Curb Your Enthusiasm

With an array of great guest stars and triumphantly surprising storylines, the final season of Curb is as brilliantly funny and beautifully outrageous as ever.

David and his ensemble are just so good at what they do, watching slightly slacker Curb is like going to see a veteran rock band who have lost relevance but not their groove. .... Curb is terribly good.

Complaints, like many of Larry’s, are minor. Even up to the end, David, Schaffer, and the colorful characters who’ve spent decades in Larry’s orbit (let’s not forget Susie Essman, Richard Lewis, and Ted Danson, who all kill this season too) find new ways to drive each other crazy.

Effortless, affecting, and urgent, the final season of Curb leaves us to ponder just how humankind will fare in the future, considering how David spent his entire career shining a light on the asinine rules society demands we adhere to.

Curb Your Enthusiasm was great from the very beginning, but this twelfth and final season is a testament to this show’s greatness. While we can’t comment on the final episode, the buildup to this finale seems as though David is heading towards another iconic end, a meta-joke that the entire season is building towards.

“Curb” remains as borderline offensive and edgy and hilarious as ever. (Nine of the 10 episodes of Season 12 were made available to critics.)

This is the season-12 premiere, so there’s a lot to establish. .... It’s fun to think of the ways this show has grown over time in its ambitions and scope (while still remaining petty and small as ever). Watching Larry argue with Siri is great.

Season 12, like many seasons, is a little shaggy. Certain threads are introduced early and then come full circle. Others are left dangling, never to be tied up. But rather than feel forgotten, the stragglers lend the series a sense of wonder.

Over 10 episodes of outrageous and absurdist farce, Larry does his best, meaning his worst, to tarnish his newly golden reputation. [19 Feb - 10 Mar 2024, p.5]

The days when Curb Your Enthusiasm was at the cutting edge of comedy are long over. But this was still an enjoyable reminder that, in the pantheon of great on-screen cranks, Larry David remains the one grump to rule them all.

There was plenty to prove it still has much poke in its tank.

The final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm is pretty much more of what we’ve seen over the past 24 years. But it’s still funny, howlingly so at times. And that’s pretty much all we’re looking for from Curb as Larry and company kvetch into the sunset.

This misfit still has his teeth.

Whether it’s Larry concocting a “dream scheme” or repeatedly employing the “I like it gambit," the show continues to mire its morons in choice nonsense.

Attempts at “timely” humor — a Giuliani hair-dye joke, an uncomfortable exchange with a trans man whom Larry knew before he transitioned, and a guest star I cannot reveal but whose presence will certainly spark conversation — feel forced and fall flat. But then there are moments when the show is just as hilarious as it’s been at its best.

Much of this season feels more tired, or perhaps just familiar, in an “Old Man yells at cloud” (or in Larry’s case, Siri) kind of way. That said, there are still explosively funny moments, underscoring David’s knack for identifying the absurd and a prevailing attitude that has long since made clear he doesn’t care who he might offend, but rather mischievously revels in it.