Jerry Seinfeld & Larry David Are Totally Right About How Seinfeld’s Finale SHOULD Have Ended

Jerry Seinfeld & Larry David Are Totally Right About How Seinfeld’s Finale SHOULD Have Ended

WARNING! This article contains spoilers for Curb Your Enthusiasm’s series finale!

The series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm sees Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld reassess how they should have ended Seinfeld, and their new insight couldn’t be better (despite being 26 years too late). Premiering 25 years after the mockumentary pilot, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s ending brings back plenty of familiar faces from the show’s 12 seasons as Larry David is put on trial for breaking a law about bringing voters water in Atlanta. In brilliant Larry David fashion, his arrest in the season 12 premiere was a ploy for the comedian to remake the divisive series finale of Seinfeld from 1998. This time, however, the ending worked.

Seinfeld’s ending has long been considered one of the most controversial TV finales of all time, which is a reality that co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld have carried around in the decades since. However, they finally had the chance to redeem the divisive episode in Curb Your Enthusiasm’s 2024 finale, which put Larry in almost exactly the same position as the four main characters from Seinfeld. Curb Your Enthusiasm remakes Seinfeld’s finale almost shot-for-shot as returning characters take the stand as witnesses and the judge ultimately sentences Larry to one year in prison, but a last-minute twist with Jerry Seinfeld effectively “fixes” their last TV show ending.

Jerry Seinfeld & Larry David Are Totally Right About How Seinfeld’s Finale SHOULD Have Ended

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Jerry Seinfeld & Larry David Are Right: Seinfeld Should Have Ended With The Characters Being Freed From Jail

Larry David gets the ending right after 26 years

The series finale of Seinfeld concluded after Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer were sentenced to a year in prison for breaking the Good Samaritan Law, with the final moments seeing Jerry doing stand-up for his fellow inmates. Up until the last few minutes, it seemed like this was exactly where Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12, episode 10, “No Lessons Learned” was headed. However, after Larry went to his jail cell to await his impending prison transfer, Jerry Seinfeld continued his Curb cameo by walking in and informing Larry that he was free to leave.

Jerry had seen one of the jurors breaking their sequestering rule by going to a nearby restaurant, leading to a mistrial that declared Larry’s sentencing void. As Jerry and the newly-freed Larry walked out of jail together, Larry mused that “this is how we should’ve ended the finale.” Jerry then chimed in, “You’re right. How did we not think of this?” Considering how the series finale is now Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s highest-rated episode on IMDb, dethroning the three-way-tied “The Doll,” “Palestinian Chicken,” and “Seinfeld,” Larry and Jerry couldn’t be more right.

Seinfeld characters Krammer, George, Elaine, and Jerry

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Seinfeld’s cast is full of talented actors, like Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who give life to some of the most hilarious ’90s characters.

Part of the fun of each Seinfeld episode was seeing the main characters get away with their shameful actions or mishaps without any serious consequences, providing somewhat of a fantasy outcome for viewers to live through vicariously. Seinfeld’s characters often said or did things that most people never would because they aren’t socially acceptable, would inevitably cause trouble, or could lead to terrible consequences, which made the show highly entertaining to watch. Curb Your Enthusiasm had this same effect with Larry David, as he often found himself in social misunderstandings or feuds that had the potential to derail his life or career, but somehow never did.

TV Show

Finale Episode Title

IMDb Rating

Seinfeld

“The Finale”

7.8/10

Curb Your Enthusiasm

“No Lessons Learned”

9.4/10

Consequently, seeing Seinfeld’s characters land in jail in the show’s ending took away from this enjoyable part of the show, which was a huge gamble considering how much it strayed from the general premise of the sitcom. It seemed as if there was one last punchline missing from Seinfeld’s season 9 finale that could have made their jail twist work, and Larry David finally found it and implemented it in Curb Your Enthusiasm’s ending. Had they actually used this ending for Seinfeld, the co-creators could have made the meta gag even better by having Larry David himself free Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer from jail.

Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Ending Better Highlights Larry David’s “No Lessons Learned” Mantra

Larry faces no consequences and learns no lessons

Curb Your Enthusiasm’s ending twist of Larry’s prison sentence being reversed is also a great demonstration of Larry David’s “no hugging, no learning” rule for Seinfeld. Under these guidelines for the sitcom, the characters wouldn’t have emotional moments where they hug and grow after a difficult time, and no lessons would be learned from their mistakes going forward. Rather, his characters would remain flawed throughout the entirety of the series, essentially being the same misguided people they were after the finale as they were at the start of Seinfeld’s pilot episode (or second episode, for Elaine).

By having the protagonists serve prison time in Seinfeld’s ending, the characters finally pay the consequences for their actions and are inevitably forced to learn from that mistake upon release. Curb Your Enthusiasm’s ending, on the other hand, gives Larry no such fate, with the finale even including a moment where Larry tells a young child, “I am 76 years old and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life.” When Larry’s sentence is reversed, the notion that he would ever learn his lesson and change vanishes, with the hit HBO original show instead concluding with Larry and his friends arguing about nothing on a plane.

Like Larry David, Seinfeld’s Main Characters Never Actually Deserved To End Up In Jail

They’re menaces to social graces, but not dangerous

Larry David and the cast of Seinfeld

Custom Image by Sam MacLennan

Larry ending up in jail was arguably only a product of his many misunderstandings over the years with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s witnesses who took the stand, which is the same case for Seinfeld’s group. The fictional Larry David and Seinfeld’s main characters have all done unforgivable things over the course of their respective shows, but nothing that quite warrants a long stint in prison. Being unhelpful bystanders or giving a woman a water bottle in a voting line are far from the worst actions committed by the protagonists. Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld’s protagonists aren’t dangers to society – society’s social graces and norms, certainly, but not the safety of society at large.

The idea of the characters facing a prison sentence for the accrual of their seemingly innocuous misdeeds over a decade is a funny idea, but the execution of it wasn’t fitting to Seinfeld’s finale. Furthermore, it was over a Good Samaritan Law violation where the protagonists were wrongly mocking the victim of the robbery, but it’s also not too reasonable to expect them to step in when the criminal was armed. Larry going to jail in Curb Your Enthusiasm for giving Auntie Rae a water bottle in the Atlanta heat was purposefully ridiculous, which is why it’s much more fitting that he never ended up serving time for breaking the law.

Source: IMDb

Seinfeld Poster

Seinfeld

Comedy

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Seinfeld stars Jerry Seinfeld as a stand-up comedian whose life in New York City is made even more chaotic by his quirky group of friends who join him in wrestling with life’s most perplexing yet often trivial questions. Often described as “a show about nothing,” Seinfeld mines the humor in life’s mundane situations like waiting in line, searching for a lost item, or the trials and tribulations of dating. Co-starring is Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Jerry’s ex-girlfriend and current platonic pal, Elaine Benes; Jason Alexander as George Costanza, Jerry’s neurotic hard-luck best friend; and Michael Richards as Jerry’s eccentric neighbor, Kramer.

Cast

Jerry Seinfeld
, Julia Louis-Dreyfus
, Jason Alexander
, Michael Richards

Release Date

July 5, 1989

Seasons

9

Network

NBC

Showrunner

Larry David