The simple genius of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, now in its 12th season on HBO, was about the difference several hundred million dollars makes in one’s life. David is, of course, one of the creators of Seinfeld, and he famously served as the inspiration for the character of Jerry Seinfeld’s friend George Costanza. George, the show’s resident schmo, was heavy, short, balding, and not particularly handsome; a low-level sociopath who was happy to prevaricate in any situation for a marginal advantage, he had little to offer the world and viewed it with a barely repressed anger. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, we can watch Larry David at his most George. The fictionalized character of Larry David is a lot like the real Larry David: He’s a guy who created Seinfeld and is living a very comfortable existence in Santa Monica. The lancing joke of Curb is that Larry is, like George, a man at war with the world around him—but, since he’s rich, few of the daily indignities George suffered apply to him, and when they do, he still gets to go home to his spacious L.A. mansion. Much of his life is, basically, as the comedian himself might put it, “pretty, pretty good!”
Larry’s position now allows him to go on the offensive, to pursue the same petty and sometimes deranged crusades George might go on. “L’enfer, c’est les autres,” wrote Sartre—“Hell is other people”—and Larry would agree. He battles with everyone from waiters to dry cleaners to studio executives over the flimsiest things. He’s also willing to go to outrageous lengths to get what he wants, like sleeping with a repulsive city councilwoman in order to get a local ordinance hanged. It’s not a particularly flattering character portrait, but that was another of the show’s charms: David never spared himself, instead freely acknowledging that he, like just about every other human, was a bad person. He took it as a point of pride that he, at least, was honest about it, and he accepted the consequences. Thus each season would lead to the same outcome, with Larry, having been hoisted mightily by his own petard, ending up in a bruised heap when he fell back to earth.
But no show can last forever, and fewer still get to go out on a high note. The truth is that Curb should have ended with its last season. The current one has been a disaster of epic proportions, a disheveled, unfocused, annoying mess.
