SPOILER ALERT! This story contains details from the series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO.
After 12 seasons, Larry David officially signed off as Larry David on his HBO comedy. And as predicted, he used his time on Seinfeld to help tie up loose ends on Curb.
The action began with Larry heading back to Atlanta to face charges for handing out water at a polling place at the start of the season. Traveling with him is Jeff (Jeff Garlin), Susie (Susie Essman) and his longtime roomie Leon (D.B. Smoove), who declared he was going to catch up on old episodes of Seinfeld during the flight.
“You never told me it was a show about weekly ass,” he rants to Larry.
While driving into the city, Larry encounters an irate, bird-flipping driver named Cynthia (Allison Janney), who ends up being the latest squeeze of Richard (the late Richard Lewis, in his final performance on the comedy). Naturally, Cynthia denies later that she was the one who tussled with Larry on the freeway.
In court, the prosecutor (Greg Kinnear) tries to bolster his case that Larry both violated the Election Integrity Act and is a general menace to society by questioning several antagonists from the comedian’s past: Mocha Joe (Saverio Guerra), the country club’s Tackahashi (Dana Lee) and the real Lt. Alexander Vindman, who “won’t tolerate corruption from Trump, Putin or Larry David.” Bruce Springsteen returned, too, as did Tracey Ullman (as Irma Kostroski, who couldn’t believe how Larry once wore old shoes from a Holocaust exhibit).
The Curb flashbacks and stars just kept coming. Ted Danson showed up in Atlanta for the trial, as did Jerry Seinfeld (as himself), Dean Morris (as the judge) and Sharlto Copley (as Michael Fouchay).
Despite flashing a heart sign to the jury, Larry didn’t make a good witness for himself. The jury, naturally, convicts Larry.
“You have a history of doing the same thing wrong, over and over,” says the judge, who sentences Larry to a year in prison.
The comedian ends up in a cell that’s not unlike the one that Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine were in during the polarizing, 1998 series finale of Seinfeld. But that’s not where this comedy ends: the real Jerry shows up to tell Larry that he’s a free man because one of the jurors broke sequester. The charges were thrown out!
“It’s over,” says Jerry, who gestures to the jail cell. “You don’t want to end up like this. Nobody wants to see it. Trust me.”
As the two walk out of the jail, Larry exclaims, “This is how we should have ended the [Seinfeld] finale!”
Replies Jerry, “How did we not think of that?”