The Season 11 finale of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” finally brought an end to Larry’s quest to repeal the 5-foot fence law, but not without a detour featuring a cameo from a real-life Trump whistleblower.
The episode opens with the filming of the pilot for “Young Larry,” and Maria Sofia Estrada is still in the cast. Ted Danson saunters over as Larry’s father, and points out that Maria forgot her line. “Is it my imagination, or is this getting worse?” Jeff asks Larry. But Larry notes that he’s close to getting Irma to repeal the 5-foot fence law, thereby giving him the ability to boot Maria Sofia and her father off the set without fear of retribution.
Larry then walks over to find Maria Sofia’s father once again sitting in his chair. He’s had enough. Larry goes to Stan, the prop guy, and asks him how to stop people from sitting in his chair. Stan suggests roping his chair, but cautions that once he ropes it there’s no turning back. He tells him a cautionary tale about another actor who roped off his chair and never worked again.
Meanwhile, back at Larry’s home, Leon and Irma are not getting along at all. They’re arguing over who gets to sit at the breakfast nook. Irma is trying to do a cat puzzle on the table, while Leon wants to eat breakfast. Larry walks in and takes Irma’s side in the argument. “I can’t take it anymore with this guy, Larry,” Irma says once Leon walks out of the room, and gives Larry an ultimatum – either Leon gets kicked out, or she leaves. Larry, hanging on by a thread, says he’ll kick Leon out later.
Larry heads out to the guest house and asks Leon to leave for a few days until they vote to repeal the law, but Leon doesn’t want to leave. He has a girl coming over soon – another Mary Ferguson – who’s meant to accompany him on his trip to Asia. Larry decides to ask Jeff and Suzie if Leon can stay with them a few days, just until he goes to Asia. As has happened so frequently in this season, Suzie agrees but on the condition that Larry does him a favor. Suzie wants to throw a party for Alexander Vindman, the former Director of European Affairs who blew the whistle on Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked him to investigate Joe Biden. Vindman is speaking at the Holocaust museum, but Susie can’t have the party at her house, so Larry offers his house. Susie notes that she’s also supposed to lay low because she’s recovering from her vaginal rejuvenation surgery, and Larry jokes that he’d like to “sample her wares,” to which Jeff says, “You have at it, my friend.”
Susie then starts going on and on about the particulars of the party, and Larry starts mimicking orchestra music. “Ba dum, ba dum, baaaaaaaaa dum.” When Suzie asks what he’s humming, Larry explains, “You know the Oscar acceptance speech when they go on too long so they have to cue them to get off stage? That’s the music they play.” This inspires one of Susie’s classic “Get the f—k out!” lines.
Larry and Jeff go to lunch with their friend Walt (played by Matt Walsh), but when Walt greets Larry, Larry complains that they touched penises. “He doesn’t know how to hug a man, you have to get your butt back!” Larry says to Jeff.
Back on the set of Larry’s show, Larry’s chair has been roped off. The entire crew is glaring at him as if he’s gone insane. Larry unhooks the rope and sits down, but feels self-conscious. Danson is sitting nearby and tells him roping off his chair was not a good idea. “People are starting to get ticked off. It’s not gonna end well.”
Stan then comes up to Larry and asks him if he’ll meet with a friend of his, but keeps going on and on. Larry decides to play him off, as he did with Susie, and much to his amazement it works. Stan begins stepping backwards and walks away.
At the city council meeting, Irma pushes to repeal the 5-foot fence law, but the head councilmember counters that they take a vote on Thursday instead since they have a full plate. A female councilmember starts speaking, and a man next to Larry says she’s his wife, that they met at BYU. Larry asks if they’re Mormons and he says yes, then Larry asks how many wives he has. “Let me ask you this question, if I converted to Mormonism, could I get more than one?” The man says yes, technically, but he’d have to go through a full conversion. “It’s a lot to do just to have one more wife,” the man says. Larry then proceeds to explain to the man all the pros of polygamy, and the man seems to semi-seriously consider his points.
After the meeting, the man’s wife comes up to Irma and says she’s in support of repealing the 5-foot fence law, at which point it becomes immediately clear that Larry is going to screw this up.
At the Holocaust museum event, Walt comes to hug Larry “penis-first,” and Larry moves backwards to evade and ends up stepping in dog poop. Larry says it’s Walt’s fault and now has poop all over his shoe. He’s forced to throw his shoes in the trash, and ends up walking into the event – at a Holocaust museum, mind you – with only his socks on.
Larry runs into Suzie at the event, and tells her that Lily Collins is going to replace Maria Sofia in the show once everything gets settled. Cheryl walks over and tells Larry he needs to wash his socks, explaining that he shouldn’t be shoeless in the museum.
Later on, Larry notices the Mormon man he met at the city council meeting, and the man is now with a different woman. He sees Larry and points to the woman in disbelief, seemingly having taken Larry’s advice to practice polygamy. Larry is stunned.
Before leaving the museum, Larry notices a pile of shoes as one of the exhibits – shoes that presumably belonged to Holocaust victims — and decides to take a pair for himself so he won’t be barefoot anymore. He wouldn’t, would he? Oh yes, he would. And he does. Larry is next seen walking outside the museum and skipping away, completely free of guilt from what he’s just done.
Back at Larry’s house he’s hosting the party for Vindman, and Jeff asks Irma if she wants a drink. She begins a long, rambling story about why she’s in recovery, and Larry pulls up acceptance speech play-off music on his phone and begins playing her off. Immediately, she says she has to go and walks away. It worked again. This is arguably the episode’s best joke.
Irma later confronts Larry at the party and asks him if he told the Mormon man to get a girlfriend. His wife called Irma irate, and she won’t be voting to repeal the law anymore. Larry then goes to his bedroom and calls the woman to apologize, offering to make a donation to a Mormon charity. In return, Larry says he’d love her to vote to repeal the 5-foot fence law, saying “some very bad hombres” are involved in the law. He starts bad-mouthing the other council members who are “no” votes on the repeal, and she’s swayed. She agrees to vote no.
As Larry gets off the phone, the author, Alex Vindman (played by the real Alex Vindman), steps out from the bathroom and confronts Larry about the call. “It was a perfect call,” Larry says in a nod to Trump’s defense of the call which Vindman brought to public light, and which resulted in an abuse of power charge in Trump’s impeachment (the first one). Vindman says he’s going to transcribe the call and send it to the city council as proof of bribery, and Larry is now worried his whole plan is about to blow up.
Irma notices Larry’s shoes and says her grandfather had a similar pair. Later, she picks up the shoe to find her grandfather’s name inscribed on the inside. She passes out, and misses the vote on the fence-repeal law while drinking her sorrows away at a bar. With the vote a tie, the law stands – Larry did not get the law repealed.
All of this is unknown to Larry, who goes to head councilman Weinblatt’s house to try and grab the transcript before he can see it. The councilman isn’t home, but his mother is. Larry says he’s there for a Torah lesson and the woman invites him in for tea. He finds the transcript and heads into a dream scenario in which security kicks Maria Sofia’s father off the set, he fires Maria Sofia, then the crew erupts into applause and Lily Collins (yes, the real Lily Collins) walks in to even more wild applause. Irma is booted out of his house, and he’s free at last.
But back in reality, Larry is trying to escape from the house and ends up falling into the councilman’s pool. “Where’s the fence?” he exclaims from underwater. In the episode – and the season’s – final scene, Mary Ferguson is on the plane cuddling up to Vindman, saying she’s excited to go on this trip with him. Leon missed the flight because he couldn’t find his passport.
Final Thoughts
This was a fairly disappointing finale. It felt like it didn’t deliver on the promise of the season-long joke of Larry’s predicament with Maria Sofia and Irma – we didn’t even get closure on what happened with Larry’s show. The ending felt rushed, and while the Vindman gag was funny, it overshadowed the stories that were the backbone of the season (and Vindman, bless him, is not the best comedic actor). We got far too little of Maria Sofia, and even Irma’s arc came to an abrupt and disappointing end. And yet, overall Season 11 was a welcome return from Larry David, and Ullman proved to be a hilarious adversary for him all season long. If only the ending had been more fulfilling.
