After fumbling the Seinfeld finale, does Larry David get it right on his second go?
In an early scene in the finale episode of Curb Your EnthusiasmLarry David gives some advice to a young boy. As the kid’s mum looks on with increasing shock and stern disapprovalhe looks the lad in the eye and imparts his wisdom. “I’m 76 years old and I have never learnt a lesson in my entire life.”
Later, during a typically fiery exchange with Susie Greene, his frenemy on the show, she snaps at him, “you never learn your lesson!” The title of this one-hour-long farewell to his long-running series, which is streaming on Neon, is even titled No Lessons Learned.
This may be true of the fictional character of Larry David, who has spent a whopping 25 years and 12 seasons standing up for society’s unwritten rules and battling the small injustices of life in the most stubborn and self-serving ways possible. However, the same cannot be said of the actual, real-life Larry David. Indeed, Curb’s entire grand finale proves that David learnt a hard lesson from the tepid response to the final episode he wrote for Seinfeld back in 1998.
Larry David has spent 25 years and 12 seasons standing up for society’s unwritten rules and battling the small injustices of life. Photo / Instagram
Having left the hit sitcom he co-created and steered with comedian and star Jerry Seinfeld for seven seasons, he was coaxed into returning to write the show’s concluding episode after a two-year absence.
His idea was that the show’s lead characters would be arrested under an obscure law and go to trial where all the people they had wronged over the show’s nine seasons would testify against them. The gang would be found guilty and end up behind bars. Fade to black.
People did not like it. It’s often cited as one of the most disappointing finales ever, despite it giving the show’s most popular one-off characters a returning cameo as they testified against the gang.
In true Seinfeld fashion, it then circles right back to the first conversation of the first-ever episode by having the show end with the characters sitting in a cell ruminating on the (mis)placement of a shirt button. It showed there’d been no lessons learned during their nine years of self-centred misadventures together.
No Lessons Learned takes the Seinfeld finale and reheats it like a slice of leftover pizza. Photo / Instagram
David has always stood up for the episode and has not shied away from showing how aggrieved he was by its response. He’s addressed it in countless interviews and referenced it many times on Curb itself where he’s defended it against a naysayer. This was most notable in the show’s seventh season where he essentially - and brilliantly - completely remade a Seinfeld finale throughout its 10 episodes.
That obviously still wasn’t enough for him to lay his demons to rest. No Lessons Learned takes the Seinfeld finale and reheats it like a slice of leftover pizza. Larry is charged with an obscure law and taken to trial. There are cameos and flashbacks as affronted characters testify against him and he’s found guilty. He ends up in a cell ruminating about the “pants tent” his corduroy slacks create when he sits down, a throwback to the first-ever episode of Curb. Only this time the show does not fade to black.
As he walks free on a technicality, Jerry Seinfeld (playing himself) admonishes both Larry and the very idea of ending the show with Larry in prison in the most meta way possible.
“No one wants to see that,” he says, shaking his head. “Oh my god,” Larry replies, suddenly struck with a thought. “This is how we should have ended the finale!”
David was determined to make his old idea work. Photo / Instagram
From season 12′s opening episode, where Larry is arrested for America’s inexplicable crime of giving water to a voter standing in line, David’s intentions to replay the Seinfeld trial were apparent. The only question was whether or not he’d learned any lessons from its failure.
From the get-go, the episode comes out firing with one of the funniest scenes of the season as Larry gets into a verbal altercation with a flight attendant. It’s an example of Curb at its best. It’s clear David was determined to make his old idea work. The episode’s pace does not let up as minor transgressions lead to major consequences. A running theme of the show as a whole, sure, but here delivered with precise calculation as events follow a labyrinthine path to their ultimate conclusion. David even throws in a couple of plot feints planting two major subplots that blossom only into a punchline.
On his Seinfeld do-over, David has succeeded. The one-off cameos and flashbacks don’t take over and he gives the major players of his ensemble cast plenty to do.
David gave the major players of his ensemble cast plenty to do. Photo / Instagram
There’s a spectacularly filthy and funny rant from housemate Leon, another doomed romance for pal Richard Lewis (who sadly passed shortly after filming), an exceptional explicit outburst from Susie, a disagreement over an inconsequentiality with ex-wife Cheryl, an antagonistic predicament with her new beau Ted Danson, some Seinfeld-esque verbal back-and-forth with Jerry Seinfeld and the execution of a classic harebrained scheme with manager Jeff.
You could, in fact, remove the trial entirely and still be left with an incredibly strong episode.
With this final-ever episode, David has managed to not only fulfil Curb fan’s lofty expectations but exceed them. It satisfies in all the ways his Seinfeld finale didn’t. There’s no pandering or shoehorning in any out-of-place sentimentality. It finds unexpected places to go within the expected route he’s been mapping out for us the entire season. Despite all the protestations to the contrary, it’s clear that Larry David did indeed learn his lesson.
Curb ends the only way it could. Not with a whimper or a bang but with a typically minor contravention against courtesy exploding into a full-throated, foul-mouthed quarrel as the jolly stomp of its theme tune plays us out, to finally curb our enthusiasm for good.
