Initially my plan was to study the first eight seasons of Curb this year and then look at the “revival” sometime in the future. But when it was announced that Twelve would be the last, I opted to discuss everything all together, disrupted production continuity be darned. Oh, I still believe breaking a reliable pattern is inherently against the promise of series television, and especially the sitcom, which hinges on expectations of regularity. However, it is the same program, with the same basic premise and characters, and all 12 seasons, united under the same title, will ultimately constitute an individual legacy. Also, most of what I observe in this revival was already showing up in the original run, so there is, for me, analytical flow. It’s just that a gap as wide as six years is major and makes these changes more obvious, for so much time has passed that Curb is different now, re-calibrating its identity based on the updated cultural landscape — evolved from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s — along with the collective view of self that had calcified over the long hiatus where it seemed like Curb was done and therefore appraisable in a rear-view mirror. I find that this self-conscious perspective — where the show thinks it knows what it’s supposed to be, and, incidentally, has Season Eight as top of mind as, say, Four — actually obstructs some of its ability to still be the best version of itself, for in the revival’s efforts to fall back in step but stay on top, it feels like Larry and his crew are doing Curb Your Enthusiasm, instead of being it. That is, it’s sometimes a parody of the old show — a good, earnest parody, but a parody nonetheless: hitting the marks, only bigger and louder. This criticism started to be applicable in the latter half of the 2000s, but it’s more extreme now. For example, the show’s understanding of Larry has further caricatured — he’s the rudest, pettiest troublemaker he’s ever been, with no social grace and a habit of picking problems in every circumstance, even when believability is stretched beyond the standard previously established. This broader depiction is used to enable more of the bold ideas for which the show has been celebrated, and which has indeed been its raison d’être. As such, every episode in Nine is filled with funny notions of every size — some small, some big… some so big, in fact, that they’re not always believable and/or motivated, and not always well-connected to Larry.

In general, there’s a lack of personalization to many of Nine’s ideas — they’re not as unique to Larry or his world; any social discomfort that the show can mine, it’ll mine now, with less discernment. And the situation, as a whole, is less relevant. Yes, the series is still centralizing Larry David, or the heightened version described above, but it’s rarer now for these final years’ overarching seasonal narratives or their individual episodic stories to directly utilize the showbiz trappings that once accentuated in Curb a compelling sense of metatheatricality, contextualizing his character and justifying the single-cam veritas look that informed so much of how the series first predicated its identity, both internally and externally. That’s why, in general, the show feels less like itself now — it’s so fixated on boasting BIG-laugh ideas to maintain the end result of its excellent comedic reputation that it’s less mindful of how it once was excellent: conceiving those ideas inside the situation, where the implications of a broken fourth wall helped focus the depiction of Larry, granting the series a specificity beyond just the generalities of being funny and having an increasingly bold curmudgeon. This loosening tends to happen on most sitcoms, especially ones that consume lots of ideas and predicate value solely on them; eventually, good ideas get harder to conjure as novelty dwindles, and something about the situation — e.g., the characters — has to change (or broaden) in order to keep the creativity flowing. More support, like from other well-defined leads, would have thus been beneficial. (Larry does have sidekicks, but their capacities are limited.) Although, Curb would probably argue that Larry has become so well-established that he alone is enough of a situation. That’s a character-driven thought I could appreciate, if this wasn’t such a fundamentally idea-driven show, maneuvering its lead for its idea-driven aims — the tail wagging the dog, as it were, thereby creating a dog that knows how it’s expected to move but does so unnaturally, chasing ideas he shouldn’t fetch… Bad metaphors aside, Curb’s efforts to offer what it was remembered for offering zeroes in on results, taking less care in how they’re earned. This is the product of a show that’s both too big-picture about itself and also overextended — a trend that accelerated every time it took a little break but is extremely pronounced and pinpointable now after six years off for self-reflection.

Okay, in terms of its minimized metatheatricality — to be fair — I’m sure the show knew this sensibility was no longer fresh. By 2017, there’d been a whole generation of sitcoms that followed in Curb’s footsteps as winking single-cams with premised fourth walls, either via a mockumentary format (like The Office) or a similar showbiz setting where real people played versions of themselves (like 30 Rock). None of that could uniquely excite in the late 2010s, so even if it’s always been part of Curb’s identity, it couldn’t stay part of its special appeal anymore. The genre had changed since 2000 — what once was cutting-edge became dime-a-dozen. However, the show isn’t just playing catch up to its own influence; it’s actively chosen to evolve its look closer to what we could find on any ol’ single-cam from the late 2010s — more formal in visual texture, with less of the verite that suggested something rawer and more privileged in its vantage point. This also partly explains Curb’s reduced meta — and the dilution of the situation that justified it — for with a style now evidenced in all kinds of generic shows (even those without fourth walls or showbiz trappings), both the Larry David persona and the series’ chosen storytelling are less situated in a “meta” frame where a curated sense of realism is cultivated around the notion that we’re peeking behind an implied curtain, and instead filtered through a lens more familiar yet less precise, where any broadening of character or story has less to which it must answer. In that regard, Curb has helped itself become less unique — an adherent to trends rather than a leader of them. And while it may distinguish itself with rich comedic ideas, the mise en scene undercuts it with truth: Curb has become more like the kind of show it influenced and is no longer the influential show it once was… That said, it’s still above most contemporaries, mostly because of its maintained prioritization of comedy, which was not common for cable sitcoms in the 2010s, due to the now-dominant single-cam aesthetic and the attitudes of “prestige TV,” where viewer interest is sought through narrative serialization and higher emotional stakes, and therefore a more story-based, dramatic tension that makes half-hour “comedies” less situation-oriented and much less funny.

Fortunately, Curb remains funny and tries to project a situation via Larry, despite an idea-driven focus and the caricaturing of character discussed above. Instead, the 2010s’ corrupting hand is felt elsewhere — see: this season’s longer runtimes, which tend to make episodes drag, for, as always, this just means more story beats, which in turn emphasize how little spontaneity there’s left in Curb’s performance style, as its “retroscripting” is too loaded with plot points or vital information to sound in corroboration of the broken-fourth-wall naturalism once premised, especially now that the show is so aware of what it’s supposed to be that even its improv feels too-perfect. This sensibility, as the show increasingly becomes both more traditional and, by proxy, too seemingly written, is the most elemental rejection of situation that’s observable throughout the run of the show. So, now, with less of the situation as an undercurrent through everything it does, Curb truly lives and dies — more than ever — on its individual comedic ideas… How does Season Nine fare here? Well, its overarching story — of Larry getting a Fatwa put on his head by the Ayatollah of Iran after making jokes in preparation for a musical — is, on paper, amusing: another person whom he has offended. And I like that it begins and ends with reminders of his character’s showbiz-based world — such trappings are always welcome. However, this is a bigger and less believable story than any of the past arcs, which were more rooted in Larry’s everyday situation — the Seinfeld reunion, Richard’s kidney transplant, even the restaurant — and thus had more intrinsic support from the show itself. Without as much substantive aid from what Curb has established, the Fatwa idea isn’t fruitful for episodic story and instead feels like one drawn-out joke — something that, frankly, is true of all the arcs in the final stretch: they’re designed for a punch line. This is… not wonderful, but also not terrible, for Curb is almost always successful on the comedic front, even in these last four seasons, which aren’t enough of a comedown to hurt the series’ reputation, but aren’t great enough to help it either. And while the show’s baseline quality continues to gradually erode — disrupted only by Ten having better, more enjoyable ideas than Nine — every season is capable of funny moments. That’s what Curb wants to offer and, no matter the era, it does.