Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm, “No Lessons Learned” | Season 12, Episode 10

“I’m 76 years old and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life.”

It’s something Larry says only a few scenes into the series finale of Curb—a throwaway line, really, spoken to a pair of one-scene characters we’ll never see again, but one imbued with much more meaning because of the episode in which it appears. And it’s not the only time the subject comes up, even outside the courtroom. Just a couple scenes later, while urging Larry to let Richard Lewis have his illusions about his love life, Susie says, “You never learn your lesson.”

So much of Larry David’s work has revolved around the “no hugging and no learning” mantra originally used to describe the Seinfeld formula, nodded to with the title of this finale as much as the actual conversations about growth and learning. We know this isn’t a show that would ever end with Larry having an epiphany that sticks, nor would it conclude with any cheesy outpourings of emotion.

And yet we, as viewers, have a degree of real emotional connection to these characters! This show began over 23 years ago, and if you’re a longtime fan, you want some payoff, even if that has nothing to do with plot. It’s the reason 76 million viewers tuned in for the Seinfeld finale in May 1998, and it’s why so many came away disappointed, left hanging by some unfulfilled promise. How do you end a comedy series that resists sentiment at every turn while still offering some degree of closure for the audience? It’s a difficult task, and one that I also expect to see It’s Always Sunny tackle in the next few years.

In the end, I think “No Lessons Learned” actually does just about the best it could—which is, on the whole, very good. Sure, it makes some of the same mistakes as the finale it so directly apes, especially by trotting out a whole series of guest stars to cite events from earlier in the show as evidence for Larry’s essential selfishness. I’m in a nostalgic enough state of mind to smile at many of these appearances, but they’re far from necessary, and that middle chunk of the episode doesn’t quite overcome the inherent superfluousness of clip shows. Over the course of the trial, we get references to (deep breath): “Beloved Aunt,” “The Group,” “Trick or Treat,” “The Doll,” “The Special Section,” “The 5 Wood,” “The Car Pool Lane,” “The Seder,” “The Ski Lift,” “The Ida Funkhouser Roadside Memorial,” “The N Word,” “Denise Handicap,” “The Bare Midriff,” “The Black Swan,” “Vow of Silence,” “Larry vs. Michael J. Fox,” “Insufficient Praise,” “The Spite Store,” “IRASSHAIMASE!” “The Mormon Advantage,” “Atlanta,” “The Lawn Jockey,” “Disgruntled,” and “Ken/Kendra.” If we were looking to cut down this 53-minute finale to a normal episode’s length, there’s plenty of material that could go.

Of course, Larry David is fully aware of the risk in this guest-star parade—more aware than anyone. David may be a longtime defender of the Seinfeld finale, but he’s also long since reached a point where he can acknowledge that it didn’t work for everyone and poke fun at himself. So this episode feels like a surprisingly telling encapsulation of the real-life man’s perspective: he still doesn’t give a shit about pleasing crowds, but his trolling comes from a place of playfulness more than stubbornness. He’s sticking to his guns enough that this finale doesn’t feel like a capitulation to fans, but subverting expectations enough that the endpoint isn’t too predictable.

“No Lessons Learned” is replete with self-aware references to the Seinfeld finale’s reception, especially when Leon offers his thoughts after binging the show for the first time. This is the perfect ending use of Leon—it’s so in character that he’d lock onto Jerry’s success rate with women, calling the series “a show about weekly ass” and later priming us for the final scenes by mentioning that he heard Larry fucked up the Seinfeld finale.

David also still manages to make this feel like a normal episode of Curb amid the high stakes of the trial, even with the unusual Atlanta setting. I’ve taken issue with the long episode lengths in the past, but 50-ish minutes actually does feel about right here; it allows David to have his cake and eat it too, providing several classic lower-key subplots to balance everything else out. I didn’t love last week’s Cheryl story, with her one-note reaction to learning about the reason for Larry’s “floor fucker” tendencies, but her reaction to Larry sharing her dislike of Mexican food is much, much funnier because it’s more specific and more in character. And it just gets funnier each time it comes up.

Jeff’s scheme to steal Auntie Rae’s salad dressing recipe for Susie’s anniversary present is also classic Curb material; in fact, Jeff needing to buy a gift for Susie feels like a cornerstone of the show at this point, and Larry even hangs a lampshade on the fact that we already did this earlier in the season. But it’s funny enough, and it gets the job done in eventually derailing Larry’s already-dwindling chances of avoiding jailtime when Rae turns on him.

Another way that David manages to have his cake and eat it too: this is by no means a sentimental finale, but it does feel infused with a little more warmth than usual, to the point that my roommate and I said “aww” a couple times while watching. Every Richard Lewis appearance this season has been subtly affecting, and his newest doomed attempt at love is no exception. The Cynthia story allows a fitting final conflict for Larry and Richard (“You think you’re suicide material?”), and Larry’s indelicate probing for details about her suicide attempt is one of his funnier inappropriate lines of inquiry. It’s true that a big reason for the story’s sneaky poignancy is the fact that Lewis isn’t with us anymore—but you can tell that Larry David didn’t want to end this show without including his best friend, and that love comes across.

Larry’s reunion with Jerry Seinfeld is just as heartwarming in its own way, and it ties into the thematic arc of this finale more directly. Again, we see real affection creep in here, a little more than usual: Jerry’s first appearance serves no narrative purpose besides making space for some comfortable riffing, and you can hear David’s genuine laughter as we cut away. Later, Larry’s jail-cell conversation about his pants tent directly parallels the first episode of the show, just like the jail-cell conversation from the end of Seinfeld paralleled the beginning of that show—there’s even an almost-identical dolly back that suggests the finales really could end the same way. But Jerry arrives like a knight in shining armor, armed with some wisdom and a handy (foreshadowed) contrivance to save Larry from a predictable fate, and we’re left with a final interaction about how they should’ve ended the finale this way.

I began this season slightly dreading ten just-okay episodes that would inevitably pale in comparison to the first eight seasons; that was essentially the experience I’d had with the prior three seasons, to varying degrees. And to be sure, season twelve of Curb Your Enthusiasm is not one of its best, with less of the consistency and less of the ingenuity that made those aughts seasons some of my favorite TV comedy seasons ever. But I’ve found myself pleasantly surprised on the whole—maybe because my expectations were low, or maybe because writing about this show has given me a stronger appreciation for nü-Curb than I would’ve felt otherwise.

So I can’t tell if my tender feelings for “No Lessons Learned” are truly deserved. All I know is what I feel when I watch Larry David shooting the shit with Jerry Seinfeld on screen—along with J. B. Smoove, and Richard Lewis, and Jeff Garlin and Susie Essman and Cheryl Hines and Ted Danson. I’d watch them talk about nothing all day, no lessons necessary.

Stray observations

• No Freddy Funkhouser?
• Ted Danson getting arrested on camera is a pretty perfect ending for his character.
• Allison Janney fits perfectly in her short screen time (anchoring the final stare-down of the show), and Greg Kinnear sells Earl Mack’s passionate recitation of Larry’s various social faux pas. But Dean Norris is pretty underused.
• I do think the appearance of a 21-years-older Tara Michaelson from “The Doll” is pretty funny (albeit dark), partly because it’s actually a new joke compared to most of the cameos. And it’s the same actress!
• I almost didn’t catch the quick shot of Cynthia tossing her keys to the valet and saying, “Keep it close,” tying back to the tossers debate from a couple weeks ago. Real big-shot behavior.
• Shout out to Horsecock Williams, the sympathy snatcher.
• “You ever crutch fuck?”
• Check TIME later today/this evening if you’re interested in my interview with J. B. Smoove (which still has not happened, as of writing this).
• It was a real honor to cover the final season of such an iconic and long-running show, and writing about this on a weekly basis was a fun challenge. Thanks for reading!