Curb Your Enthusiasm series finale: Oh baby, it’s Seinfeld time!

With everything leading up to this big, Election Integrity Act/water bottle trial all season, we all knew Curb Your Enthusiasm would end with Larry in court, just as Seinfeld did in its two-part 1998 finale. This was inevitable, but there were some variables at play, too: 1.) whether our guy would be convicted and go to jail, and 2.) which of Larry’s previous-season sins would show up to incriminate the man. Is fan service fun? Sure, it’s fine. And the court thing does serve as a convenient device to collect clips from seasons 1-12 to give the series a nostalgic sendoff (which is why Seinfeld did it first, of course). But the thing is, this episode revolved so much around the Seinfeld finale that it felt a bit expected and devoid of much surprise.

They do have a bit of fun playing with one lingering, ultimately incorrect fan theory, though: that Larry may die somehow to end this thing. We start off on a plane (another little nod to the Seinfeld finale, in a way). The whole gang is coming to Atlanta with Larry for the trial: the Greenes, Leon, Ted, and Cheryl (Richard Lewis is already there), so that’s nice. But L.D., Leon, and Jeff get busted for having their phones on as their Atlanta-bound plane is taxiing, and Larry won’t wear his dang seatbelt. Now, would either of these things kill the guy so early in the episode? Nah. But we see he’s at least being a bit reckless here, loose with the rules, as opposing council suggests in court later.

Next, once that plane lands and all is fine, there’s a little drama on the I-85 freeway. A blue Mercedes won’t let Larry and Leon exit, and it becomes obvious quickly (to viewers and L.D., at least) that the Mercedes’ driver is none other than an old flame Richard Lewis has come to Atlanta to see named Cynthia (Allison Janney, in a fun surprise). Throughout the episode, Larry grills her on whether she was the one driving that car, but also on whether she did, as Lewis suggests, attempt suicide after her breakup with Richard years ago (Larry has serious doubts). On the day of L.D.’s verdict, once Lewis has left her again, his pal even warns him that this woman has bought herself a gun post-breakup and plans to use it kill old Larr. That she may end his life presents a little tease that makes us jump a bit the two times it surfaces, but as we see, it goes nowhere; that’s not the ending we’re gonna get.

So the court stuff begins with each side getting to dismiss some jurors (and with Dean Norris, Hank from Breaking Bad, playing the judge, which is kind of perfect). The opposition’s lawyer (Greg Kinnear) bases his choice of who to send home on whether they would steal bread to feed a hungry person; Larry bases his solely on appearance, i.e. whether they’ve got big hair, a combover, or a string tie. We learn here that the jurors must sequester throughout the trial (this proves to be important), then things really get rolling. Larry’s lawyer’s strategy amounts to calling out the unjust nature of the law; Kinnear’s approach is to emphasize the importance of laws as well as Larry’s history of lawlessness—and he’s got plenty of witnesses who can attest to that.

Joe Boccabella/Mocha Joe is first up, and he of course mentions the whole spite store thing. Matsue Takahashi is next up, and he talks about “Disgruntled,” the golf ball hitting Troy Kotsur in the back, and Larry killing his black swan. Vindman’s next, the guy who was snooping on Larry’s city council thing (Larry says again that what Vindman heard was a “perfect call”). Irma talks about him taking shoes from holocaust museum and his long balls. Bruce Springsteen even shows up via video to talk about Larry giving him COVID. Basically, all the worst things L.D. has ever done get trotted out (the “beloved cunt” line in the obituary LD was probably my favorite), and everyone in the courtroom squirms and gasps through it.

With all this negativity coming up, one might think Auntie Rae, the recipient of the water that led to this whole trial, would have some nice things to say about our man—not so. As an anniversary gift to Susie, Jeff has tricked Auntie Rae into divulging the salad recipe from her restaurant by calling to say that his wife is in the hospital due to some reaction to an ingredient it contains, and on that call he uses the word “catawampus.” He happens to use the antiquated term once more as Rae walks past him on her way to the stand, she quickly pieces things together, and is rightfully incensed. Rather than defend Larry, she ends up dragging him, too. She says he once hugged her with a hard on, used the N word around her, and, the last time she saw him, he had that racist lawn jockey in tow. Yeah, his goose is pretty much cooked.

They also try a truly stupid strategy, courtesy of Leon’s fellow Big Johnson Club member and “sympathy snatcher” Horsecock Williams, and use a wheelchair to try to score pity points with the jurors. In their spin on it, Susie dons a blonde wig and nasal cannula and scoots in as Leon cackles from his seat. She pretends she’s Larry’s girlfriend, and he makes up some big story about how she was hit by a bus, he saved her life, and they fell in love. Of course, when Auntie Rae catches wind of the Jeff’s salad dressing deceit, Susie springs from the chair enraged, ruining the entire ruse, but it’s a funny little cartoonish bit while it lasts.

Finally, alas, our guy is found guilty, and is sentenced to the maximum amount of prison time the law allows for this: 1 year. Larry gets cozy in his cell for a minute, but then Jerry Seinfeld (who had also flown in for the trial) comes knocking and busts him out. Turns out he recognized some guy at a bar who looks like Joe Pesci as being one of the jurors as well: a juror who was supposed to be sequestering, but wasn’t. The case gets declared a mistrial, and Larry’s officially out. “You don’t wanna end up like this. Nobody wants to see it. Trust me,” Jerry says (like the controversial Seinfeld finale, get it?) As they walk away from the cell, they realize, “This is how we should have ended the finale.” And now they’ve had their chance. They got to have their little do-over, and you know what? I’m happy for them. Congrats on getting the ending you wanted, and congrats on 12 successful seasons, L.D.

Stray observations

• Did you catch that Lewis’s girl Cynthia is a “key tosser,” just like L.D.?
• I love Leon telling Larry, as he’s cuffed and taken away, “I’ll take real good care of that house of ours!” It will always be their house to me, even if Larry was a jerk at the start of the episode and told Leon that he doesn’t consider him a person, breaking my heart.
• Larry feigning tears and sincerity, saying “god bless us all” and bumbling his way through making a heart with his fingers on the stand was pretty great.
• Leon’s take on Seinfeld is the best, and it echoes something other have brought up about the show: the mind-boggling number of “girlfriends” Jerry cycles through. “You never told me it’s a show about weekly ass,” he says. “This is more of a fuck documentary.” He completely fixates on it—even asks Jerry himself if there are secret sex tapes from the show’s run (Seinfeld says they’re on laserdisc, “13 unbelievable hours”).
• Leon also tells L.D. he heard that he “fucked up” the Seinfeld finale in a cute little meta joke.
• Ted’s little self-satisfied grin as he gets cuffed protesting outside the courthouse is pure gold.
• L.D.’s little conversation with the man in the cell across from his about the fold in his pants forming a “pants tent” is a fun little reference to Curb’s pilot episode.
• With the many celebrity guests and side characters who popped up this episode, was there anyone you were hoping to see from this show’s 12 seasons who didn’t make the cut?