It has been said that you can tell a lot about a person by the theme tune they hear in their head whenever you play them the HBO intro. For many, it’s the courtly pomp of the Game of Thrones opening credits. For others, it’ll be the swampy bass of The Sopranos theme, or maybe the weird gargling of The White Lotus. For me, it has always been three ascending tuba burps that start the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme tune. This is because, as everyone knows, Curb Your Enthusiasm is the best show that HBO has ever made.
But get ready to not hear that tuba for much longer, because Larry David has just announced that the upcoming 12th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm will be its last. Which probably isn’t a surprise, since earlier this year an overzealous producer tweeted that he was witnessing the final shot of the final scene of the final ever episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in a post that was very quickly yanked down.
But just because we may have been expecting this, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t celebrate Curb Your Enthusiasm while we still can. As HBO’s longest running scripted drama series – its first episode debuted 23 years ago – it can be easy to take Curb for granted. Which is a shame, because there has arguably been no comedy more influential made in the past half century.
Curb’s genius was taking the bones of Seinfeld – the show Larry David co-created, which was celebrated for the elegant way that all its disparate plot strands came crashing together at the end of every episode – and strapping it to a looser, more improvisational framework. On Curb, the performers were given a detailed outline of each scene, but were free to do and say whatever they wanted within those confines. If that doesn’t seem particularly groundbreaking now, that’s only because hundreds and hundreds of TV comedies since have ripped off the formula. If you work in comedy, then Curb Your Enthusiasm is nothing less than the water you swim in.
And for a show that has been on the air for 23 years, Curb has been remarkably consistent. The production values might have increased, and David seems to have figured out how to dress himself in the most flattering way at some point over the past decade, but the root of the show has remained. It is a show about Larry David challenging, and being challenged about, society’s accepted laws of etiquette. What’s an acceptable amount to leave at a tip? What’s the precise order in which people in a doctor’s waiting room should be addressed? Who do you ideologically align yourself with as a Jewish man who happens to enjoy eating Palestinian chicken?
This was the delight of the Larry David persona, a man who acted on impulses that the rest of us only ever sit on. Over the years a mystique has built up around the man. Is he really like that in real life? I managed to interview David this year for an upcoming book, on baldness of all things, and I’ve since been inundated with people desperate to learn if, off screen, Larry is the same as on screen Larry (the answer is very much “yes, to the point that it made me giggle like a child.”) You suspect he’d hate to hear it, but the man is truly beloved.
Curb also managed to keep fresh by reinvigorating its cast whenever the moment allowed. Although David mainstays such as Jeff Garlin and Richard Lewis have been there from the start, Curb has had an uncanny ability to know the exact time to bring in fresh blood. JB Smoove’s Leon Black is a case in point; initially brought on as a one-time side character, he electrified the show to such an extent that he now just hangs around as Larry’s lodger. More recently, Tracey Ullman ran away with season 11 as Larry’s reluctant love interest Irma Kostroski.
Everyone will have their own favourite Curb Your Enthusiasm moments; many of them, I suspect, from the season that functioned as an informal Seinfeld reunion. The episode The Table Read alone contains several, not least Bob Einstein’s Marty Funkhouser causing Jerry Seinfeld to double over laughing by telling a joke with the punchline too rude to publish. But there are so many from other series, too. Larry peppering John McEnroe with endless nonsense questions (“Were you shy as a child?” “Do you have any allergies?” “Do you like life?”) while acting as his chauffeur. Larry scream-texting ‘NO I DON’T WATCH WIZARDS OF WAVERLEY PLACE. I’M AN ADULT!!!!!!!’ to a child. Jon Hamm slowly taking on all of Larry’s mannerisms and cadences to the horror of everyone around him.
However, let’s not be too premature. David has announced the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm before, walking away from the show to make movies (like the highly underwatched Clear History) and Broadway plays (2015’s A Fish in the Dark) before returning to the fold again in 2016. Perhaps that’s what will happen this time. Or perhaps he really has reached the end of the road. If that’s the case, let’s celebrate Curb Your Enthusiasm for what it has always been; a pretty, pretty, pretty good show.
