Seinfeld

Curb is the show Larry David made out of the one he had just left. He co-created Seinfeld and wrote the George Costanza half of it out of his own life; Curb removes the intermediary and puts him on screen as himself. The method is Seinfeld's, pushed further: a half hour assembled from small social infractions that converge in the last two minutes, no moral, and no character allowed to learn anything. What is new is the production, outlines rather than scripts with the dialogue improvised inside them. The seventh season stages a Seinfeld reunion inside Curb, which is the show saying the connection itself.

Rob McElhenney has described the show as what happens when you take Seinfeld's rule and refuse to soften it. The rule is no hugging, no learning: characters end an episode exactly as bad as they began, the plots are four selfish schemes colliding, and the setting is a place they have no real reason to keep returning to. Sunny keeps the structure and removes the last of the likeability, which is the whole joke.