Seinfeld was a revolutionary sitcom, so its reunion had to be equally brilliant. As witnessed on Curb Your Enthusiasm, the non-reunion reunion about the making of a reunion on a different show will make blood pour out of your ears.

Let's just examine the layers of this thing:

  • Curb Your Enthusiasm is a fictional show about Larry David. In it Larry David plays Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld.
  • On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David the character divorces his fake wife Cheryl in a parallel to the real life Larry David divorcing his real wife Laurie.
  • In order to win back his fake wife, the fake Larry decides to try to have a Seinfeld reunion show.
  • Jerry Seinfeld, playing a version of Jerry Seinfeld on Curb, tells the fake Larry David that he said he would never do a reunion because they're always stupid. The real Larry David said the same thing.
  • Both the real and the fake Larry David got over it.
  • Now, the fake Larry David goes to all the Seinfeld stars, playing fake versions of themselves, trying to convince them to do a fake Seinfeld reunion when they've already agreed to do a real reunion by appearing on the show.
  • Faux Jason Alexander wants to be on the fake reunion show to make up for the really disappointing real finale to the original series.
  • Ersatz Michael Richards is distracted by pictures of real boobs and he can't concentrate on the fake reunion. It's just like real life!
  • What we see is the making of the reunion and all the petty grudges that David stirs up when he brings the old gang back together again.
  • The end result is a bunch of fake action surrounding the fake reunion show, but it is really the real reunion, because they're all back.
  • But Larry David was never on Seinfeld (at least in a substantial role) and they're making the reunion for NBC even though the show is airing on HBO.
  • The whole stunt will end as the characters disappear in a vacuum rift caused by the fission of real and fake in mass quantities that is the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

So, Seinfeld on Curb Your Enthusiasm has replace the old meta king—Broadway's [title of show] a "musical about two guys making a musical about two guys making a musical"—to become the ultimate in fake/real self-referential comedy. The construct of one show about the maker of a show engulfing both the real and fake versions of his own show is the logical conclusion of this type of comedy, and the Seinfeld/Curb non-reunion reunion is the non plus ultra of the genre. Thanks for killing it, David.

After this, there is officially no more outrageous concoctions of show-with-a-show or actors-playing-themselves that can be made and think it's still original. Congrats, Curb, you've won the Post-Post-Modern Olympics. Now, like Michael Phelps, you must go smoke a lot of pot while counting your gold metals and leave us alone.