The 9 Best Episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm
The ninth and final installment of our 9 Weeks of Curb series was easily the most difficult. Between the both of us, we’ve watched well over 1,000 hours of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and can truly say only a small handful of episodes are (at their worst) somewhat forgettable.
With 80 episodes to choose from, this list surely won’t satisfy all the die-hard Curbies, but we are pretty confident these are the nine best ones.
The long six-year wait for Season 9 finally comes to end on October 1st.
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Beloved Aunt
A true marvel of an episode. Larry’s aunt-in-law (that’s a thing, right?) passes away, and LD is asked to place the obituary. Let’s just say it’s always best to spell check because misspelling “aunt” can definitely go over poorly.
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The Doll
Larry is at an NBC viewing party, and has an encounter with an NBC exec’s little daughter in which he gives her doll a haircut. To make matters worse, Larry and Jeff attempt to swap out the doll’s head with one from Sammi’s (Jeff’s daughter) doll collection. The imminent Susie meltdown ensues, and it’s arguably the best of the series. “GET ME THE HEAD!”
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The Weatherman
We find out that Larry pees sitting down, he starts to use a cane, and he calls BS on the weatherman regarding his rain predictions. What more could we ask for?
We won’t spoil too much of this episode, but basically Larry plans a day of golf with Jeff and it gets canceled due to “rain”. We all know how false weather predictions can really make or break a day, but we never think to blame the weather channel. We should start considering that.
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The Car Pool Lane
Larry picks up a prostitute so he could use the empty HOV lane en route to a Dodgers baseball game. He also tries to buy marijuana for his dad Nat, to help with his glaucoma.
This episode actually helped to exonerate a man who was put on death row. Defense attorneys looked at outtake footage from the episode filmed at Dodger Stadium, which corroborated defendant Juan Catalan’s alibi that he was at the Dodgers game during the time of the murder. You can read more about the crazy story here.
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The Anonymous Donor
Larry donates a wing to the NRDC under his name, but gets pretty upset when he finds out the other wing was donated by “Anonymous” (actually Ted Danson). Now, it just looks like Larry did it for the credit.
In this episode, we also encounter the unwritten rule of dry cleaning, one that states “at the dry cleaner, sometimes you gain an item that’s not yours, and sometimes you lose an item that’s yours.” Unless, of course, you’re Larry David.
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Denise Handicap
Too many gems to go over in a short synopsis, but what this shows about Larry is that he chooses logic over everything. He decides to date two people with different disabilities and labels them as such in his cell phone. He isn’t the smartest man when it comes to social etiquette, but you can’t say that he doesn’t get what he deserves.
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The Black Swan
Hands down the one episode that we’ve watched the most times. There are just way too many amazing quotes to reference. In this episode, Larry and his golfing gang find themselves on the hole right next to the pond. Out of nowhere a beautiful black swan decides to get a bit too close and personal with Larry, and he completely misjudges its intentions. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well for the swan and the entirety of the episode is based around this. Things really just don’t go well here for him.
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Palestinian Chicken
Perhaps no conflict generates more emotion, rage, and passion than the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has been raging on forever.
One-state solution? Two-state solution? No. Larry and Jeff have the answer. “What the [Palestinians] should do is send their chicken over to Israel. They would take down all those settlements in the morning.”
Palestinian Chicken really cemented the fact that, like wine, Curb gets better with age.
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Larry vs. Michael J. Fox
You all knew it was coming. What was the final episode until October 1, 2017 was arguably the very best one, and it centers around Larry’s upstairs neighbor Michael J. Fox.
Throughout the entire episode, Larry believes that Fox is using his Parkinson’s Disease to undermine him at every turn. Yup, Larry went there.
Larry getting exiled from New York by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg is absolutely insane, but are we really all that shocked? After all, this is Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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Other installments:
Week 1–9 Executive Orders Under a Larry David Presidency
Week 2–9 Most Absurd and Very Best Curb Arguments
Week 3–9 Best Curb Your Enthusiasm Celebrity Cameos
Week 4 — Are You Sure? — The 9 Best Larry David Stare-Downs
Week 5–9 Insane Moments that Are Honestly Too Insane for Curb Your Enthusiasm
Week 6 — A Tribute to Comic Shelley Berman, Larry David’s TV Dad
Week 7 — Don’t Be a Larry David
Week 8 — The 9 Best Jewish Moments from Curb Your Enthusiasm
