The most influential television comedy of the 21st century is coming to an end. On February 4, the first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s 12th and final season aired, kicking off a 10-week run that will apparently wrap up Larry David’s revolutionary improvised sitcom with a definitive conclusion. For a show like Curb, which perpetually seems to be on the brink of killing Larry off entirely, that sounds terribly ominous. Just how definitive are we talking?
“I will say this: none of us die,” assures Susie Essman over a video call from a hotel room in LA, where she is preparing for the season premiere. And she would know. Any show that has been around as long as Curb will always have a fluctuating cast. Some stars, such as Bob Einstein, died along the way. Others, such as Wanda Sykes, disappeared and never returned. Recent seasons have been bolstered by the likes of Vince Vaughn and Tracy Ullman. But Essman and Jeff Garlin have been there since the very start. As the Greenes – Garlin plays Larry David’s manager, and Essman his explosively foulmouthed wife – the pair are foundational pieces of the Curb puzzle. Aside from Larry David himself, there is no greater authority on the show.
As such, Essman and Garlin are used to fielding questions about Curb. And lately, one question has stood out above all others: is this really the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm? After all, we’ve been here before. David apparently ends every season by stating that he doesn’t want to make any more. After 2011’s season he drifted off for six whole years to do other things – a film, a Broadway play – before returning. So is this definitely, really going to be the absolute end?
“People have overplayed this,” argues Garlin. “On every advertisement, it says ‘The Final Season’. In all of Curb, Larry David has never walked up and said: ‘Hey, we’re done after this.’ But guess what? He did this year. He said: ‘I am not doing any more. We’re done.’” So that’s really it? “I gotta tell you, say there was an offer to do a Curb movie, I think it’s highly unlikely that I would appear. I know the ending of the show. I feel closure. I’m grateful.”
But nobody dies in the finale, so is there maybe even a tiny chance it could come back? “OK, so feasibly, we could come back,” Essman concedes. “But it feels wrapped up. It just feels done to me.” Did you feel this way in 2011? “No!” she replies. “When Larry called me after Season Eight and told me it was over, I went into a deep depression. I mean, I went into a serious depression after that. It didn’t feel done to me, and I was right. But this time Larry and I have spoken at length since the beginning of the season, so I knew it was the swan song. I’ve been prepared for it to be over for about a year and a half now, so it’s not a shock to me.”
The actual events of the final season are shrouded in secrecy – Essman reveals that they’re a week away from doing reshoots of the finale, so even she doesn’t know the finer details of the show’s conclusion – but on the basis of the first episode, it’s business as usual. Social norms are breached, deliberately and accidentally. Restaurant etiquette is discussed at length. The act of butt-dialing is given its own weighty subplot. Everyone’s a quarter of a century older than when the show started, but Curb remains firmly in its groove.
“When Larry called me after Season Eight and told me it was over, I went into a deep depression.”
For now, though, this is a moment that’s as much about looking back as it is about looking forward. Despite David’s pedigree as the co-creator of Seinfeld, Essman insists there was never any sense that Curb would become the beast it did. “I was a day player for years,” she recalls. “I had no contract. After every season Larry would say: ‘That’s it, we’re not doing another one,’ so I never knew from year to year if we were coming back. In Season Two I was only in two episodes. I never knew if he was going to write me in, or if the show was even going to return. It was the most slapdash operation. We had no trailers, we had no dressing rooms. It was just really like: ‘I got a barn, let’s do a show’ kind of a thing.”
For all the closure Garlin and Essman say they feel about the finale, they’re keen to point out just how special Curb Your Enthusiasm has been to them: “I can’t think of any other job that I would have so much creative input,” says Essman. “Usually as an actress you get a script, you learn the lines and you work with it. But with this show, I write all my own lines. Every piece of filth that comes out of my mouth, that’s mine. I can’t imagine anything that would be more creatively fulfilling as a performer than doing this kind of a show.”
“I don’t like television,” echoes Garlin. “Curb is the one exception of my career where it was joyous, and I look forward to it. But all these other shows that I did, I felt trapped. And it was a horrible feeling.”
Key to this is the way in which Curb was made, with David and his writers producing a detailed outline for each episode rather than writing a traditional script, which allows the performers to vamp away in individual scenes however they see fit. Back when it debuted, this loosey-goosey approach felt entirely revolutionary. But over the years, reams and reams of shows have tried to copy the Curb formula, to varying levels of success. The show has spawned so many imitators, in fact, that there’s a very good argument to call Curb Your Enthusiasm the most influential comedy series of the century.
“I don’t want to mention any names,” Garlin says. “Of course, people go, ‘Oh, they’re copying you guys’. But there are probably about a dozen shows. You know, I really love Jury Duty. Many people have tried to do Curb Your Enthusiasm exactly, and they failed miserably, but Jury Duty is the first improvised show since Curb starting where I can go, ‘That is amazing.’ It’s taken the form to another level. That’s the only one I can think of, in all these years.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the elegiac nature of the moment, Garlin and Essman have decided not to let go of Curb completely. As of the first of this month, they are now the hosts of The History of Curb Your Enthusiasm, an official HBO companion podcast where they’ll dissect a new episode each week, starting with the pilot.
“It was the most slapdash operation. We had no trailers, we had no dressing rooms.”
“It’s been interesting to go back because Jeff and I, for the most part, we haven’t really seen the episodes since they aired,” Essman says. “We see ourselves younger, I see myself skinny, Jeff sees himself fatter. It’s not just us, either. We’ve had so many crew members that have been there from the beginning. And we’ve all watched each other, married and divorced and children and grandchildren. We’ve had 23 years of life together, so it’s interesting going back and saying: ‘Oh, remember? Remember that day?’”
Garlin adds: “What also is interesting, really terribly interesting, is the friendship between Susie and me. She’s one of my best friends, meaning we disagree. I am very vulnerable with her, and she is not nice about it. I’m an annoyance to her. But I think if you’re a fan of Curb, you will fucking dig the podcast. I really believe that. Maybe I’m wrong.”
The recap podcast industry is especially strong at the moment. Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa got a book deal out of their Sopranos podcast; the official It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia podcast sold out the Royal Albert Hall last year. However, don’t expect Garlin and Essman to hit the road anytime soon. Despite the podcast only just launching, the pair have already recorded more than 50 episodes. That amounts to almost a full year before the hosts will even start responding to listener feedback.
On the plus side, however, it means we’ll still have a new stream of Curb content for two and a half years after the show itself ends, complete with several high-profile guest stars, including the man himself. “There’s a lot of Larry,” Essman grins. “My favorite person in the world besides my husband.”
As we’re wrapping up, Garlin says: “I just want to really be clear that I’m grateful that I have had the journey of Curb Your Enthusiasm. And I’m grateful that we’ve made so many people so happy. That’s really like, for me, that’s what it’s about. It’s not about accolades. It’s not about awards. It’s not about recognition. It’s just that we made a lot of people happy. And let me say, I am terribly sorry to everyone who loves this show that it’s ending. But I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I had the experience.”
Stuart Heritage is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL. He is the author of Bald: How I Slowly Learned to Not Hate Having No Hair (And You Can Too)