The comfort-cringe masterpiece Curb Your Enthusiasm came to an end last night after 24 years of Larry David and friends — and enemies. It was a predictably loose finale for a show that always wore its laziness on its sleeve, beginning and ending with David-esque scenes about airplane decorum and stealing much of its structure from Seinfeld’s last episode, which ended with its four protagonists in a jail cell. Jerry Seinfeld himself shows up for moral support during Larry’s trial in Georgia and — spoiler alert — plays a part in his eventual exoneration, thus breaking the curse of the hated Seinfeld finale … sort of.
Seeing Larry and Jerry together is never a bad time, but it can’t match Seinfeld’s scene with J.B. Smoove’s Leon Black. Early in the finale, Leon, who has just decided to start watching Seinfeld, says what might be the funniest line of the whole episode to David: “You never told me it was a show about weekly ass.†Later, sitting next to Seinfeld in the courtroom, he demands that the actor tell him where “the tapes†are — “Larry won’t give that shit out.†“What tapes?†Seinfeld asks. “The fuck tapes,†Leon says. “Every week you getting new ass … and I know you fucking.†Jerry admits he “had ’em all†(troubling), but the footage is on laserdisc and there’s no way to convert it.
Just before Larry’s verdict comes in, Leon pulls him aside to tell him that in the three or so days they’ve been in Atlanta, he has binged all of Seinfeld except for the last episode. “Although I heard some terrible things about it,†he whispers. “I heard you fucked it up.†What a thing to tell someone just before they’re sentenced to a year in prison by Dean Norris. Tragically, we never get to hear what Leon thinks about the finale. Season 13?