‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Finale: The Story Behind the ‘Seinfeld’ Twist

Curb Your Enthusiasm ended its 12-season, 24-year run this past Sunday in perhaps the most fitting way possible: with a do-over of Seinfeld’s infamous series finale. In the final moments, Larry David was sent to jail for violating Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, after some of the series’ most memorably aggrieved guest stars testified to his extreme offensiveness. It was a direction that many fans saw coming from a mile away, thanks to carefully seeded references to Seinfeld’s much-maligned last episode—and David’s hand in it—throughout the season.

But Curb put a last-minute twist on this familiar ending, by having Jerry Seinfeld bail Larry out after a scant few moments in a jail cell. Turns out that one of Larry’s jurors broke his sequestration, and thus, the whole thing was declared a mistrial. Larry David was free to roam the Earth once more, pissing people off with his extreme impropriety.

While David and Curb executive producer/director Jeff Schaffer have contemplated ending the show before, Schaffer tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed that as soon as the Seinfeld idea came to mind, they knew it was time to wrap. “That’s the funniest way to go out and the most Larry way to go out,” he said, in a conversation following the Sunday night finale. “‘Oh, you didn't like the other finale? Hey! Guess what? Here’s a big steaming pile of seconds. Choke on it!’”

Read more at The Daily Beast.