There’s a particularly fatalistic flavor to the kickoff of what Curb Your Enthusiasm ads call the “Final Season.†In one campaign, Larry David stands on a lone iceberg in the melted Arctic, shrugging his signature shrug. It’s the perfect habitat for TV’s favorite misanthrope. The ad calls Larry “the last of his kind,†but he’s the only of his kind. Larry never evolves; he only becomes more Larry. So how will he finish a show defined by its circularity? Considering the last time he ended one, the threat of disappointment looms large with Judgment Day around the corner.
But so far, the skies are clear and the weather is Beverly Hills perfect. The episode is jam-packed with subplots, Larry-isms, and commentary, moving at what sometimes feels like 1.5x speed. The pacing can make a viewer feel nostalgic for the rougher, more improvised early seasons, but there’s a lot to get through, and the show is eager to hit the ground running.
We begin the episode with Maria Sofia (Keyla Monterroso Mejia), the impressively awful actress who, last season, landed a starring role in Larry’s autobiographical sitcom, Young Larry, after her uncle drowned in Larry’s pool and her father extorted him. Now, the reviews are in, Hulu has picked up a second season, and everyone loves Maria Sofia. (The Hollywood Reporter calls her “an actress who came from absolute obscurity†and “is now on top of the world.â€) Meanwhile, Larry is still living with city councilwoman Irma Kostroski (Tracey Ullman), whose jingle-singing and almond-milk rants are becoming more irritating by the day. We learn, in a sepia-toned flashback, that this is because Irma’s AA sponsor has urged Larry to stay with her for a minimum of six months; she can’t handle a breakup right now, let alone one initiated by Larry, the man who stole her grandfather’s shoes from the Holocaust Museum because he stepped in dog shit. So, Larry counts down, marking each calendar day in captivity with an emphatic x. His frustration culminates in a car-seat spiral, where he shouts at his phone, calling Siri a cunt, which she, of course, interprets as “bundt.â€
Thankfully, this season sees Susie continuing to serve looks that could double as costumes for Desperately Seeking Susan — synagogue Purim spiel. She shows up to lunch with Jeff and Larry in a zebra-print top, a tennis-ball-yellow jumpsuit, big fat hoops, and a white beret that she probably found at a Beverly Hills estate sale. Over lunch, Larry tells her and Jeff that he was invited to Atlanta to show up to the birthday party of a wealthy African businessman simply because he’s a fan of Young Larry. All he has to do is “be cordial.†“Do you even know how to be cordial?†Susie asks, always the voice of reason. “I don’t think I can,†he says, “but I’ll try.â€
Another great look comes from Leon, who shows up in a jacket covered with teddy bears at the airport and tells Larry he’s been butt-dialing him. Maria Sofia arrives in a pink trench coat with her emotional support corgi, Pachuca. (A dog is to Curb as a gun is to Chekhov.) Larry calls the dog fat, and despite Maria Sofia’s protests, he insists he can’t fat-shame her because she’s a dog. A tracking shot of Pachuca shows just how much fluff is in this corgi butt.
In Atlanta, Larry makes a mess of his hotel room and an enemy of the maid. Being Larry, he argues that she must be inexperienced to be so appalled at such a basic mess; later, he finds out she’s Employee of the Month, having worked there for six years. When Larry, Leon, and Maria Sofia visit Leon’s Auntie Rae, Maria Sofia insists she try on Larry’s glasses, causing them to stretch out. He tries to fix them back at the hotel, and they end up falling in the toilet; Larry, being the germaphobe he is, refuses to fish for it, instead asking the maid, “hypothetically,†if she would do it.
Auntie Rae offers Larry a pair of tortoiseshell cat-eye lenses, and Larry wears them with gumption. He shows up to the party of Michael Fouchay — a South African businessman with shades of Elon Musk, played by Sharlto Copley — channeling Roz, the grumpy secretary from Monsters Inc. He soon finds himself in an Old Lady Glasses standoff and a debate about “the Brooke/Brookie rule,†the phenomenon Larry coined to point out the injustice of not being allowed to call a woman he just met by her nickname. He ends up leaving the party with one of the most awkward good-byes in party-leaving history, and the businessman refuses to pay Larry because he failed his one task: to be cordial.
“I really did the best under the circumstances of a person who hates people and yet had to be amongst them,†Larry tells him. For a woefully misguided social pariah, Larry shows a refreshing self-awareness here that could serve as the thesis for the entire show. The thing about Larry is that he’s never not Larry. It’s this transparency that makes him a trustworthy protagonist, if not always an admirable one. Even when he’s wrong, he’s always a little right.
And so Larry’s honesty pays, and he earns back his paycheck from showing up to the party. Back at the hotel, the maid finds a ten-dollar bill in Larry’s toilet. The bill, intended as the housekeeping tip, had fallen in without Larry realizing as he was blow-drying his pants (because Pachuca jumped on Larry and slobbered all over them). Appalled, she resorts to throwing Larry’s clothes out the window, one by one. And because this is Curb, and like a golfing Don Quixote, Larry must always suffer; he loses the paycheck when criticizing Fouchay as Pachuca happens to sit on his phone, making a corgi butt-dial.
The episode ends with Larry visiting Auntie Rae while she’s on line to vote, sweating in the heat. In a somewhat rare instance of good samaritanism from Larry, he offers to bring her water from his car. And because Larry must always suffer, he is immediately arrested for violation of Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which states no one can bring free food or water to voting lines.
Cue the Curb theme with a picture of Larry’s mug shot: a pursed-lip face with leathery orange skin and contrasting pale under-eye bags. Upon first glance, it’s an obvious Trump jab, something of a cheap shot in an otherwise intricately plotted episode. But Larry’s arrest at the end of episode one is also a clever inversion of the Seinfeld finale when the gang ends up in jail for failing to comply with Massachusetts’s Good Samaritan Law when they stood by as a man was mugged. Unlike Jerry & Co., Larry actually does something helpful, and, in the most masochistic twist of fate Larry could’ve dreamed up for himself, he’s penalized for it. (Georgia is a red state, after all.)
“I don’t like myself,†Larry tells Fouchay in their post-party conversation. “I’m a person.†In this final season, we’re seeing both Larrys, character and creator, experience an exciting late-stage reckoning, an autofiction meditation on who he is, who he isn’t, and what he’s left behind. Then again, this is Larry David, not Camus, so he likely won’t be pushing up the boulder any harder than he has to.
Leonisms
• Dick Dial: “See, me, I carry my phone in my front pocket. But sometimes, I dick-dial people by mistake. One time, I ordered a pizza by mistake. This motherfucker shows up, ‘I said, the fuck is this?’ ‘You ordered a pizza earlier.’ ‘Wow, my fucking dick.’ And sometimes, I can hear my dick dialing a number.â€
• DTM: “They call that shit DTM. Doing too much.â€
• On Dogs: “Dogs are like goldfish. You can overfeed this motherfucker.â€
• APA: “I had a 4.0 APA. Ass-Point Average. In high school, I was the valedictorian of tapping ass.â€