Larry David has a message for “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Seinfeld” finale haters: 'F‑‑‑ you!'

"You didn't like the first one?" David joked at PaleyFest.

Larry David is well aware that some viewers didn't enjoy the Seinfeld series finale — which only compelled him to double down with the last episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

At a recent PaleyFest event in Los Angeles, the Curb creator and star discussed his decision to draw parallels between the endings of the two hit comedy series he created.

Curb executive producer Jeff Schaffer teed things up by saying, "It was just incredible, by the way, getting to bring all that full-circle and then getting to do it one last time in the season finale. As Jerry [Seinfeld] said, it was a joke 26 years in the making. It's neat that you can stick around long enough to do that."

David then shared a message to his critics. "F--- you!" he quipped. "You didn't like the first one? F--- you!"

The Curb conclusion saw Larry (the fictionalized version of David, played by David) on trial for violating the Election Integrity Act of 2021, just as the 1998 Seinfeld finale saw Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer on trial for criminal indifference. Both episodes had past guest stars testify in court as character witnesses, detailing slights the main characters made against them as evidence leading to their convictions. Both trials (and episodes) concluded with the protagonists being sentenced to a year in prison.

However, Curb deviated from the Seinfeld formula with Larry's case being declared a mistrial and him telling his old friend Jerry, "This is how we should've ended the finale!" and heading home.

Schaffer previously told Entertainment Weekly that emulating Seinfeld was too strong an idea to pass up. "Larry was joking about how 'I've never learned a lesson in my life,' and we realized, 'Oh, we should go to trial. What if we went to trial and it looked a lot like the Seinfeld finale?'" he said. "That felt big enough to be a season ender: Larry's never learned a lesson, so we're doing the Seinfeld finale all over again, people! If you didn't like it the first time, we don't care! But it also made us end the series. It forced our hand, because if we're redoing the Seinfeld finale, it has to be the Curb finale."

Schaffer added, "We realized that all the buildup of this being the final season of Curb worked for us. As people slowly realized what was happening, it was like our audience was being pranked in slow motion."

David co-created Seinfeld with the titular comic, but he left the series after its seventh season. However, he returned to pen the 1998 series finale, which was viewed by 76 million people and widely regarded as a disappointment. "At the time, I think it did bother me," David said at PaleyFest, adding that he saw "probably a couple" negative reviews.

Back in 2014, David told Bill Simmons, "I think the thing about finales is everybody writes their own finale in their head… They go, 'Oh, well this should happen to George, and Jerry and Elaine should get together,' and all that. They've already written it, and often they're disappointed, because it's not what they wrote… I was not interested in an emotional ride, and neither was Jerry. No wonder why [people] would dislike it."

At PaleyFest, David followed his characteristically crabby comments with a rare note of earnest positivity. "It was the most fun I could ever have possibly had doing anything," David said of Curb. "To do that, to write it and then film it. I can't imagine how I could ever have had more fun in my life."

Curb Your Enthusiasm is streaming in full on Max.

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.