20 Best Episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ranked
These twenty standouts are pretty, pretty, prettayyyy—you get it.
Larry David swears that season 12 is the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm. We're supposed to believe him... even though he's said it before! Still, throughout red carpet interviews and HBO promotional material, the Seinfeld co-creator declared that he is finally shedding the "Larry David" persona to "become the person God intended me to be—the thoughtful, kind, caring, considerate human being I was until I got derailed by portraying this malignant character."
We Curb fans here at Esquire are still in denial. Or, as I like to call it, we just know better. As JB Smoove recently joked, "I don’t believe that, man." Even Cheryl Hines said, "I had heard that before, because since season 1 that’s what Larry has told me." Take it from the cast! Larry is going to stew in that house, come up with a thousand new ideas, and we'll have season 13 within the next three years.
But if this is really Larry's final farewell, we should celebrate the 110-plus episodes he's given us so far. Not that I need the excuse! My colleague Adrienne Westenfeld and I asked our editor if "every episode" was an acceptable answer to "How many episodes should we include in our 'Best of' rankings?" For sanity's sake, we settled on a top 20—and even that was difficult. We had a meeting in Esquire's largest conference room for this one, which should tell you that this is very important work. How do you compare Larry stealing shoes from the Holocaust Museum with Larry causing chaos at a Palestinian chicken restaurant?
It's an impossible task. Yet, we're confident in our choices. I've long envisioned Curb Your Enthusiasm ending with Larry's death and ascension to the afterlife, where God tells Larry that everything he did on Earth was the right choice. I pray that you, dear reader, feel the same about our rankings below.
Adrienne Westenfeld is the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversees books coverage, edits fiction, and curates the Esquire Book Club.
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
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