Curb Your Enthusiasm: Every Season Premiere, Ranked By IMDb Score
The season premieres of Curb Your Enthusiasm rank among the show’s most important episodes. Larry David’s sitcom utilizes season-long story arcs, and the premiere episodes often set up these storylines, so they’re pretty integral. The most recent premiere, for example, season 10’s “Happy New Year,” established Larry’s ongoing rivalry with Mocha Joe and his intention to open a spite store next door.
Sometimes, seasons of Curb start off a little slow and build up momentum on their way to the finale. Other times, they start off so great that it’s all downhill from there. The premieres’ IMDb scores reflect that.
10 Season 4: Mel’s Offer (7.9)
In the fourth season of Curb, Mel Brooks casts Larry to play Max Bialystock in the Broadway production of The Producers. The premiere opens with Larry singing in a karaoke bar and Brooks noticing his talent.
Along the way, Larry butts heads with a bunch of different people: a doctor, a man in a wheelchair, Brooks’ receptionist, and her partner.
9 Season 1: The Pants Tent (8.1)
Technically the pilot episode, but made after an hour-long special that was later retooled as a series, “The Pants Tent” expertly introduced audiences to the abrasive fictionalized version of Larry David.
Larry clashes with Richard Lewis’ girlfriend in a movie theater when she complains about letting him into the aisle, while Cheryl’s friend mistakes Larry’s pants bunch-up for an erection.
8 Season 2: The Car Salesman (8.1)
In the season 2 premiere, Cheryl’s ambivalence towards Larry’s semi-retirement forces him to start working on a new sitcom — but he becomes more interested in a part-time gig as a car salesman, given to him by Jeff’s friend so he can prove he can sell cars.
The montage of Larry on the lot, trying to sell cars with all the tricks he’s gleaned from salesmen over the years, is improv comedy gold.
7 Season 5: The Larry David Sandwich (8.1)
The fifth season of Curb is the show’s most spiritual. It begins with Larry almost drowning in the ocean and believing that divine intervention had something to do with his survival. These elements come into play later when Larry’s parentage is questioned and Richard Lewis needs a kidney. But the premiere episode doesn’t dive into the longer arcs at first.
Instead, the focus is on Larry getting a sandwich named after him at his favorite deli — a sandwich he doesn’t really like — and trying to switch sandwiches with his friends, only for his dad chokes on the Larry David sandwich. In the hospital, Larry believes his dad tells him he’s adopted, but he later denies it, so he hires a private investigator to look into it.
6 Season 8: The Divorce (8.2)
Larry and Cheryl finalize their divorce in the season 8 premiere, which had the burden of following up the season 7 finale’s cliffhanger. The eighth season had to get the divorce out of the way to get to the main storyline of Larry’s trip to New York.
Still, the episode has some fun moments, like a bunch of Girl Scouts trying to break into Larry’s house to force him to buy their cookies.
5 Season 6: Meet The Blacks (8.3)
The sixth season of Curb got off to a terrific start as Larry played with his technique of getting out of a party by showing up the next day and pretending he got the wrong night. Both times he tries it, it backfires.
The second time, it makes Larry and Cheryl late to meet the Black family at the airport. Cheryl takes them in after a hurricane destroys their home.
4 Season 7: Funkhouser’s Crazy Sister (8.4)
It’s always a delight to see one of the master improvisers from Christopher Guest’s company of actors making an appearance on Curb. In “Funkhouser’s Crazy Sister,” Catherine O’Hara plays Funkhouser’s sister, who was recently released from a mental facility.
Meanwhile, Larry’s girlfriend, Loretta, is tested for cancer and he races the doctor to his house in an attempt to break up with her before she’s diagnosed.
3 Season 3: Chet’s Shirt (8.5)
Curb’s season 3 premiere does a great job of telling its own story while setting up the larger narrative arc for the rest of the season, which involves Larry investing in a new restaurant.
From a spiteful dentist giving Larry comically large temporary replacement teeth to Larry asking a widow where her late husband got a shirt he wore in a framed picture, “Chet’s Shirt” has some hilarious moments.
2 Season 9: Foisted! (8.7)
The ninth season of Curb had a heck of a story arc and it was set up in a hilarious closing scene in the season premiere. “Foisted!” mostly focuses on Larry trying to foist off a bad assistant who was foisted onto him by Jimmy Kimmel.
But in the final scene, the story takes a major left turn. After Larry went on Kimmel’s show to promote his musical about Salman Rushdie’s fatwa, the Ayatollah gives him his own fatwa.
1 Season 10: Happy New Year (9.3)
The most recent season of Curb revolved around Larry opening up a “spite store” next to Mocha Joe’s to steal his business in retaliation for poor service. This set up one of Curb’s funniest season arcs to date.
The episode has plenty of great subplots, too, like Larry wearing a Make America Great Again hat to alienate people and Jeff being mistaken for Harvey Weinstein.