While you won’t find “The Finale” on many lists of the best Seinfeld episodes , its influence on pop culture was undeniable, to the point where Larry David and Jeff Schaffer used it as an inspirational touchstone for Curb Your Enthusiasm ’s twelfth season and its own final episode. Now streaming with a Max subscription , “No Lessons Learned” is a tour de force in self-reflective storytelling for a series that always kept its foot in reality’s door jamb, and CinemaBlend talked to Schaffer about his biggest laughs from filming the series finale. As well as how Jerry Seinfeld’s return led to that A+ scene with JB Smoove’s Leon.
(Image credit: Max)
How Jerry And Leon’s Hilarious Exchange Came About
In an episode filled with surprising and well-executed cameos — from West Wing fave Allison Janney to the actress who played the little girl that thought she walked in on Larry jerking off in the bathroom — easily the best was Jerry Seinfeld himself, who returned to the HBO comedy for the first time since the 2009 conclusion of Season 7, which reunited the NBC sitcom’s cast and added a lot to Curb’s list of Seinfeld callback jokes. It allowed the creative team to have Jerry take a front-row seat to Leon’s R-rated musings, and I could have watched an entire episode of their courtroom exchange.
The sex-fueled Leon had one very specific takeaway from his Seinfeld binge-watch that served as the lynchpin for their scene together, and I had to ask Jeff Schaffer how they got to that moment, in which Jerry joked about having hours worth of sex-tape footage with the actresses who played his sitcom character’s girlfriends. And apparently the magic touch needed was just getting Jerry Seinfeld to drop his guard to match JB Smoove’s illicit improvisations. As he put it:
Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good Appearances (Image credit: NBC) All The Characters Larry David Played On Seinfeld
We knew we wanted Leon to be talking about Seinfeld, because we wanted Leon’s take on it. So even in the script, it was a show about ‘weekly ass’ for him. There were other scenes where it’s like, ‘I know you fucking. Where are the tapes?’ And there was more of that, but it was better that we cut the one with him and Larry, where Larry was trying to explain that it’s not real. Then we did the Jerry one, which was amazing. The turn, this is one of those improv things where Leon and Jerry are talking, and JB’s going off about the fuck tapes, and I remember telling Jerry, ‘Just just go with it, go with it. Agree with him, agree with him.’ And so Jerry got there and he’s like, okay, so he does the turn, and then they both knew exactly how to play it.
I love that Curb Your Enthusiasm exists on a level where one hard-to-believe concept (that Jerry would lie to anyone about having Seinfeld sex tapes) meets another unlikely concept (that Leon believes the footage is unwatchable due to being on laserdisc) and somehow creates a perfectly plausible outcome. Although if Curb went on to deliver Season 13, I have to believe Leon would learn all he could about converting laserdisc data to other mediums. If there’s ass involved, Leon finds a way.
Jeff Schaffer continued, saying the main reason that scene happened is because it’s the kind of moment he’d have wanted to see.
It was just one of those really fun improv things where you shape it right as it’s happening, and you’ve got two amazing comedians who know exactly how to play the angles. I just love that scene so much. Those two, God, they were so funny together. We wanted to do a Jerry/Leon scene, [because] if I was an audience member, I would want that.
Sadly, we didn’t get to see Jerry mixing it up with Susie or any of Curb’s other mainstay favorites, but at least we can cross
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Showrunner Told Us How Jerry Seinfeld’s Hilarious ‘Sex Tape’ Riff With Leon Happened, And What Made Him Laugh The Most In The Series Finale
