PicoBlog

“I’m 76 years old and I have never learned a lesson in my entire life.”

It’s something Larry says only a few scenes into the series finale of Curb—a throwaway line, really, spoken to a pair of one-scene characters we’ll never see again, but one imbued with much more meaning because of the episode in which it appears. And it’s not the only time the subject comes up, even outside the courtroom. Just a couple scenes later, while urging Larry to let Richard Lewis have his illusions about his love life, Susie says, “You never learn your lesson.”

So much of Larry David’s work has revolved around the “no hugging and no learning” mantra originally used to describe the Seinfeld formula, nodded to with the title of this finale as much as the actual conversations about growth and learning. We know this isn’t a show that would ever end with Larry having an epiphany that sticks, nor would it conclude with any cheesy outpourings of emotion.

And yet we, as viewers, have a degree of real emotional connection to these characters! This show began over 23 years ago, and if you’re a longtime fan, you want some payoff, even if that has nothing to do with plot. It’s the reason 76 million viewers tuned in for the Seinfeld finale in May 1998, and it’s why so many came away disappointed, left hanging by some unfulfilled promise. How do you end a comedy series that resists sentiment at every turn while still offering some degree of closure for the audience? It’s a difficult task, and one that I also expect to see It’s Always Sunny tackle in the next few years.

In the end, I think “No Lessons Learned” actually does just about the best it could—which is, on the whole, very good. Sure, it makes some of the same mistakes as the finale it so directly apes, especially by trotting out a whole series of guest stars to cite events from earlier in the show as evidence for Larry’s essential selfishness. I’m in a nostalgic enough state of mind to smile at many of these appearances, but they’re far from necessary, and that middle chunk of the episode doesn’t quite overcome the inherent superfluousness of clip shows. Over the course of the trial, we get references to (deep breath): “Beloved Aunt,” “The Group,” “Trick or Treat,” “The Doll,” “The Special Section,” “The 5 Wood,” “The Car Pool Lane,” “The Seder,” “The Ski Lift,” “The Ida Funkhouser Roadside Memorial,” “The N Word,” “Denise Handicap,” “The Bare Midriff,” “The Black Swan,” “Vow of Silence,” “Larry vs. Michael J. Fox,” “Insufficient Praise,” “The Spite Store,” “IRASSHAIMASE!” “The Mormon Advantage,” “Atlanta,” “The Lawn Jockey,” “Disgruntled,” and “Ken/Kendra.” If we were looking to cut down this 53-minute finale to a normal episode’s length, there’s plenty of material that could go.

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