SPOILER ALERT: This text discusses plot factors from the collection finale of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Larry David acquired the chance to revise the controversial ending he’d chosen for his first broadly liked TV collection, and he stayed fairly near the method. However whereas his earlier collection ended with its protagonist in jail, his present one is ending with David himself strolling free.
This season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” had appeared, from its first episode, to be constructing towards an ending that both mirrored or inverted the way in which “Seinfeld,” co-created by David and Jerry Seinfeld, had wrapped up in 1998. The season’s mega-arc has been the continued uncertainty across the character Larry’s having by chance run afoul of Georgia election legal guidelines. And, all through the season, askance references to the “Seinfeld” finale (which featured the core forged going to jail after having been pressured to listen to countless testimony as to their self-centeredness) urged that the best strategy to wrap up a collection was very a lot on David’s thoughts.
The “Seinfeld” finale — which David, who had left the collection, returned to put in writing — was pilloried on the time, but when one watches it right this moment, exterior the warmth of the present’s press-choreographed march to the end line, it’s not unhealthy. It’s only a bit sloppy. In that, it was already extra like a generic episode of “Curb” than a generic episode of “Seinfeld” — after which the “Curb” finale simply reiterated the method. I’ll admit that I used to be stunned to understand that this “Curb” episode, within the current day, actually was simply doing the trial method yet again, and that I used to be dismayed that the character witnesses, this time, have been plucked usually although not solely from current episodes. (“Seinfeld’s” witnesses, just like the Soup Nazi, had the load of getting blossomed by fashionable mandate into TV historical past; “Curb’s” included Bruce Springsteen, speaking about one thing that occurred on final week’s episode; Alexander Vindman was additionally again, for some cause.)
“Seinfeld” ended with its characters confined to jail, put away on a technicality after years of abusing their fellow man. It’s prime Larry David, in that it looks as if an ending David had in thoughts, towards which he constructed a collection of occasions that made sense — kind of. “Curb’s” ending was nonetheless extra complicated: Larry is convicted, however then let off on a technicality after the real-life Jerry Seinfeld sees a juror breaking sequester, spurring a mistrial ruling. Larry flies off into the sundown, with a comparatively uninspired quarrel with Susie (Susie Essman) marking the top of this narrative. Earlier within the episode, David had made the barely-buried subtext of the collection textual content: Confronting a toddler, he appears prepared to inform him off or to ship unsolicited parenting recommendation to his mom, earlier than declaring, “I’m 76 years outdated, and I’ve by no means discovered a lesson in my total life.”
Jail can’t wake him up, however TV manufacturing would possibly: One can learn this episode because the response to classes he discovered from the response to the “Seinfeld” finale. And there are, certainly, moments of enjoyable that have been lacking there — David and Seinfeld, strolling out of jail collectively, comment how way more enjoyable it could have been if Jerry, Elaine and the gang had gotten an analogous last-minute reprieve. Ha-ha. And Essman has nice moments elsewhere within the finale, earlier than her look within the out-of-ideas ultimate scene.
However the finale spoke, in the primary, to each the strengths and weaknesses of “Curb” relative to what would possibly — had he been much less bold within the years after — have been David’s nice work. “Seinfeld” was elastic for a community present, nevertheless it had its limits. “Curb,” which debuted as a daily collection in 2000 after first airing as a particular in 1999, is as outdated as this century, and has moved ahead by perpetually pushing limits. It’s finished a strong if not at all times optimally elegant job of monitoring the evolving dinner-party trending matters over 20 years. The present’s on-the-fly nature — with its wholly improvised conversations constructed across the free define of a plot — successfully invented a class of leisure, but additionally signifies that the present is by its nature a blunt instrument. Larry and his pals are loopily, outrageously humorous; they reside out loud; they play video games of one-upsmanship which can be genuinely pleasant to observe. However they’re not often sly.
This, as a lot because the West Coast-vs.-East Coast divide or the profanity allowed by premium cable, is what differentiates “Curb” from “Seinfeld” — on the latter collection, (almost) each episode’s ultimate minutes had a lovely, Swiss-watch high quality, because the disparate storylines clicked neatly into place and the characters got here again collectively as soon as extra. “Curb” has made a follow of bringing its episodes in for memorable landings, too, however its endings extra often come as wild, who’d-have-thunk narrative swings. (This has turn into more true and more true in current seasons, the development of which has grown ever extra lackadaisical.) On “Seinfeld,” one admires the logic; on “Curb,” one admires the audacity.
Which additionally meant that on “Seinfeld,” those that weren’t bitterly dissatisfied by the finale may admire a sure poetic logic to it. The one poetry to “Curb’s” finale was free verse. (It’s telling that on “Seinfeld’s” finale, we noticed all of the witnesses and acquired their tales positioned in context; towards the top of “Curb’s” testimony in opposition to Larry, a prosecutor performed by Greg Kinnear was simply itemizing off issues that had occurred on a collection that was improvisatory to the top.) Larry can be missed. However he could deserve a break.
