Season 7 is the peak of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's consistently hilarious, boasts the greatest story arc in the series, and writing one of Larry David's greatest wrongs.
Season 7 actually gets off to a bit of a shaky start, spending two episodes to hastily write off the Blacks family (with the exception of Leon, who stays behind). Ultimately I do think this was for the best, the season's main storyline wouldn't work with Loretta around, but was a bit of a shame coming off of the heartwarming Season 6 finale. Thankfully, Season 7 quickly makes up for this with hands down the greatest story arc in the whole series: The Seinfeld reunion. That's right, this entire season was about Larry writing and shooting a Seinfeld reunion, bringing the cast back together for one final show, and it's easily the best TV show reunion ever. For starters, it's a "producing a film" plotline, which I will always be fond of. You get to see the casting, screenwriting, table read, and shooting phases of making a Seinfeld episode and I just find that really fascinating. And on a comedy standpoint, this storyline allows Larry David to get a bit meta, from poking fan at how Larry based George on himself, to lampshading how reunion episodes usually don't work, to frequently bringing up the controversy over the finale. And speaking of which, adding even more to how awesome this storyline is is the fact that the fictional reunion episode is also a genuinely great episode of Seinfeld in its own right, and a way better ending than the one we actually got.
The story arc is more than just fanservice, though, as the reason why Larry made the reunion in the first place was so that he could cast Cheryl in it and win her back. The addition of these personal stakes makes the season way more compelling and fun, and by having Larry date around while still ultimately trying to get back with Cheryl allows for the perfect balance of poking fun at Larry's dating life while keeping Cheryl in the show as a straight man. Trust me, the show never gets this balance right again. As far as the general comedy goes, this season is absolutely fantastic. There's not a single weak episode in the pack, not a single joke that falls flat. The improv is on point, the Rube Goldbergian subplots are tight, and as a whole, this season caught me off guard with its jokes and one-liners more than any other season of Curb.
Unlike Seasons 4 and 6, however, this season's high points can be absolutely soaring at times:
The Reunion: While not the funniest episode of the show, The Reunion was just incredibly cool to watch. Seeing all of the cast members of Seinfeld reunite after all these years to shoot a reunion is just great, and all of those jokes poking fun at the awful Seinfeld ending slayed me.
The Black Swan: Maybe it's just me but I really feel like the golf club gets some of the show's best episodes, probably because of their often surreal premises and the way they utilize the supporting cast. Case in point, The Black Swan is absolutely hysterical, especially once Larry accidentally kills the titular swan. The episode suddenly transforms from an average Curb episode to a straight-up murder mystery, and it's glorious.
The Table Read: Easily one of my favorite episodes of the show, The Table Read is jam-packed with subplots, clever ideas, and jokes making for probably the highest joke-per-minute ratio of the whole series. For starters, watching the reunion table read was so cool, and I love how the reunion episode took beats from some of the best episodes of Curb. But outside of the fanservice element, The Table Read is just damn funny, from the rash, to Funkhouser's awful joke, to the pen. But then there's Leon posing as a Jewish doctor named Duberstein, which might just be one of the funniest subplots in the series. By the time he said you have to have a Bar Mitzvah every 13 years to "recharge your mitzvah", I was on the floor dying of laughter.
Seinfeld: Hands down the best finale in the whole series. Seinfeld finally shows off large portions of the reunion, and as mentioned above, it's a genuinely fantastic episode of the series. But it also wraps up a bunch of subplots like Michael's supposed disease, introduces an important new character in Mocha Joe, and has the funniest cliffhanger in the whole series. I still quote "do you respect wood" to this day, and Larry almost getting back with Cheryl only to ruin it at the last minute is peak Curb.
Overall, Season 7 is the best Curb Your Enthusiasm by a long shot. Every single episode is funny, the main story arc manages to be a meta spectacle that still maintains personal stakes, and the last two episodes are easily some of the best in the series.
5/5 Stars
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