There are few occasions in popular entertainment that are more promising, or more perilous, than the finale of a great television series. When done well, it provides resolution and closure. We understand that the characters have accomplished worthwhile things and built solid relationships but still have fresh opportunities before them — a new romance, a new child, a new job. We’ve welcomed the characters into our living room, as the cliche goes, for years, and there’s a particular mix of nostalgia involved in seeing even a one-sided relationship end happily. The same sentimental sigh accompanies the closing of a beloved novel.
Conversely, a dud of a finale sours the entire series. It gives the impression that you and the people behind the show had very different ideas about what it was about, what made the characters likable, and where you wanted them to end up. You feel cheated, as if you could have been doing something more productive with all of those 30- or 60-minute chunks of your life. A lot’s at stake.
The series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm was particularly fraught with peril, even by these standards. The star and creator of the show, Larry David, was also one of the creative minds behind Seinfeld, a show that holds up among the greatest but whose finale nearly 26 years ago was perhaps the most disappointing in television history. Back then, television critic Tom Shales predicted that “viewers probably won’t get misty-eyed because they know that [Jerry] Seinfeld and his writers would only jeer and scoff at them if they did.” Not even he anticipated that viewers would want to strangle Seinfeld and David.
The Curb finale, then, was a shot at redemption, a chance for David to make good for the disappointment of a generation ago.
The longest-running live-action sitcom in the history of American television, Curb followed the day-to-day life of a character named Larry David, who was a lot like real-life Larry David. We watched Larry pick petty arguments, stumble into awkward social situations, and commit egregious gaffes. We saw him dining, dating, driving (cars and golf balls), arguing, fighting, yelling, copulating — but never changing as the show’s distinctive oompah score wormed its way into our ears. David famously declared “No hugging, no learning” as the motto for Seinfeld. It applied just as well to his character in Curb and, from what we can tell, his actual personality. He holds the title of “America’s Most Lovable Curmudgeon,” which real-life Larry successfully defended by choking Elmo during the show’s promotional tour in February. (“Someone had to do it,” he reasonably explained.)
Strange as the comparison seems, Larry David’s allure as a writer is like that of Jane Austen. We enjoy both for how they depict the tension of social expectations and the repercussions of when people subvert social norms. David’s humor is based on the premise that these little things matter. How many sample spoons of ice cream is appropriate? How old is too old to trick or treat? How hard and fast is the one-year deadline for a wedding present? Is it ever acceptable to cut in line?
Often, Larry was right when he challenged or defended social convention. Perhaps just as often, he was wrong. He was frequently misunderstood, which, like an overhead conversation from Three’s Company, caused chaos. In one of the series’ most hilariously ironic moments, Larry receives the most sympathy and understanding from a group of mufti, who are so moved that they persuade the ayatollah to call off a fatwa issued against this very secular Jew.
Curb does not get the credit it deserves for innovating the sitcom format. Seinfeld was groundbreaking in tone and plotline but stuck to the tried-and-true multicamera, studio-audience format. With Curb, David helped usher in the faux documentary format that dominated sitcoms for much of the early 2000s and early 2010s. Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, the hourlong special that set the table for the series in 1999, is an ostensible documentary about David’s return to standup comedy. Although that format was dropped early in the series, the single-camera, on-location format continued, and it’s easy to see the continuity between the show’s origins and later comedies such as The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family.
Yet the show’s influence has waned with the fortunes of sitcoms in general. In Curb’s first season (2000-01), six sitcoms were among the 20 most-viewed shows in the country. By 2022-23, there were two sitcoms on that list. That trend added another level of significance to the finale: This isn’t just the end of the show — it’s the end of the last show of its kind.
It has to be said that the show’s final season was not its finest. Apart from the finale, I doubt any of the episodes rank among the its greatest. Readers of this magazine were likely annoyed by its focus on Georgia’s Election Integrity Act: In the season premiere, Larry is arrested after giving water to a parched voter waiting in a long line on a scorching day in Georgia. This established the season’s overarching plotline, as he is feted as a civil rights hero and defender of democracy. To underscore the newsworthiness of Larry’s act, the season subjected me to more MSNBC footage than I’ve ever voluntarily watched.
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But it was a genius season in many ways, subtly laying the groundwork for the conclusion. Characters in multiple episodes referred to the disappointment of the Seinfeld finale, foreshadowing a finale that reenacted essential elements of that notorious episode. In fact, Larry’s arrest was itself a brilliant spin on the Seinfeld finale: Whereas those characters got themselves in hot water for refusing to be good Samaritans, Larry gets in trouble for being one. In other words, David seemed to be steering Curb straight toward a replay of Seinfeld, as if the writer and showrunner, like Larry David the character, had learned nothing. That would have been a solid finale, a testament to his enduring stubbornness.
What was so remarkable about the finale, impishly titled “No Lessons Learned,” though — what made it one of the most satisfying finales I’ve ever seen — is that it managed to both repeat the creative sins of the past and offer hilarious surprises at the same time. Loyal audiences got many things they expected and some things they didn’t, the right blend of nostalgia and novelty. And it provided perfect closure for Curb in a manner that also redeemed Seinfeld’s waywardness. Indeed, one source of the episode’s delight is that Seinfeld himself played an important role, helping him wash some of his finale’s stink away. It seems David learned something after all, even if there still wasn’t any hugging.
Christopher J. Scalia is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-editor of Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (Crown, 2017).