‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ is dead — and so are funny sitcoms
With roughly a trillion shows on TV, the ending of a series is no longer the “cancel all my plans” event it once was.
Nowadays it’s hard to imagine that the 1983 finale of “M*A*S*H” was watched by a staggering 106 million people — nearly half the country at the time. Or that “Cheers’” last episode snagged 84 million viewers in 1993. And that, in 1998, 76 million tuned in for the controversial closer of “Seinfeld.”
Sunday night’s finale of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” by “Seinfeld” creator Larry David, won’t do numbers like those. Not even pretty … pretty … pretty close.
But, after 24 years on the air, the finish line for “Curb” feels momentous all the same. That’s because it’s one of the last comedy series — if not the last — to let us laugh without cumbersome strings attached.
The brilliant show, which ran 12 seasons, had no morals, no grand causes and no hug-it-out, heartwarming conclusions. Unless, of course, you count Bill Buckner successfully catching a baby thrown from a fiery Manhattan apartment. building as heartwarming.
With its largely improvised dialogue and personalties so huge they should be Wonders of the World, “Curb” was all about the bit. Unsparingly so.
David, who, like Jerry Seinfeld, played a fictionalized version of himself, was my kind of television hero: a perpetually annoyed Jewish man in Los Angeles who just wanted to play golf and be left the hell alone.
And yet, everybody else was hellbent on bothering him.
Yes, Larry got into some adventures. In Season 4, he played Max Bialystock in the LA production of “The Producers” with David Schwimmer. In Season 6, Larry and wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) amusingly housed a displaced Hurricane Katrina family called the Blacks. In Season 7, the miser worked on a “Seinfeld” reunion. And in Season 8, he moved back to New York solely to avoid attending a charity event.
But, like the title suggests, Larry was never particularly excited about any of these developments. They’d simply happen to him, much to his chagrin.
Oh, how I’ll miss his shouting matches over nothing with Susie “You bald motherf – – ker!” Essman. Or when J.B. Smoove as Leon uttered the craziest, filthiest similes imaginable. I cherish the old-school chops that the late actors Richard Lewis and Bob Einstein (as Marty Funkhouser) kept alive.
Larry also delivered almost as many lexicon-worthy catchphrases as “Seinfeld” did.
For losers who don’t use coasters: “Do you respect wood?”
For opportunists who try to weasel their way to the front of a line by starting a conversation: “The chat and cut!”
For a bored partygoer who wants to elevate a casual conversation: “Medium talk!”
There are too many unforgettable scenarios to mention, but I still howl when Larry messes up the obituary for Jeff’s (Jeff Garlin) “beloved aunt.” And, my God, the time the little girl at the movies called him out for sneaking in a water bottle inside his trousers. There was Ted Danson quietly admitting, “I’m Anonymous,” and Larry, the social assassin, chastising his friend’s wife for constantly saying “LOL” out loud.
The past three seasons have been more hit-and-miss, I know, but last year’s KKK saga and the recent “I’m disgruntled!” plot were as inspired as ever.
The truth is we barely watch so-called comedies to chuckle anymore. Audiences enjoy “The Bear” and “Only Murders in the Building” for their story, writing and acting. Not the jokes.
At the Emmys, comedy no longer means hilarious — it means lightish. “Abbott Elementary” is the funniest of the pack that’s left. But seeing that the ABC sitcom is set in a poorly funded school, there is still an undercurrent of seriousness and a primary aim of kindness.
In “Curb” there were no niceties. Ever. Death was hysterical. Divorce? A riot. The show had Michael J. Fox mock his Parkinson’s disease, and in another episode, a Holocaust survivor got into a fight with a contestant from CBS’s reality show “Survivor.” “I’m a survivor!” they yelled back and forth at dinner.
Nothing was sacred — except laughter.
And that’s pretty … pretty … pretty rare.
The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” series finale airs on HBO Sunday, April 7, at 10 p.m. ET.
