Larry David has confirmed that a 12th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm is in the works. There’s no release date set for the next installment of the Curb saga, but the Seinfeld co-creator’s ad-libbed antics will eventually be back on HBO’s airwaves. It’s great that Curb fans have a new season to look forward to, but the producers’ original plan to end with the most recent season would’ve been perfect. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, David’s co-writer and showrunner Jeff Schaffer revealed the original plans to conclude the series with the season 11 finale.
Schaffer told THR, “Every season is the last season.” David and co. never go into a season of Curb with the intention of making more after it. Making the show is such a huge undertaking – dovetailing storylines, improvising dialogue, cutting hours of filmed material down to brisk 30-minute episodes – that the Curb team never plans more than one season at a time. So, every season functions as a possible final season.
Some of the show’s season finale episodes would’ve made great series finales. Season 3 ended with Larry showing solidarity to a chef with Tourette’s syndrome by shouting out a series of expletives. Jeff, Cheryl, Richard Lewis, and everyone else in the restaurant follow suit, launching into one sweary tirade after another in quick succession. The camera pushing in through a crowd of restaurant patrons yelling out curse words to the proud look on Larry’s face would’ve been a perfect final shot for the series. Similarly, the season 4 finale would’ve sent Curb out on a high note with Larry’s Broadway debut as Max Bialystock in The Producers. The season 5 finale is literally called “The End.” Larry dies, goes to Heaven, and meets his angelic guides before being sent back to Earth because it’s not his time.
The season 8 story arc sees Larry moving to New York for a few months just to avoid helping out at a charity event. The season ends with Larry moving all the way to Paris to get out of yet another charitable obligation. The season 9 arc sees Larry being sentenced to death by the Ayatollah and desperately trying to get it revoked. It ends with Larry being chased down by an Iranian man who hasn’t heard that the fatwa has been overturned. The season 10 arc sees Larry opening a “spite store” next door to Mocha Joe’s coffeehouse to run him out of business. It ends with the spite store being burned to the ground and Mocha Joe buying a “spite house” next door to Larry.
Any of these season finales could’ve been a series finale and Curb fans would’ve been satisfied. But the ending that David and Schaffer had in mind for season 11 would’ve been much more definitive. While they were filming the finale episode, the crew got a take of Larry’s dramatic death scene – just in case they wanted to use it. Schaffer joked, “If this is how we go, this is how we go!” They got the shot, but decided to leave the season more open-ended with a more ambiguous fate for Larry after David told Schaffer, “I’m not ready to die.”
Killing off Larry might seem like a step too far for a sitcom, but this is no ordinary sitcom. Throughout the show’s run, Larry has invited a sex offender to Passover, stolen flowers from a memorial site, and masqueraded as an incest survivor. In the season 11 finale alone, Larry threatened Alexander Vindman, talked a monogamous Mormon into giving polygamy a try, and stole a pair of shoes from a Holocaust Museum exhibit. His untimely passing would make a surprisingly fitting ending for the series.
It would’ve been particularly fitting at the tail end of season 11’s story arc. Schaffer told THR that the season’s story arc “lent itself too perfectly” to an ending in which Larry bites the dust. The season began with a man drowning in Larry’s pool, à la Sunset Boulevard. After being threatened with legal action and even jail time because he didn’t have a five-foot fence around the pool, Larry was blackmailed by the victim’s brother into casting his hilariously untalented daughter in his new streaming series.
Throughout the season, Larry canvassed for a mayoral candidate, donated a boatload of money to political campaigns, and dated a relentlessly unpleasant city councilwoman (played brilliantly by guest star Tracey Ullman) in a desperate attempt to get the five-foot fence law repealed. After going to all that effort just to remove fences from pools, ending with Larry drowning to death in a fenceless pool would’ve been morbidly ironic, and a perfect conclusion to this delightfully cynical sitcom.
Having said that, more Curb is never a bad thing. If Larry had died in season 11, season 12 wouldn’t be on the way. So, maybe the writers made the right call by letting him live.