Larry David ended his heralded comedic HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Sunday night with an episode fictionally set in Atlanta, where he’s standing trial for having the temerity to hand a bottle of water to a woman waiting in line to vote. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes a cameo appearance, too. Spoiler alert: don’t read any further if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know what happens.
That was one of the widely criticized voting rights restrictions passed in Georgia in 2021.
The final episode of “Curb” was basically an echo of the 1998 series finale of “Seinfeld,” the show David and Jerry Seinfeld turned into a 1990s phenomenon. Many viewers were unhappy with that series finale in part because the core quartet of Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer ended up in prison.
Like the “Seinfeld” finale, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” trial featured character witnesses basically recounting in example after example how terrible David was. A jury then found David guilty and sentenced him to one year in prison, the same punishment that the “Seinfeld” crew received 26 years ago.
But unlike “Seinfeld,” the actual Jerry Seinfeld spied a juror outside, breaking the sequester, resulting in a mistrial causing the sentence to be thrown out.
In a pure wink-wink meta moment, Seinfeld told David: “You don’t want to end up like this. Nobody wants to see it. Trust me!”
As the pair left the jail, David said: “This is how we should’ve ended the finale!”
Seinfeld: “My gosh, you’re right, I didn’t think of that!”
Images of a restaurant review from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also pop up for a moment in an early scene but the story appears to be entirely fictional and set in a fake restaurant.
Credit: HBO
Credit: HBO
Credit: HBO
Credit: HBO
