make the series, David and his collaborators ditched the pretense of a documentary but kept the aesthetic in place. Curb employed a cinema verite style, shot on early digital video with conspicuously handheld cameras. There were few visual gags, comic sound effects, or conventional punchlines. It forged a perfect blend of naturalistic comedy and visual realism. 

Over the years, however. it ditched its defining aesthetic so gradually that many failed to notice the changes. The plotting got less character-driven and more reliant on coincidence. You could feel David straining to make the story strands come together at the end. There seemed to be less improvisation, or at least more rehearsal. The comedy became more absurd. Larry’s behavior got even more ridiculous. Consider, as just one example, his behavior in front of judges. When he is caught stealing cutlery from a restaurant in the season two finale, he appears visibly chastened in court. “Maybe I could volunteer at the temple,” he offers timidly when the judge asks him to suggest an appropriate punishment. In the Season 9 episode “A Disturbance in the Kitchen,” however, Larry fights a traffic ticket and peacocks his way through the court appearance, offering the judge a cough drop, comparing himself to Rosa Parks, and finally ranting that his citation makes us “no better than the beasts in the field!” His complete indifference to consequence lowers the stakes, making the scene feel like an independent comic sketch rather than a beat in a larger comic narrative. He goes for the quick laugh rather than laying the groundwork for a big payoff. 

In recent seasons, all vestiges of relatability disappeared. The houses got bigger and more ostentatious. Larry started spending more and more time at his country club. The characters have become selfish and cruel to the point that it’s unclear why they remain in each other’s lives. Cheryl left Larry and began dating Ted Danson, turning a friend who occasionally pissed Larry off into a sworn enemy. The everyman moments became fewer and further between. This season, there have only been two so far: Larry getting increasingly frustrated at his Siri’s inability to understand his voice prompts, and his complaints about a restaurant that won’t serve him breakfast after 11 AM. Neither is particularly inspired. The startling insight and originality that was once David’s brand is largely missing, replaced with tired, unfunny bits that are recycled from old Adam Sandler movies.

If the downward spiral of Curb feels familiar, that’s because it’s the same trajectory followed by Seinfeld, which was also defined by groundbreaking naturalism but eventually—to be fair, mostly after David left the show—devolved into broad comedy and sour relationships. When Seinfeld first aired, it was widely celebrated for rejecting sitcom cliches. The characters talked like normal people talked, or at least a funnier version of it. Seinfeld and David injected the loose narratives with observational humor, allowing space for hilarious digressions on the proper number of buttons on a dress shirt and how hard it must be for an Hispanic person to order seltzer and not receive salsa. The characters had a laugh at each other’s expense from time to time, but they also seemed to genuinely like each other.

Just like Curb, the plots got bigger and broader over time. Kramer shoved a rubber ball filled with oil out a skyscraper. Jerry got involved in a cockfighting ring. Elaine kidnapped her neighbor’s dog. Newman hallucinated that Kramer was a giant turkey and tried to eat him. The characters grew to revel in each other’s miseries, epitomized by Jerry’s trademark wisecrack everytime a friend suffered a misfortune: “That’s a shame.” Perhaps this was a purposeful evolution to demonstrate the consequences of the characters’ shallow worldviews; the series finale, which David returned to write and featured the characters being imprisoned for their callousness, would support such a reading. But it seems more likely to be an unfortunate, inevitable trend towards self-parody, or an effort to continue broadening the show’s audience, when what made both shows feel so revolutionary was their commitment to their creators’ unique vision of reality.

In fairness, it’s difficult for a series to maintain its brilliance for more than a few seasons, even more so when the comedy relies on such a delicate balance of heart and cynicism. We saw it go bad with Arrested Development, while The Office, like all British shows, wisely shut down after just two seasons. Maybe Curb and Seinfeld should have ended a few seasons earlier, but there’s still a chance for both to redeem themselves. There are rumors of a Seinfeld reunion in the upcoming Curb series finale, and if David pulls it off, surely all will be forgiven. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Curb is a shadow of the show it once was, but leaving us annoyed, dissatisfied, and disgruntled might be the best way to honor the man who created it.

Noah Gittell (@noahgittell) is a culture critic from Connecticut who loves alliteration. His work can be found at The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Ringer, Washington City Paper, LA Review of Books, and others. His new book, Baseball: The Movie, is currently available for pre-order, and will be released in May 2024.