It’s hard to say goodbye: What Curb Your Enthusiasm’s finale got right, and what others get wrong

“You never get a second chance to say a last goodbye.” Is that a saying? Probably not. Anyway, it wouldn’t apply to TV finales. They have a habit of coming back. Nearly 20 years after Frasier Crane fled Seattle for Chicago – and a full 30 after we last saw him in Cheers – the pop psychiatrist last year returned to Boston for another batch of sessions. What Larry David did with the final Curb Your Enthusiasm does, however, feel unique in the troubled history of televisual valedictions. The irascible genius this week fixed the botched closing episode of Seinfeld.

We should have seen it coming. The final season of Curb began with Larry, on a road trip to Atlanta, being arrested for offering water to a woman queuing to vote (apparently plausible under Georgia’s election regulations). From early on it was apparent that, like Seinfeld, the show would end with its protagonist on trial in an unfamiliar part of the country.

[ Frasier: The return of Kelsey Grammer’s beloved sitcom after 20 years is a massive letdown ]

The earlier show, created by David and its star Jerry Seinfeld, was still in rude health as it rumbled into its closing months, but that farewell worked too hard to pack in references to the preceding 179 episodes. The penultimate moments of Curb find Larry and Jerry, in a happier place to the Seinfeld characters at a similar point, agreeing that this was how they should have said goodbye the last time. That’s to say the heightened variation of David in Curb Your Enthusiasm is saying these things to the almost “real” Seinfeld as opposed to the almost wholly fictionalised Seinfeld in Seinfeld. Still with me?

Who remembers what was the last episode of classic-era Columbo? Well, me obviously. It was the notorious stage-Irish shenanigans of The Conspirators, the one where our hero learned the meaning of ‘sinn féin’

The point is that David managed a remarkable save and, where many others (including him) have failed, ended a beloved series on a notable high. This was a Sopranos moment, not a Game of Thrones moment.

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The habit of fretting over finales has a long history, but it has only become an obsession over the past decade or two. Who remembers what was the last episode of classic-era Columbo? Well, me obviously. It was the notorious stage-Irish shenanigans of The Conspirators, the one where our hero learned the meaning of “sinn féin”. It’s just as well they didn’t make a big deal of that 1978 story, as the rumpled gumshoe was back for an inferior (though not awful) revival a little over a decade later.

There were some high-profile farewells in that era. The last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in 1978 – a model for the event finale – drew huge figures and, nearly 30 years later, influenced the writers of Friends when they shut down that behemoth. There is at least one celebrated fadeout in British TV of the era. In 1977, at the end of the 80th extant episode of Dad’s Army, our superannuated heroes break the fourth wall and offer a toast to the real Home Guard. The mawkish finale of Mash broke viewership figures in 1983.

One thing we do know. No ending, however well considered, can compensate for a show outstaying its welcome. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Derry Girls, Mad Men and The Sopranos got out just before the narrative turned stale

It was, however, the more recent addiction to serial TV that really got the enthusiasm for big goodbyes going. Everything now unfurls in a continuous plot that entwines all episodes. Everything is a soap. The phrase “season finale”, once common only to US TV executives, is bandied promiscuously by amateurs on this side of the Atlantic. Each helps build a crescendo towards the much-trailed series finale. When almost all TV shows comprised self-contained episodes, that closing chapter was less of a big deal. Maybe a much-missed character came to visit. The taxi company suddenly shut. The bar was demolished. Or, as with Columbo 1.0, nothing at all special occurred. If you’ve ever wondered, the closing episode of Fawlty Towers was Basil the Rat. The eponymous hotelier is last seen being dragged unconscious from the dining room. Fair enough.

[ What a punch Succession packs at the death. It goes out doing what it does best ]

Now we require all narratives to come together in a satisfying final flourish that nods to remembered pleasures and dilemmas. Succession did that reasonably satisfactorily, answering the title’s implicit question along the way. Derry Girls (closer to an old-school episodic comedy) referenced the traumas through which the characters progressed as it permitted a stirring outburst of hope. Sometimes, a finale is all about the last moment. Season seven, episode 14 of Mad Men is merely an above-average entry, but it gains transcendence for a final shot in which, referencing a famous Coke commercial, we are reminded how the advertising business monetised the idealism of the hippie movement. Just perfect. The ambiguity of The Sopranos’ final shot still stirs debate.

One thing we do know. No ending, however well considered, can compensate for a show outstaying its welcome. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Derry Girls, Mad Men and The Sopranos got out just before the narrative turned stale. It is probably best if The Simpsons just ends inconsequentially with another routine, largely unnoticed episode. Yes, it is still going.