Summary
The series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm is a fitting to send-off to both this season and the show overall, as well as the predicted redo of the Seinfeld ending.
It wasn’t exactly a secret that the series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm was going to be a redo of Seinfeld. Season 12 hasn’t exactly been subtle about this. The much-loathed conclusion to the NBC sitcom, which Larry David wrote, has been a point of contention for TV enthusiasts since it aired back in 1998, and the ending of Curb is a chance for Larry – and a guest-starring Jerry Seinfeld – to right that longstanding wrong.
And it does. “No Lessons Learned” is a suitable payoff to the events of the final season, a giant callback to Curb’s entire history, and a chance for Larry to finally acknowledge that there was probably a better Seinfeld ending than the one he came up with.
Everyone leaves happy. Including Larry David, albeit only just.
Larry’s Trial
In the Season 12 premiere, Larry gave Leon’s Auntie Rae a bottle of water in a direct violation of an obtuse Georgia election law, and the trial that might land him in prison has been a looming ticking-clock device ever since. In “No Lessons Learned”, Larry and his lawyer Sibby, Leon, Jeff and Susie, and Cheryl and Ted, all head to Atlanta for the trial.
As if it happened been obvious enough throughout, Leon makes the point clear. He’s binge-watching Seinfeld for the first time, and passes commentary on it every time he turns up. He reaches the finale right around the time that the verdict is about to be rendered.
Ghosts of Curb Past
As ever, Larry can’t get out of his own way even at this point. A subplot with Richard Lewis sees him ruining yet another of his friend’s relationships, this time with Allison Janney, playing a woman who made-up a suicide attempt and won’t let Larry move over on the highway.
But most of the antagonists in the finale are ghosts of Curb past. There are almost too many cameos to count. Mocha Joe is present, Bruce Springsteen calls in after Larry inadvertently gave him COVID in Episode 9, and a laundry list of past offenses is reeled off, flashing back to earlier episodes of the show.
Larry stole shoes from a Holocaust museum. He’s disgruntled. He carries racist lawn paraphernalia in his car, may have said the N-word, traumatized a nine-year-old girl with something hard in his pants, put a barista out of business… the list goes on.
Some of these incidents aren’t as bad as they appear. But they’re all Larry’s fault, because as Larry proudly proclaims to a kid at one point in the episode, he has never learned a lesson in his life.
Larry is Found Guilty in Curb’s Season 12 Finale
This trend continues. As if things didn’t look bad enough for him, he only makes them worse. Through some conniving with Jeff, he even turns Auntie Rae, one of his key witnesses, against him. As if it couldn’t be any worse, Larry David steals secret salad dressing recipes.
Larry is deemed “petty, conniving, and frankly spiteful,” found guilty, and sentenced to a year in prison. History is repeating itself.
But the rewriting of the Seinfeld finale saves him at the last moment, thanks to none other than Jerry Seinfeld. The finale would have worked without this final reversal, but it’s better with it. After running into one of the jurors breaking the sequestering rules, Jerry rats him out and a mistrial is declared.
“Oh my God, this is how we should’ve ended the finale,” says Larry with a sudden realization.
True to form, Larry learns no lessons even now. Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12 ends with – you guessed it – Larry and co. bickering about something that doesn’t matter. How else?
