Curb Your Enthusiasm chronicles the misadventures of Larry David, a self-absorbed New Yorker with a tendency to get himself in trouble. The series, developed from a 1999 one-hour special, has received high critical praise and a following since its debut.
But the twelfth and final season feels less like a coherent whole than the show’s early years. Ideas are set up but never fully paid off.
The Good
Larry David, co-creator of Seinfeld and one of the most prolific comedy writers in TV history, is just as good at playing a grating, self-absorbed grouch here as he was on that legendary sitcom. He and the rest of the ensemble cast have a great rhythm together, which is why it’s no surprise that, even at the end of its run after 11 seasons, Curb Your Enthusiasm still delivers.
This season, which debuts on Feb. 4 and will have 13 episodes, finds the show in a more confident groove than most of its previous iterations. The shift toward ongoing plots and a loser, more episodic format has lessened the feeling of claustrophobia that used to come from seeing two or three arcs set in motion at once. And though the writing may seem a little more overcooked at times — as in a scene where Larry lashes out at his car’s navigation system for mistranslating his directions (!) — there are plenty of other hilarious moments, including a wonderful performance by JB Smoove as Leon, Larry’s priapic freeloader of a lodger.
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Curb Your Enthusiasm has always been more willing to take risks than most sitcoms are, and this season is no exception. It takes on hot-button political topics, mocks the MSNBC crowd and riffs on incest victims, among other things. But it also doesn’t stoop to cheap or mean-spirited humor, and it’s a testament to the cast that you never lose interest in the characters’ self-serving, petty behavior.
The Bad
As the first incarnation of Curb Your Enthusiasm showed, Larry David took the observational comedy he perfected with Seinfeld and ran with it. He augmented the carefully crafted plot outline with freewheeling improvisation from his cast, creating a unique and successful spin on situational comedy. It’s an approach that has helped make the show such a critical success, and it explains why the series still thrives after 11 seasons.
But the series has become more conventional in its storytelling in recent years. The 12th and supposedly final season, which premieres tonight on HBO, continues in this vein. The pacing is slower, the premise is less bold, and the gags are more predictable. The opening episode, for example, features a scene in which Larry throws his head back and bellows “Prettay Prettay Good!” It feels more like a lazy episode of Little Britain than classic Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Perhaps the most troubling issue is that the show’s titular character has become a caricature. He’s a rich baby-boomer who knows how to keep himself entertained, but he also treats everyone around him like a dick. He tells a woman she’s butch and insists on repeating it long after it’s clear that he’s offending her, and he will continue to behave rudely and pedantically even when he knows that his actions could jeopardize an important relationship.
The Ugly
Over the years, curb your enthusiasm series has strayed from sitcoms’ traditional one-and-done episodes toward more serialized, weekly installments. Yet it has managed to do so in a way that makes sense for the show. Season 12 continues that trend, but it also has plenty of new material to offer.
The season premiere finds Larry stuck with two women he can’t eject from his life: Maria Sofia, the wildly untalented star of his new TV show “Young Larry,” and Irma Kostroski (played by Tracey Ullman), a local politician who has a strange habit of starting private conversations in her kitchen by singing her version of the J.G. Wentworth jingle. Whether he’s giving a celebrity COVID, trying to rekindle his friendship with Richard Lewis at an AA meeting, or agreeing with Leon Black that you can insult a dog’s weight, Larry proves himself a master of inappropriate idiocy.
He’s still a narcissistic, rich white-male baby boomer, but it’s hard to argue with his charm. Even when some of the storylines feel familiar or slightly outdated (a lot of them began as Seinfeld plots), it’s still entertaining to watch David and his ensemble of actors riff on them. And a scene in which Larry and Jeff Garlin complain that their meal was delayed because the waiter is mourning a death is a classic.
The Finale
As this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm comes to an end, it does so in a way that feels completely natural. It’s a show that always operated at a slightly higher level of thematic consistency than most sitcoms, and it’s never done anything to alienate an audience. Even if the fictional Larry David does give the man in charge of his health and safety program COVID, admits to having sex with women on the floor (which negates post-coital cuddling) or tries to insult a dog’s weight (because it doesn’t understand English), his idiocy is still funny.
The fact that there are no mysteries to solve and no loose ends to tie up may frustrate those who expect every plot point to click perfectly into place, but it also allows the writers to recycle plenty of old jokes. It’s been a long time since the second season finale involved a masseuse and Larry getting their signals crossed over whether he wants a sexual favor at the end of the massage, and it’s funnier than ever.
The episodes that work best are often the ones where David and his cast are just enjoying themselves, either by riffing on an amusing idea or identifying a social construct that still feels novel. There’s a reason that the scene where Larry discovers that Richard Lewis has been using his AA meetings to test out new comedy material is one of the season’s strongest. It’s a classic example of the type of comedy that makes Curb Your Enthusiasm so special. Follow Journal Sea for more!