TV

Every Episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ Ranked (Nos. 20-1)

After a weeklong countdown, here are the best episodes in ‘Curb’ history

TV

Every Episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ Ranked (Nos. 20-1)

After a weeklong countdown, here are the best episodes in ‘Curb’ history

By The Ringer StaffSept. 29, 2017, 12:30 pm UTC • 13 min

Larry David—social assassin, four-eyed fuck, utmost respecter of wood—returns to HBO on Sunday with a new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It’s been six years since the last episode of Curb aired, and the extended hiatus has allowed us to contemplate some very important questions: Can you pause toast? Is the chat-and-cut a morally indefensible move? And, of course, what is the best episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm? Over the next four days, The Ringer hopes to answer those questions—well, at least the last one—by ranking 20 episodes a day for the rest of the week. We’ve made it to the end; here are the 20 best installments of the series: Palestinian chicken, Gil Bang, Krazee-Eyez Killa, and the unexpected redemption of Bill Buckner.

The Ringer’s Curb Your Enthusiasm Rankings

Nos. 80-61

Nos. 60-41

Nos. 40-21

Nos. 20-1

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Season 6, Episode 2

Plot Summary: Larry is upstaged by Ted Danson’s quasi-anonymous donation, Leon gets unfairly linked to Jeff’s clandestine semen, and Larry tries to repeal the unwritten rules of dry cleaning.

Episode MVP: Leon, in his first Curb appearance. This is an ensemble episode with strong contributions from Jeff, Susie, Cheryl, and Danson, but Leon really brings the ruckus.

Best Larryism: “The flirtatious tap. That’s like sex for platonic friends.”—Ben Lindbergh

Season 7, Episode 7

Plot Summary: After Larry’s cousin Andy’s breakfast takes forever to arrive because he insists on ordering crispy onions, LD and his foursome get stuck behind Norm, the slowest golfer at the country club. On the course, Larry confronts Norm, which leads to the man having a fatal heart attack. The next day, on the same hole, Larry is attacked by a black swan—the club owner’s prized pet—and kills it in self-defense. Larry, Jeff, Funkhouser, and Andy hide the dead swan in the woods, and spend the rest of the episode trying (and failing) to keep their crime under wraps.

Episode MVP: Funkhouser, for the way he looks at Andy during the drawn-out breakfast and says, “Will you please finish shoveling that shit into your face?” and for telling Larry, after Norm dies: “Look, it may have been an accident but you’re a murderer.”

Best Larryism: “It’s a pointless and useless social convention, to introduce everyone you know.”—Andrew Gruttadaro

Season 7, Episode 9

Plot Summary: For fans of both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, this episode is a dream come true—we get to see the entire cast of Seinfeld go through a table read in the improv-centered world of Curb. Off the bat you can sense this episode will be one to remember, especially when Stacey tells Larry that her 9-year-old daughter has a “rash on her pussy.” There’s just so many good bits in this episode that it’s hard to keep up: Jason Alexander jawing over a borrowed pen, Funkhouser crashing the table read, NEWWWWMANNN, and Leon pretending to be Danny Duberstein. But the shining moment of the episode comes when the show references Michael Richards’s racist rant in a truly self-aware meltdown.

Episode MVP: Leon, as Danny Duberstein, delivers one of the best performances in his run on Curb Your Enthusiasm. “I Danny Duberstein’d the fuck out of that man in that room,” is an all-time classic line.

Best Larryism: [Asked by a doctor if he might know how he got a rash] “You know, the only thing I can think of, is, that I’ve been seeing this 9-year-old girl and she kinda has a rash on her pussy.”—Sean Yoo

Season 2, Episode 3

Plot Summary: When a friend claims that his grandfather created the Cobb salad, Larry sends his assistant on a fact-finding mission. It’s also Halloween, and Larry goes to war with the father of a teenager who TP’ed his house and spray-painted “BALD ASSHOLE” on his front door after he refused to give her candy. Although, to be fair, Larry was already at war with this man, because he had chastised Larry for whistling Wagner as a Jew.

Episode MVP: Larry David, not only because of the delight he takes in correcting his friend about the origins of the Cobb salad, but because he pulls a move for Cheryl’s birthday—hiring an orchestra to play inside their home—that Kanye West would literally go on to copy.

Best Larryism: “I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish, OK?”—Gruttadaro

Season 1, Episode 5

Plot Summary: Because of the first-come-first-served policy at his doctor’s office, Larry misses an important meeting with Diane Keaton. When he finally gets invited back to Diane’s house, he runs into the interior decorator who he’s just fired and is—surprise!—very awkwardly insulted.

Episode MVP: Marissa Winokur, the rival patient with whom Larry has a knock-down, drag-out race to the waiting room. (Also, the disembodied voice of Diane Keaton.)

Best Larryism: “Boo on earth tone, that is so passé. I’m a pastel man.”—Lindsay Zoladz

Season 8, Episode 5

Plot Summary: This convoluted episode involving Larry’s repeated encounters—and inability to communicate—with a man named Vance who has taken the titular, spiritual vow of silence, is largely an on-ramp to one of the show’s quintessential moments: the chat-and-cut.

Episode MVP: Michael Hitchcock, who plays Vance. His wordless, bug-eyed performance threads the episode.

Best Larryism: There is only one answer: “You see what’s going on over here? She’s doing a chat-and-cut. She’s feigning familiarity with someone she vaguely knows for the sole purpose of cutting in line.”—Sean Fennessey

Season 3, Episode 2

Plot Summary: When Larry buys his first cellphone (at a Cingular store!), a dropped connection leads to a mix-up in which Richard Lewis’s new Christian Scientist girlfriend is fed peanut products despite being highly allergic. Per her religion, she can’t take any medicine for it, forcing Richard to bring her to the Emmys with a face looking like “turnips and blood.” Meanwhile, Larry is forced to to fire the cable guy because his five-remote entertainment system never works, he briefly joins a prayer circle, and his attempt to butter up Susie in order to reverse-poison Richard Lewis’s girlfriend is a complete failure.

Episode MVP: Susie, who thoughtfully honors the memory of her grandmother by refusing to give up her secret brownie recipe, foiling Larry and Richard’s plan, and who correctly accuses her husband of “[stealing] brownies out of the mouth of his baby.”

Best Larryism: “It’s a good idea ’cause if it works, she thinks the prayer did it.”—Katie Baker

Season 3, Episode 7

Plot Summary: Faced with a choice between her German shepherd and her father, Jeff, Sammi picks the dog (who may or may not smell a rotting corpse under the floor of Larry’s new restaurant, by the way). Larry is called in to try to sway her the other way, and he does, but only because she’s so susceptible after Larry accidentally serves her wine instead of grape juice. After this flawed negotiation is uncovered, Larry has to retrieve the dog from the couple he gave it to. He doesn’t mind though, because he’s feuding with the wife after the two got into an argument when Larry refused to thank her after her husband paid for dinner. (“You can call it your money, but for the sake of discussion, he’s the one who goes to work and earns the money!”)

Episode MVP: Sammi—because she straight-up chooses a dog over her father like a savage, and because a then-10-year-old Ashly Holloway plays a pretty convincing drunk.

Best Larryism: “It’s nice to be affectionate to something German; you don’t get the opportunity that often.”—Gruttadaro

Season 2, Episode 7

Plot Summary: In a classic Curb sequence of misunderstandings, Larry gets branded as a sexual deviant and possible pedophile after trimming the hair of a little girl’s doll (it was at the girl’s request) and getting caught in compromising positions inside unlocked bathrooms.

Episode MVP: Susie, for both screaming and, even more menacingly, silently mouthing “four-eyed fuck”; and for ordering the doll-beheading duo of Larry and Jeff to “Get me the head” as imperiously as Cersei putting a bounty on Tyrion.

Best Larryism: “What's the difference between Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman?” might be the best moment, although I’m planning to use “Divorce? Is it a divorce?” to defuse every argument after I’m married.—Lindbergh

Season 6, Episode 3

Plot Summary: After Marty Funkhouser's mother dies, Larry steals a trio of bouquets from her roadside memorial to apologize to a local school headmaster he’d offended by criticizing her frozen yogurt sampling etiquette, as well as to earn some bedroom time with Cheryl.

Episode MVP: Jeff, brought to a rare moment of rage by Larry. “You have ruined my life! You have ruined my life! I have to live with this now!” he screams at Larry after realizing he’ll be going home with a furious Susie. “You hear that? I am fucked! And you fucked me! Hard!”

Best Larryism: “You’re a little too old to be an orphan,” Larry tells his twice-bereaved friend, shortly before he dubs him “little orphan Funkhouser.”—Claire McNear

Season 2, Episode 4

Plot Summary: In an oblique callback to a legendary episode of Seinfeld, a Chinese restaurant mix-up that links him with HBO president Allan Wasserman complicates Larry’s ability to pitch a show to the network with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Episode MVP: Louis-Dreyfus, who, in a pre-Veep turn, portrays a semi-satirical version of herself, blithely desperate to get a show of her own on HBO. “I wanna be able to say ‘fuck.’ And ‘cocksucker,’” she says to Larry at one point. Eleven years later, she would.

Best Larryism: Larry inexplicably singing the theme song to Rawhide is meaningfully weird. This was an actualizing moment for me. I do weird stuff like sing the theme song to Rawhide for no reason, too.—Fennessey

Season 3, Episode 6

Plot Summary: After Larry’s mother dies, he realizes how perfect of an excuse it is to get out of social engagements. In the cemetery, Larry learns that his mother was buried in the titular special section—a place for “villains, suicides, and gentiles from mixed marriages”—because she and his father got tattoos on their butts. He hatches a plan to move her in the night.

Episode MVP: Larry’s father, Nat, for the unbelievably funny scene in which he explains that he didn’t tell Larry about his mother dying because “she didn’t want me to bother you.”

Best Larryism: “Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m deaf, and I try to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear [birds chirping] … it’s not so bad.”—Gruttadaro

Season 7, Episode 10

Plot Summary: As Larry and the Seinfeld cast prepare for the upcoming reunion show, Larry also feuds with the set’s coffee caterer and frets over Cheryl’s friendship with Jason Alexander.

Episode MVP: It has to be Larry. In the most Curb twist possible, he finally gets what he has been longing for all season—an opportunity to reunite with his estranged wife—and he immediately loses sight of it because of a petty quest to discover who disrespected Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s antique wood table. He also does the greatest bad George Costanza impression of all time.

Best Larryism: “Do you respect wood?”—Kate Knibbs

Season 1, Episode 3

Plot Summary: After accidentally calling him when he was trying to reach someone else, Larry is invited to a party at the house of his old golfing pal Gil. Except it turns out to be an intimate dinner party, to which Larry and Cheryl are humiliatingly late, and then Larry ruins the night when he insults the hostess by refusing to take off his shoes.

Episode MVP: Ex-porn star and current tiny-bottle collector Gil, played resplendently by a fresh-faced post–Mr. Show Bob Odenkirk, and who at one point regales his dinner guests with an unforgettable story about porn’s on-set secret weapon: Tabasco sauce.

Best Larryism: [To his wife] “So what’s the level of anger here, what am I dealing with? An 8.7? That’s not that bad. I thought it would be like a 9. So how do I get to a 7, any way to get to a 7? I know we can’t get to a 6, that’s out of the question, but a 7? We could have a very decent ride home with a 7. And I’ll tell ya what, if we ride home as a 7, as soon as we get home, you can go right back to an 8.”—Zoladz

Season 8, Episode 3

Plot Summary: Throughout eight seasons of Curb, Larry has always thrived in situations where he calls out annoying and sometimes detestable actions from members of society. In this exceptional episode, Larry’s superhero-like ability is celebrated and exploited; he is officially dubbed a “social assassin.” In true Larry fashion, it all blows up in his face. However, the meat of this episode comes from Larry’s love of Al-Abbas, a Palestinian chicken restaurant that is draped with anti-Israel posters. Larry’s loyalties are tested: Does he stay with his friends and his culture, or does he continue to eat delicious chicken and make love to a beautiful Palestinian woman? The episode ends with Larry caught between those two choices, and perhaps the most-used GIF in Curb history.

Episode MVP: I should pick the chicken, but I must go with Larry. He proudly took up the mantle of “social assassin” and gave us the perfect encapsulation of indecision.

Best Larryism: “You’re always attracted to someone who doesn’t want you. Well, here you have someone who not only doesn’t want you, but doesn’t even acknowledge your right to exist, who wants your destruction. That’s a turn-on.”—Yoo

Season 6, Episode 6

Plot Summary: Larry gets himself into trouble with a deaf woman after he comments on the sickly small size of her dog. When he tries to make it up to her, of course he only makes things worse. First, he accidentally calls her husband, Hal (Tim Meadows), a “cocksucker” using ASL; then a case of mistaken cellphone identity results in Leon insulting Hal; and it all culminates at a school play, where the exterminator Larry invited along kills the woman’s dog after assuming it was a rat.

Episode MVP: Leon, for the aforementioned phone call in which he proclaims, “Black man doin’ his thang, baby—Barack Obama motherfucker!” And for the amazing scene in which Larry explains the concept of turning an interview around on an interviewee by asking them questions, and Leon’s first hypothetical question is inexplicably, “Why you ain’t got no credit cards? You got no credit cards at all?”

Best Larryism: “You can’t pause toast.”—Gruttadaro

Season 8, Episode 9

Plot Summary: The Mister Softee song triggers traumatic childhood recollections for Larry, a bumpy passenger seat in Larry’s car cuckolds him, Leon discovers the door-opening power of a pair of glasses, and Bill Buckner finds redemption.

Episode MVP: Larry’s loose-lipped therapist (Fred Melamed), narrowly beating out overenthusiastic softball sponsor Yari’s profane pregame speech, Leon’s “Man cannot compete with machinery,” and Larry’s horror at sitting next to Susie while she gets off on his car.

Best Larryism: “I learned a very valuable lesson today.” “What did you learn?” “I’d rather keep it to myself.”—Lindbergh

Season 4, Episode 6

Plot Summary: Larry, desperate to see the Dodgers play, tries unsuccessfully to guilt Marty Funkhouser, who is mourning the recent death of his father, into giving his tickets to him and Jeff. Marty refuses, and Larry happens into tickets of his own. When Jeff bails at the last minute, Larry opts to pick up a prostitute named Monena (Kym Whitley) so that he can use the carpool lane.

Episode MVP: This is a runaway for Monena, who does not so much have a heart of gold as copious amounts of marijuana, high standards for Dodgers games, and ironclad confidence in her blowjob prowess: “I got a red snapper that talks to ya,” in her immortal words.

Best Larryism: “Why don’t you ask your dad?” is a classic, as Larry implores the grieving Funkhouser, who’d saved an empty seat at Dodger Stadium to honor his father, to ask the empty space beside him for help jump-starting his car. But I prefer an earlier line. As Larry and Jeff not so subtly try to feel Funkhouser out for Dodgers tickets early on, they follow him to a restaurant he used to visit with his dad. Larry makes a half-hearted attempt at earnestness by asking Funkhouser what he recommends ordering; when Funkhouser, too despondent to eat, recommends the turkey, Larry can’t stop himself from smirking as he gears up for his Dodgers gambit. “Little turkey action today?” Larry exclaims about 100 times too enthusiastically. “Turkey today!” Needless to say, it doesn’t work.—McNear

Season 3, Episode 8

Plot Summary: When Wanda Sykes breaks off her engagement with her philandering rapper fiancé, Krazee-Eyez Killa (Chris Williams), Larry takes the blame for allegedly betraying Krazee-Eyez’s confidence.

Episode MVP: Krazee-Eyez, not only for his performance in this episode, but for providing a proof of concept for Larry’s later rapport with Leon.

Best Larryism: “Are you my Caucasian?”—Lindbergh

Season 6, Episode 5

Plot Summary: Larry gifts Ted Danson a coffee-table book called Mondo Freaks at his birthday celebration. Danson kicks Larry out of the party after the limo driver that he had guilted Danson into letting inside gets drunk, breaks a vase, and gropes Mary Steenburgen. The following day, Charlie the drunk chauffeur convinces Larry to pose as him and pick up an important client from the airport. A string of tense, calamitous encounters follow, as Larry tussles with, among other people, a group of random mourners, Paul McCartney’s ex Heather Mills, and tennis legend John McEnroe.

Episode MVP: The Mondo Freaks book takes the cake here. Larry roaring in amusement over it—first by himself, then with Jeff, then with John McEnroe—is some of the funniest stuff Curb has ever done. “Oh! Three legs! What is that?!”

Best Larryism: “It makes me uncomfortable seeing a guy like that stand there and have to wear a bow tie all night.”—Jordan Coley

Click here to see our full ranking of the episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.

The Ringer Staff