Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” aired its series finale after 24 years and 12 seasons on Sunday, when it reached 1.1 million viewers.
Calculated from a combination of Nielsen’s measurement of linear viewers on the HBO cable channel and Warner Bros. Discovery’s own data regarding streams on Max, this marks the highest viewership of any episode of Season 12, which debuted on Feb. 4.
The finale also drew the “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” largest audience since 2020, when the Season 10 finale hit 1.4 million viewers. That episode predated the launch of Max, and instead streamed on now defunct platforms HBO Go and HBO Now, as well on cable.
Titled “No Lessons Learned,” the episode concluded an arc that began with the Season 12 premiere, wherein David was arrested for giving water to a woman in line to vote in Atlanta. The finale sees David and his entourage through his trial, mirroring the 1998 courtroom finale of “Seinfeld,” which David co-created with Jerry Seinfeld. Referencing that controversial episode, David says to Seinfeld, “I heard some terrible things about it. I heard you fucked it up.”
In a column, Variety chief correspondent Daniel D’Addario wrote, “‘Seinfeld’ was elastic for a network show, but it had its limits. ‘Curb,’ which debuted as a regular series in 2000 after first airing as a special in 1999, is as old as this century, and has moved forward by perpetually pushing limits. It’s done a solid if not always optimally elegant job of tracking the evolving dinner-party trending topics over two decades. The show’s on-the-fly nature — with its wholly improvised conversations built around the loose outline of a plot — effectively invented a category of entertainment, but also means that the show is by its nature a blunt instrument.”
David created “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and executive produces alongside Jeff Garlin and Jeff Schaffer.
