In the 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' finale, Larry finally gets what he wants

There was a moment when I thought Larry David was gonna get a bullet in his head. He’s about to go on trial in the series finale of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” for violating an unjust election law in Georgia when he pisses off guest star Allison Janney — a woman who plays characters you NEVER want to piss off — by flipping her off in traffic, truthering her suicide attempt, and surreptitiously convincing Richard Lewis to break up with her. Upon entering the courtroom for the verdict, Lewis informs Larry (and we have to call him “Larry” here, because this man has become the definitive Larry for all time now) that Janney’s character has purchased a gun.

Uh-oh.

Throughout its run, “Curb” has never been subtle in its foreshadowing. Every seemingly innocuous encounter ends up having disastrous future consequences, and every prop used is all but certain to function as Chekhov’s gun: a bottle of water, an unfortunately placed pants fold, a piece of Pirate’s Booty, etc. So it stood to reason that Larry would end his own series by taking his conceit for the “Seinfeld” finale — a clip show of Larry’s enemies testifying to his crimes against both humanity and basic etiquette — and one-upping it by having an ACTUAL gun be the proverbial gun this time, with Janney shooting Larry dead and his brain matter splattering the jury box in one final disrespect to wood. Larry’s an asshole, and he deserved to get what was coming to him. Not jail, like the “Seinfeld” principal characters were fated to, but a senseless, violent death. A death over nothing.

And that would have been satisfying because honestly, who HASN’T wanted to see Larry David suffer? It’s true of everyone on “Curb,” but it’s also true of the general American population. Show any random person on the street a photo of Larry and you will get a visceral reaction from them. My wife can’t watch too many “Curb” episodes in a single sitting — call it a one-and-half ep maximum — because, as she told me, it’s just too much Larry. She can only tolerate him in small doses, and hers is one of the kinder reactions that Larry elicits in others. I know people who make a gag face just when you say his name to them. They just … they f—king HATE him. They hate his face. They hate his bald head. They hate his voice. I’d wager that once Larry David does pass on, my mom will be like, “Oh thank god.”

This is why Larry couldn’t die at the end of “Curb.” He may be a vocal liberal, but he’s also a cartoonishly wealthy man who lives only to indulge his pettiest grudges. In that way, he’s pretty much like every other rich asshole you’d like Allison Janney to shoot dead. But the real world rarely affords us such satisfaction. The bad guys never get what’s coming to them. So why would Larry, a selfish asshole by trade, be an exception to that?

He isn’t, and that’s why the end of “Curb” was the right one.

Rather than killing himself off, or letting himself rot in a jail cell forever (in a rolling shot that deliberately echoed the final shot of “Seinfeld”), Larry ended “Curb” by getting off on a technicality thanks to his rich friend Jerry Seinfeld. Then he and his rich friends get on a plane home and get into an argument in first class over whether or not it’s rude to open your window shade when other people want the cabin to be dark. That’s an argument that could go on for a million years without resolution, and it jolly well might on “Curb,” because the end credits come in just as it’s ramping up.

If you saw the title of the finale, “No Lessons Learned,” you could’ve seen this coming. Hell, if you’re familiar with the work of Larry in any respect, you could’ve seen it. From the birth of “Seinfeld,” which he co-created, and throughout the entire run of “Curb,” Larry has steadfastly avoided anything resembling moral teachings, introspection, or even basic humanity. “No Lessons” was a guiding principle of the “Seinfeld” writer’s room, and it made that show legendary. A few other comedies have hewed to that philosophy since (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” being the best of them), but only “Curb” did it with Larry aboard. And that matters, because Larry is the definitive crank, a man who resides exclusively in a world of hilariously petty gripes: fights that reveal nothing about the inner nature of man, and everything about the inner nature of Larry. Namely that he’d prefer to never have one.

Because being a human being is a complete pain in the ass, something that both “Seinfeld” and “Curb” depicted in minute detail over the course of the past three (!) decades. Larry, now 76, has not grown as an artist in that span, and will not grow as an artist now that “Curb” is over. He just wants to be left alone and have everyone act the way he’d like them to act. You know who else is like that? Me, and likely you. I don’t wanna have to interact with people who consider their dislike of Mexican food to be a private matter. I don’t wanna drive on highways where other people won’t let me merge. I don’t wanna eat at a restaurant that cuts off breakfast service at 11 a.m. I want everyone to love me and to gather in public to cheer my name, like they do for Larry after he gets arrested. When they do neither of those things, I want them to suffer. THEY’RE the assholes. Not me. 

Now, do I deserve universal adulation and capitulation? No. We teach our kids, from a very young age, that you can’t always get what you want. What Larry David has always said is, “OK, fine. You can’t always get what you want, but doesn’t it suck when you don’t? Doesn’t it suck when you have to go out of your way to be nice to people? And isn’t it annoying when they aren’t properly grateful when you are? Isn’t it even more annoying when they treat you as selfish for stealing a golf club out of a coffin when that club always belonged to you? Shouldn’t the world understand why you are the way you are, and not make doody faces when you open up a spite shop next to Mocha Joe’s?”

Larry, at least on “Curb,” thinks it should. And because he doesn’t get the “Uncut Gems” treatment at the very end, he can hold onto that worldview for the rest of his delightfully miserable life. I would tell you that this says something about what it means to be privileged in this world, but then I’d be teaching you a lesson, and I have no interest in that.