This article was published on February 6, 2024. Curb Your Enthusiasm has since received four nominations for the 2024 Emmy Awards. Read all of Vulture’s Emmy-race coverage here.
Curb Your Enthusiasm has been on television for more than 23 years. There have been some gaps in that timeline, including a six-year pause between 2011 and 2017. But even with the hiatuses, it will have run for 12 seasons once its final one, which began February 4, concludes. That makes it the longest-running scripted HBO series of all time, one whose existence stretches across seven presidential administrations. This sounds false, but it’s true: When Curb debuted, Bill Clinton still occupied the Oval Office. (That was in October 2000.)
Obviously times have changed significantly over the course of that multi-decade run, but Curb Your Enthusiasm has more or less stayed the same. Through recessions, the War on Terror, global pandemics, and various forms of political upheaval, the series has remained committed to its bit: that Larry David — the fictional character based on series creator Larry David — will always behave like a completely self-absorbed asshole. This might be weirdly reassuring, except that Curb and David are both too consistently prickly to ever be reassuring. If the ethos of Seinfeld, which David co-created with Jerry Seinfeld, was “No hugging, no learning,†on Curb Your Enthusiasm, it’s been more like: “Fuck you! Who do you think you are, trying to hug me? No hugs!†There is one thing Larry David is never going to do, and that’s comfort anybody. He is a middle finger in human form, extended at every piece of wall art that says, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.â€
None of that has changed in season 12. In the half-hour premiere, “Atlanta,†Larry curses out Siri, gets mad at an emotional-support corgi, offends a housekeeper for what won’t be the last time this season, and fails to fulfill a contractual obligation to show up to a party and simply be cordial to the guests. When the host of said party, a wealthy South African businessman played by Sharlto Copley, says he expected more from Larry, Larry responds, “I’ve been expecting more from myself my whole life and it’s just not there.â€
If you squint, you can read some progress in that line — at least Larry’s a little more self-aware than he used to be? Squint even harder and you can see the sly political commentary in a plot point in the premiere episode: Larry’s arrest. Near the end of “Atlanta,†Larry gets taken into police custody for giving a bottle of water to his friend Leon’s Auntie Rae while she stands in line at a polling place, a reference to an actual Georgia election law that was only partially struck down last summer. The underlying message: Even someone as thoughtless as Larry is incapable of being as cruel as this legislation.
But don’t rush to celebrate Larry’s or the show’s spiritual growth, because the show hasn’t exactly evolved, and neither has its protagonist. In its 12th season, Curb Your Enthusiasm revisits narrative formulas so familiar to fans of David’s work that you can predict ahead of time exactly when a cringe is coming.
Leon — Larry’s permanent houseguest, played by the hilariously unpredictable J.B. Smoove — comes up with a business idea that involves urination, a reminder of Gotta Go, the app Leon and Larry started in season ten. In the same episode, Leon and Larry get banned from a local business, something that has happened to characters more than once in the comedy’s run. Later in the season, there’s a storyline about the presence of an odor in a vehicle, and another that involves Larry’s struggle with the zipper on a jacket, echoes of things that occurred all the way back in the fourth season of Seinfeld. These callbacks don’t seem purposeful or deliberately meta. They mostly come across as easy and functional, the equivalent of faded, hole-y jeans that still get worn sometimes because they’re comfortable.
Other creative choices seem more aggressively out-of-touch. Attempts at “timely†humor — a Giuliani hair-dye joke, an uncomfortable exchange with a trans man whom Larry knew before he transitioned, and a guest star I cannot reveal but whose presence will certainly spark conversation — feel forced and fall flat. But then there are moments when the show is just as hilarious as it’s been at its best. A bunch of gags about Wordle may feel less than relevant in 2024, but when Susie (Susie Essman), wife of Larry’s friend and manager, Jeff (Jeff Garlin), has a Wordle game ruined by Larry and screams in his face — “Was that today’s Wordle, you fucking piece of shit?†— you can’t stifle a laugh. That’s because Essman is such a gifted yeller. Seriously, if there were an Olympics of Yelling, she would win a gold medal in every event.
The same rules apply when Larry gets added to a text chain after an acquaintance has a stroke. After being bombarded with uplifting messages from friends and relatives of a guy he hardly knows, Larry starts yelling at his cell phone. “Be the reason someone smiles today,†he says, reading yet another nice meme shared on the thread. “Oh, fuck you!†Text-chain comedy does not sound promising as a concept, but Larry screaming at memes — that’s gold, Jerry. Gold!
One of the reasons Curb has survived for so many seasons is that it gives us permission to recognize the pettiness inside ourselves — I, too, would scream swear words at a meme like that, if only internally — while also feeling superior to Larry because, hey, at least we’re not that bad. The idea that Larry has the bandwidth to devote so much mental energy to so much stupid shit is as galling now as it was in 2000. It doesn’t help Larry’s relatability (or lack thereof) that he spends much more time on the golf course this season than he does on anything resembling work.
But Curb Your Enthusiasm knows how galling Larry is. It makes it clear over and over again that his behavior is unacceptable, but, for the sake of keeping the show going, it also has always allowed him to live to kvetch another day. He maintains his money, status, and core relationships, somehow even managing to stay on decent terms with his ex-wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines). The question hanging over this final season, then, is whether this entitled, wealthy, white-male baby-boomer from New York will actually have to face lasting consequences for any of his actions.
I have seen nine of this season’s episodes, but not the finale. Maybe that last one will surprise me and Larry actually will experience regret, and maybe even learn some meaningful lessons … oh my God, I can’t even type that with a straight face. That can’t happen. This is Curb Your Enthusiasm. No one learns anything here, least of all Larry. This show will go out the way it came in nearly 24 years ago: with Larry complaining about something, offending others, and failing to grow as a person in any substantial way. That’s the ending we deserve, and the only one that makes any sense in a world where very little else does.