Everything You Need to Know About ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ As It Bids Farewell

After 25 years, Larry David’s game-changing sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm returns for its 12th and final season on Feb. 4, kicking off a 10-episode run culminating in the series finale on April 7. When it premiered, the show was unlike anything else on the air, wringing laughs from improvised dialogue and skewering Hollywood pretension while also focusing squarely on the awkward social interactions and slice-of-life pet peeves that made Seinfeld such a hit. The comedy follows the adventures of a fictionalized version of Seinfeld cocreator David, 76, plus a sprawling cast of characters that includes Larry’s patient wife (and, later, ex-wife) Cheryl (Cheryl Hines, 58); his manager and best friend, Jeff (Jeff Garlin, 61); Jeff’s hilariously antagonistic wife, Susie (Susie Essman, 68); and, later, Larry’s new roommate, Leon (J.B. Smoove, 58). Here, nine facts that might help you curb your sadness about the end of one of the funniest comedies in American TV history.

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(Left to right) Jeff Garlin, Larry David and Cheryl Hines in "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection

The show has been going strong — off and on — since 1999

Larry David premiered his new semi-fictionalized, totally improvised comedy concept with an HBO special on October 17, 1999. Deadline critic Phil Gallo called it “the work of genius” and “the comedic equivalent of The Blair Witch Project,” and HBO decided to bring it back for a 10-episode season in October 2000. To put into perspective just how long ago that is, Bill Clinton was in the White House and Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out” was a top-20 tune.

Nobody knows what the next joke will be

The magic of Curb Your Enthusiasm is that there’s no script. Instead, David and the creative team put together a brief outline (about seven pages or so) in which they lay out the main plot points of the episode rather than write jokes or dialogue. The actors then try out different takes, which the editors cut into a coherent narrative. “You have to be so in the moment and listen to what everybody’s saying and respond, because it’s improvised,” Essman told Vulture, “and it’s just pure play.”

John P. Johnson/HBO

‘Curb’ inadvertently helped solve a murder case … really!

In 2003, 24-year-old Juan Catalan was arrested for killing a 16-year-old girl named Martha Puebla, but he had an alibi: He swore he was at Dodger Stadium when the murder was committed. Catalan’s legal team scoured TV footage to try to find proof he was at the game that night, but they found it in the unlikeliest of places. The wrongfully accused suspect shares the frame with David in unused footage shot during a baseball game for the season four episode “The Car Pool Lane,” in which Larry hires a prostitute so that he can use the HOV lane to get to the game on time. The one-in-a-million coincidence inspired a Netflix documentary called Long Shot, in which David describes the incident as “maybe something I could impress a date with.”