Now that we’ve had a day for everyone to catch up on their DVRs and reflect on the Seinfeld reunion, might as well start the discussion — what did people think of the Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7 finale? (Seven? Wow. Two full seasons occurred after Larry died and went to heaven.)
Personally, I watched through the finale never quite not enjoying it, but when it was over, I realized I hadn’t actually laughed at any of it. The episode’s token Curb awkward dilemmas — not tipping, not using a coaster — seemed like they should’ve been covered in like, the third episode of the series (and there was another tipping dilemma in the Swan episode just three weeks ago), and nothing unexpected came out of them other than the show’s insistence on repeating the terms “Mocha Joe” and “respect wood” as jokes.
Then we got to witness the Seinfeld reunion show, including almost six full minutes of material that…
1) Was a completely standard, average Seinfeld episode, with nothing special about it even attempted other than a couple modern references. And that…
2) We had already seen the actors rehearse and perform in prior episodes. Just not projected inside a television screen.
Was Curb banking on people being so instantly enamored with the Seinfeld cast back together, they didn’t need to do anything unpredictable? Or was the reunion designed to be deliberately anticlimactic, poking fun at peoples’ eagerness for a reunion by showing one happen and having it not really be anything special? Are people still that eager for a Seinfeld reunion? It is on tv fifteen times a day.
Having said that… not to be totally negative here about a finale that was for all intents and purposes fine, I was pleasantly surprised by two aspects of the season:
1) I can’t believe how well Jerry Seinfeld handled himself with the unscripted Curb banter. Given how awkward he is as an actor, and how any talk show interviews with him devolve into him testing out scripted standup bits, I never would’ve thought he would walk into the Curb world and not only completely fit with the informal dialogue style, but thrive.
2) We all knew the Michael Richards awkward racial moment was coming from the day the reunion was announced, but it was still really funny when it happened. Also, no J.B. Smoove in the finale at all? Might’ve been problem #1 right there.
As for the very end, I thought Larry David walked an interesting line with the ‘getting back with Cheryl’ plot, tempering a self-awareness of that ending’s potential cheesiness (which he even calls out when telling the cast he rewrote the script) with a not-too-bombastic conclusion, climatically kissing Cheryl then insisting that she call Julia Louis-Dreyfuss about ruining her table. Larry David reminds us yet again that no matter what happens, he’s still Larry David, which, ironically, may have been both the best and worst aspects of Curb remaining on the air for seven seasons.
Alright, enough overanalysis about a lighthearted thirty minute comedy series that doesn’t take place in Scranton — what did people think of the Curb finale and the Seinfeld reunion season in general? Favorite/least favorite parts? Praise/rant away in the comments.
