Season seven of Curb Your Enthusiasm finds Larry David, the real-life man and the fictionalized bald asshole, triumphant. Despite a steadfast claim that the world will never see a true blue Seinfeld reunion, Larry gets to have his cake and eat it too, by dedicating the season's plot to fictional Larry staging a reunion—with Jerry, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and Michael Richards all fully participating—just to win his wife Cheryl back. Lo and behold, what we see of the reunion show, within the show, is actually hilarious, and some subplots crib from actual Curb storylines, which makes for a glorious meta-loop.
Even more meta? Larry battling Jason Alexander (David wrote George Costanza as a more pathetic mirror of himself) for Cheryl’s affections. In a rare, genuinely sweet moment, Larry’s roundabout scheme succeeds. Instead of a saccharine ending, though, Cheryl is instantly reminded in one sitting of everything she loved about Larry...and everything she hated. Leave it to Larry to ruin a reconciliation with his estranged wife because she "doesn't respect wood." A brilliant ending to the series’ magnum opus of a season.
Though the catchphrase, "Do you respect wood?" is a classic, even more of a standout was Susie's line “I respect wood so much, that if I had a piece of wood in my hand right now, I’d beat the shit out of you with it!”