Curb Your Enthusiasm, WWDITS: So Long, & Thanks For All The Fish

This column was originally published as part of our newsletter The Daily Show on December 3, 2024. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)

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FOR MANY TV JUNKIES, 2024 could go down as a year of considerable upheaval with three noteworthy shows bowing out: comedy heavyweight Curb Your Enthusiasm, welterweight What We Do in the Shadows and wildcard Evil. While Curb and WWDITS may have lost a bit of mojo in the seasons preceding their toodle-oos, the loss of Evil hurts more because it felt like the show still had so much fuel left in its tank. But there’s no denying who leaves behind the biggest vacuum.

For 12 seasons, over a quarter of a century, Larry David’s cantankerous alter-ego called it as he saw it like his life depended on it. LD was our crusader for all of life’s trivial indignities. He was the ultimate social assassin, the Jason Bourne of etiquette, a Shmohawk with Shakespearean verve. He was the man you needed in the middle seat of a dinner party to keep the conversation flowing. But he was also the man you shouldn’t have invited in the first place. Not one to go along to get along, he had a way of making his pathological behaviours seem like necessary virtues. Between petty grievances and derailed gatherings, he turned every unwritten rule of polite society on its head.

Sometimes, Larry said things widely accepted but seldom expressed: if someone has already stood in a buffet line, they should be allowed to cut ahead for seconds; don’t request “no gifts” and then expect gifts; don’t call it an “anonymous donation” if you are claiming credit for it in private and letting it spread through word of mouth. Sometimes our man without a filter said things polite society was not ready to hear: No to house tours, singing “Happy Birthday”, clinking glasses during toasts, and waiting for everyone’s food to arrive before digging in. Sometimes, he asked the hard questions: Do you tell a blind man his girlfriend has been tricking him into believing she is a supermodel? Is a kamikaze pilot really one if he survived the Pacific War? Most importantly, do you respect wood?

Sometimes, while elevating small talk to medium talk and mapping the boundaries of what should and shouldn’t be said, he did the most outrageous things. Lest we forget, he is a man who once chose to save his Blackberry before a drowning girl, stole shoes from the Holocaust Museum after stepping in dog poop, opened a coffee shop out of spite, invited a sex offender to Passover Seder because he gave a solid golf tip, led people into believing a painting of Jesus was weeping when the tear was in fact a splash from his out-of-control urine stream, and foisted a blundering assistant on someone else only to be hoisted with his own petard.

In the final season, Larry is put on trial for an act of courtesy, something of an anomaly for TV’s favourite curmudgeon. But of all the shameful things he has done, he is taken to court for violating election integrity laws. The violation? Offering a bottle of water to Auntie Rae (Ellia English) while she waited in the searing Georgian heat to cast her vote. This rare display of chivalry is ennobled as an act of civil disobedience in response to a ridiculous law. The media turns him into a national hero, bagging him the admiration of Bruce Springsteen and the attention of Sienna Miller. But come trial, all the people he has wronged take the stand as character witnesses to Larry’s long history of questionable behaviour.

The show brought down the curtains with an almost beat-for-beat recreation of the divisive finale of Seinfeld, the landmark comedy David co-created. Seinfeld’s nine-season run ended with its four leads on trial for their “criminal indifference” and not being “good Samaritans” — the opposite of what Larry is arrested for. But both trials end in a guilty verdict, its leads sentenced to a year in prison, and a callback to pet peeves about “second buttons” and “pants tents” from their respective series premieres.

One of the things that made Curb different from Seinfeld was its looser structure. David would write a detailed outline for each episode, let his ensemble of friends and gifted comedians improvise, and put together the funniest lines in the final cut. The cast dynamics were so well defined that the show managed to overcome even the storylines that were running on fumes. It is not just Larry we will miss, but all the people in his orbit. Leon Black (JB Smoove) and all his off-the-cuff one-liners. Susie Greene (Susie Essman) going from “Hey Lar” to “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU FOUR EYED BALD FUCK!” within minutes. Richard Lewis’s self-parody insisting every new girlfriend is the one and fighting over the bill. Arch frenemies Ted Danson and Marty Funkhouser (Bob Einstein). Jeff Green (Jeff Garlin) playing off of Larry. And all the guest stars: the Seinfeld four, Ben Stiller, Jon Hamm, Bill Hader, Chris Williams, Martin Scorsese, to name a few.

It isn’t a stretch to suggest Curb will end up being just as influential as Seinfeld. Take for instance the words and phrases Larry has introduced into our lexicon. If Seinfeld coined close-talkers, double-dippers, re-gifters and all that yada yada yada, Curb gave us chat ‘n’ cut, stop ‘n’ chat, the accidental text on purpose, outfit trackers, birthday cut-offs and sorry windows. When you think someone is lying, the urge is strong to squint your eyes and stare them down as if you’re peering into their soul. Just remembering the running gags, the celebrity guests and Larry’s endless quibbling, the urge is equally strong to go back and rewatch the whole show. If not right away, maybe the next time you’re lampin’.

What We Do in the Shadows ends its six-season run in December. Meaning we only have about a few nights left with the undead residents of New York’s Staten Island. The quality may have dipped a bit in the final season. But the dip doesn’t put the show’s legacy in any danger. For when it was firing on all cylinders, there was nothing else quite like it. The TV spinoff of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s 2014 mockumentary film found a delightfully off-kilter mix of laughs and lunacy. The coming together of Kayvan Novak (as Nandor the Relentless), Matt Berry (as Laszlo Cravensworth), Natasia Demetriou (as Nadja of Antipaxos), Harvey Guillén (as Guillermo de la Cruz) and Mark Proksch (as Colin Robinson) felt like the long-withheld fulfilment of a wish for a horror comedy you didn’t think you needed. What made this vampire farce a rare film-to-TV triumph was a character-driven focus sharper than its blood-coated fangs.

Often, the most enterprising shows are the ones you never see coming. Like an endearing nephew of The X-Files, Evil was the best kind of hangout show for genre fiends. If you found the first season even mildly interesting but stopped watching after, hang in there. Because the ingredients only start to jell, come Season 2. Priest-in-training David Acosta (Mike Colter), forensic psychologist Dr. Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) and tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) are enlisted by the Catholic Church to assess killers, Satanists, werewolves, cults, witches, alleged prophets of God and all varieties of possessions. David’s faith and Kristen and Ben’s lack thereof are challenged by cases that sometimes neither science nor religion can explain by itself. Their convictions just as much as their friendship are put to the sternest test when Dr. Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson), a man in the seeming employ of literal and figurative demons, decides to bring “the ultimate evil” into the world. 

Creators Robert and Michelle King gave us a show both consumed by and fearful of our tech-addled world, using the medium of horror to convey what it’s like to live through an era of misinformation, right-wing populism and endless institutional evils. Once the show found its legs, it took more risks, playing around with horror conventions. Topical discussions around inceldom, cryptocurrency and healthcare discrimination were folded into its monster-of-the-week episodes. For a while, anything seemed possible. Until the show was cancelled. 

The cathartic season finale felt like a group hug that ushered out the show for all involved: the characters, the cast and the audience watching. Although the show was slept-on for a majority of its run, it has earned itself a devoted fanbase, which includes Stephen King. But it remains to be seen if a shoutout from the King of Horror can earn the Kings’ show an 11th-hour reprieve. Seeing as you couldn’t watch the show without thinking if it would be renewed for another season or not, it is a miracle it stayed afloat for four seasons. Instead of overextending its stay past the expiration date, maybe it’s best it bowed out while still ahead.

For now, as much as all three shows will be missed, all we can really do is be thankful for the memories.

Stream Curb Your Enthusiasm here.