Curb Your Enthusiasm Doesn't Really Have to End

In Hear Me Out, Primetimer staffers and contributors espouse their pet theories, hot takes, and even the occasional galaxy-brain idea.

When Larry David announced that the upcoming 12th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm would be its last, fans were heartbroken. David’s deal with HBO has been exceedingly unique over the course of the series. While many series (broadcast, cable, or otherwise) have new seasons each year, the gap between Curb seasons has ranged from that standard to a whopping six years between Seasons 8 and 9. Because of that, it was easy to hope that Curb would just keep on trucking for years and years, even if there were lengthy breaks in between Larry’s various foibles in Los Angeles.

With the final season starting February 4, the question is… what if Curb does just keep on trucking, but with a slightly new name and focus?

The world has changed immensely since Curb Your Enthusiasm premiered in the fall of 2000 (a year after the one-off special inspiring HBO to green-light a full series). The series started airing mere weeks before George W. Bush became president, and just two years after the Seinfeld series finale arrived to decidedly mixed reviews. Curb Your Enthusiasm doesn’t need to look to itself or Seinfeld as inspiration for a follow-up series. Instead, all Larry would have to do is look to the world of streaming for how a spin-off in name only works.

The Prime series Bosch ran for seven seasons but when Amazon announced that the Titus Welliver-led detective drama was winding down in 2021, it also announced that a spin-off called Bosch: Legacy was on the way. Though not all of the first series’s cast members appear as regulars on the spin-off (which has already been picked up for a third season), Bosch: Legacy does basically feel like additional seasons of Bosch with a new name. So why not do the same thing for Curb Your Enthusiasm?

It’s easy to imagine what a Curb Your Enthusiasm follow-up would look like, largely because there’s no end to the amount of moral debates Larry can get into with his manager Jeff or Jeff’s wife Susie, his ex-wife Cheryl, and the garrulous Leon. Though real life is strange enough, Curb has always invoked genuine societal or cultural details in its stories, from placing Larry in a staging of Mel Brooks’ The Producers to having Larry and Leon meet after the latter was displaced by Hurricane Katrina to having Albert Brooks play an outsized version of himself as a COVID hoarder. If a Curb follow-up played out like Bosch: Legacy, it’s likely that not much would change between shows despite a different title (perhaps The David Chronicles, as a nod to Seinfeld’s original name The Seinfeld Chronicles) and perhaps a stripped-down cast such as just David, J.B. Smoove, and a smattering of guest stars.

But if David wanted to go whole-hog, he could follow in the footsteps of the iconic Norman Lear sitcom All in the Family. That political lightning rod of a show began with the irascible and bigoted Archie Bunker butting heads with his liberal daughter Gloria and her husband Meathead. After eight seasons, the show changed both focus and name. Now, Archie owned a tavern in Queens and the series was called Archie Bunker’s Place, running for four more seasons. Larry David, though, ought to go big or go home if the idea is to shift things around while introducing a playful tweak on real life.

For a new Curb, there’s a natural if daring way to spin things off: leaning into David’s co-star Cheryl Hines and her real-life romance with presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Why not do a new Curb with Larry in a new locale, in the periphery of the White House? Though David’s more outspoken liberal politics may not fully jibe with those of RFK Jr., using Hines’ marriage as a jumping-off point could help fully upend audience expectations. Unlike David’s old friend and Seinfeld co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a new Curb wouldn’t need to be quite as uniquely vicious in its humor as Veep; Larry doesn’t need to work in the White House, per se. But as he still finds himself drawn to Cheryl, even after their divorce, Larry could similarly stumble upon an entirely different world of social mores with which to tamper, butting heads with journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and more.

Now, considering that Larry David’s already said as much, it’s sadly safe to presume that this really is the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and he’ll be content to just relax afterwards. No doubt, the brilliance of the HBO comedy over three decades — this fall will mark 25 years since the aforementioned special aired on the premium network leading to the twelve-season show — is more than enough. (You could say it’s prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good.) But with plenty of other networks being unwilling to let so many older series truly die, here’s a case of one show where hopefully Larry changes his mind and just keeps making episodes, whether they have the all-too-familiar and jaunty theme music and lowercase title greeting us each week.

Curb Your Enthusiasm’s final season premieres February 4 at 10:00 PM ET on HBO and Max. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Josh Spiegel is a writer and critic who lives in Phoenix with his wife, two sons, and far too many cats. Follow him on Bluesky at @mousterpiece.