Curb Your Enthusiasm wrapped up twelve seasons with the series finale last Sunday night. The episode, entitled "No Lessons Learned" was a callback to the 1998 Seinfeld finale, which David wrote. The Seinfeld finale had a huge audience, but left viewers confused and unimpressed. In Sunday's finale, were the "lessons not learned" about David's character in the show, or about Larry David's decision to write the Seinfeld finale the way he did? We cannot know that, because so much of the show itself is ambiguous and about ambiguity itself. The finale had David inadvertently breaking the law, going to trial, and being sent to jail, just like the characters of Seinfeld. But it was done differently. Was it different enough? The finale garnered 1.1 million viewers compared to Seinfeld's 76.3 million viewers for the finale in 1997, but Curb Your Enthusiasm aired on HBO in the age of streaming, so 1.1 million is now considered a successful episode.
The reviews of the episode were great, and audiences considered it a step up from the Seinfeld finale it spoofs. But how accurate was it legally? Jill Harness gets a lawyer's opinion on the courtroom drama in the final episode that will show us how Larry David may have learned some lessons about TV writing, but maybe not so much about legal procedures.
