Why “Curb Your Enthusiasm” had to end with that “Seinfeld” callback

"Our audience was being pranked in slow motion," writer/director Jeff Schaffer tells EW of the HBO sitcom finale.

It all started with a bottle of water. As Curb Your Enthusiasm star/creator Larry David and writer/director/executive producer Jeff Schaffer started writing season 12 of the long-running HBO sitcom, they knew they were going to end the premiere episode with David getting arrested for giving water to a Georgia voter, in a parody of the state’s recent election law. At first, they didn’t know that this was going to be the show’s final season. That only came after they decided to riff on the Seinfeld finale.

“We didn't even know we were going to do a trial. We just knew that was one of the possible outcomes,” Schaffer tells Entertainment Weekly. “We were actually talking about the story where Larry doesn't want to help a kid learn a lesson. As we were talking about it, 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?’ 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.” 

The show did try to give its viewers a heads up about their intentions. References to the Seinfeld finale were peppered throughout the season.

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

Seinfeld infamously ended with the show’s four main characters (played by Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards) imprisoned for not acting as “Good Samaritans” — and, furthermore, for their various infractions against human decency from over the course of the series. Curb flipped the premise, with David arrested for actually being a Good Samaritan by giving water to a woman who needed it. But much like the Seinfeld characters, David was put on trial in his finale, with various characters from the 12 seasons of Curb popping up to malign his character.

"When you start to compile a list of the people that Larry has wronged, you find very quickly that it's really, really extensive,” Schaffer says with a laugh. “So you want to bring back some fan favorites. You’ve gotta have Mocha Joe, you’ve gotta have Takahashi. And then you want to bring in some that make you think ‘I can’t believe they’re here,’ like Bruce Springsteen and Colonel Vindman!”

Seinfeld also appeared as a fictionalized version of himself, not for the first time in Curb history. Schaffer says the Seinfeld star was more than happy to participate in the riff on his show’s much-maligned finale.

“He immediately said he was in,” Schaffer recalls of pitching Seinfeld. “When we shot that jail scene, he was really into it and really excited about it. After we were done, he said to me, ‘you don't understand. This is a joke that's 26 years in the making. Who gets a chance to do that?’”

But at the last second, Curb pulled the rug out yet again. David did not end his series in jail, but was instead released on a technicality. That allowed Curb to end with a proper “riding off into the sunset” scene, of David having yet another inane argument with his friends (including costars JB Smoove, Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin, Cheryl Hines, and the late Richard Lewis).

"You can imagine them in 20 years, having the same argument in the nursing home," Essman says.

So that’s it for Curb Your Enthusiasm. But it’s not like David or Schaffer have suddenly stopped making humorous observations of daily life, or thinking of good jokes.

"Is Larry still having spirited interactions with people on the west side of Los Angeles? Of course he is," Schaffer says. "We're still joking around about stuff, just the other day we were talking about something like 'oh, we would've put that in the show.' I don't know where it's going to go, but there are definitely ideas."

All 12 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm are streaming on Max.

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.