Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Series

If you’re a longtime Seinfeld fan, then you should know who Larry David is. If you’re not a Seinfeld fan or just don't know who Larry David is or what he contributed to television, well, this is a great time for introductions. You see, Larry was the co-creator of Seinfeld, the ground-breaking Emmy-winning sitcom that is still loved to this day (by most folks, anyway). Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David unrefined. Or at least that’s what it’s aiming to present. 

Outside of Jeff Garland as Larry’s manager, the series presents David’s life as some sort of mockumentary, populated by real-life celebrities who often appear as the worst versions of themselves. While these folks may not be angels, no one is as tone-deaf, inconsiderate, or morally void as Larry. And, from one awkwardly hilarious episode to the next, Larry is going to prove that point again and again. 

That’s about the best summary of the series that I can come up with. Any more finer points, and I’d just get so lost in the weeds with the series, you’d never find me again. I think the most shocking thing about the series is that it lasted twelve seasons. It’s taken a few breaks along the way; there had been a couple of seasons that were initially billed as “the final season,” but with big ratings numbers, a few big awards and accolades, and enough time, HBO kept giving the greenlight for a new season. Until they got to twelve. Right now, at least, it sounds like Season Twelve is the true endpoint. 

Now, as a huge fan of this series, I have to state upfront that I can only watch so many episodes in a row before I have to stop and take a break. While the show doesn’t have a script and favors a loose plotline for structure, as the cast improvises their performances, you can see the hilariously uncomfortable, somewhat morally ambiguous punchline coming. As a result, each episode becomes increasingly uncomfortable. I laugh every time, don’t get me wrong, but after two or three episodes, I need a break.

I think a friend of mine once put it best: take Seinfeld out of network television and slap it on HBO, but then take all of the worst traits of Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine and wrap them up into one person - you’ll have Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. It’s a show that revels in one man’s worst tendencies, so it can’t possibly be real. However, if we look at the vast range of people we know in our lives and look at all of the sketchy things they’ve done, you can start to see how someone could think the way Larry does. But the hilarity comes from the fact that, unlike most people, Larry never learns; he's never apologetic. He’s just himself, and we’re along for the ride. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
After receiving a full Complete Series DVD set earlier this year, Curb Your Enthusiasm gets another crack at physical media with a complete Blu-ray release. The series is spread over 20 region-free discs. Two Epik Pak cases (everyone’s favorite!) are used to hold the discs. Seasons 1-6 in one case, seasons 7-12 in the second. The two cases are held together with a paper slipcase. Each disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options. There is no Episode Guide or indication of where the bonus features are. Generally, all of the extras for each season are found on the second disc.

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is disappointing all the same that Curb Your Enthusiasm is a decidedly mixed bag on the video transfer front. Shot on SD video and originally broadcast at 1.33:1, the first six seasons have been “remastered” to 1.78:1. I put remastered in quotations because that term usually implies “improved” or “better” than what we had before. Well, that just isn’t so. Because those first six seasons were in SD, all we’re getting here are reframed upscales that actually look worse than if they’d just shoved the previous DVD masters onto Blu-ray and been done with it. The reframing enhances the typical faults you’d see in an SD-locked series or film. Edge details are ill-defined. Fine details barely come through. There are many unsightly, smudgy textures. And worse, the reframing nips off a lot of top and bottom screen space, so some closeups are uncomfortably close. 

With that, things do get better once the show moves to Season 7, when it officially went widescreen for broadcast without any reframing. But even Season 7 still isn’t much of a looker. It certainly looks better. That season came out two years after Season 6 ended, so we get some improvements, and the digital photography lends itself a little better to 1080p, even if it's still an upscale. Things really start to improve for the series in Season 8. Then this series starts to truly take on a full appearance of a series finished for a modern High-Definition television audience. Things just get better from Season 9 through 12. But as I said, this is a genuine mixed bag when half of the series is only HD on a technicality that they are being presented in 1080p, but hardly resemble it. Rather than trying to fix the impossible, it’d been much better to leave those episodes alone. 

Seasons 1-6: 1.5/5
Season 7: 3/5
Seasons 8-12: 4/5

We get something of mixed results for the series audio as well. Seasons 1 through 6 are in DTS-HD MA 2.0, while Seasons 7-12 are in DTS-HD MA 5.1. First seasons first, the DTS-HD MA 2.0 tracks are solid efforts. This show isn’t very sonically demanding, so a mix that focuses on the dialogue with the appropriate attention for the music stingers that spawned a million memes is really all that’s necessary. “Imersion” isn’t something that pops into my head as a necessity for this show. When things move over to DTS-HD MA 5.1, you can make the argument that there's a sense of surround sound presence, but it’s hardly utilized. Most of the mix is again focused on that dialogue and delivering those timely music stingers. So, for a largely Front/Center channel-focused experience, they sound good, but again, this is a case of something getting a 5.1 track that hardly needed it.

On the bonus features side, we’re given a fine selection of the archival featurettes from the previous solo-season releases. Which, on their own, is actually a pretty extensive selection. But there are a couple of standout issues. First, none of the episode audio commentaries are included, so that’s a lot of missing content from those old DVDs, which lowers the scale a bit. How/Why they’re not included is a mystery. Then, to compound things in a very odd way, all of the first six season featurettes are very strangely framed. It’d appear that the intention was to crop them to fit widescreen televisions, but instead of cropping, they look stretched out. So those are unsightly, to say the least; they’re there, which I guess is something, but they look so odd now I’m compelled to lower the overall rating. 

Season 1, Disc 2

• Interview with Bob Costas (SD 29:19)

• Original HBO Special (SD 59:00)

Season 3, Disc 2

• Stop & Chat With the Cast (SD 22:02)

Season 5, Disc 2

• The History: So Far (SD 29:34)

• The History: Even Further (SD 24:14)

Season 6, Disc 2

• On the Set (SD 11:09)

• Gag Reel (SD 5:13)

• A Conversation (SD 22:44)

Season 7, Disc 2

• A Seinfeld Reunion (SD 8:13)

• Rebuilding the Seinfeld Sets (SD 11:10)

Season 8, Disc 2

• The 92nd Street Y Conversation (HD 1:28:33)

• Leon's Guide to NYC (HD 9:34)

Season 9, Disc 2

• Memorable Moments with Susie (HD 1:50)

• Memorable Moments with Larry (HS 2:26)

• Memorable Moments with Jeff (HD 2:09)

Season 10, Disc 2

• What Finally Broke Them (HD 1:01)

Season 12, Disc 2

• Leon's Bungalow Tour (HD 2:23)

• On Set with Susie (HD 00:37)

• Last Day on Set: Speeches (HD 1:20)

• Last Day on Set: Gifts (HD 00:40)

• Last Day on Set (HD 3:39)

• First & Last Scenes (HD 00:44)

• Larry's Favorite Episodes (HD 2:56)

• Larry-isms (HD 1:54)

Start to finish, Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the best comedies. Tough to rank it with or alongside Larry David’s other contribution to television, Seinfeld, because that show was limited by when it was made and being designed for network TV. Curb is like what Seinfeld could have been without any content guardrails. It’s hilariously uncomfortable and awkward, and I love it. While it ran for 12 seasons, they weren’t consecutive. There were breaks between those final years that I think were good for the show. Larry and the amazing cast of players got to rest up a bit, recharge, and come up with even more horrifyingly uncouth situations to stick Larry into. It’s a great show.

Sadly, it’s not a great Blu-ray. Because the first six seasons were broadcast in 1.33:1 and shot on video, they did not translate well to 1.78:1 1080p, magnifying any number of artifacting issues that would have been forgivable had they just been left in SD in their original aspect ratio. Visually, the series improves by Season 7 and really starts to look like a Blu-ray-worthy presentation by Seasons 8 through 12. Audio is strong overall, and works for what the series is, but they’re not show-stopper tracks. Bonus features are also a mixed bag: it’s not a complete collection of archival extras, and the reframing of the older featurettes is just flat-out bizarre. I love this show, I’m glad to see this series on disc, but pick any number of issues outlined above for the A/V and extras, and I just can’t fully recommend this set. Unless you desperately need it for your home collection, stick to streaming or find those old DVD sets of the first six seasons. At best, I can say it's Worth A Look