Curb is one of my favorite shows ever.
Seinfeld had a finale? Hmmm, I just have blank spot in my brain where a Seinfeld finale would logically go.
I don’t think the characters could have been that self-centered, selfish & narcissitic by accident. The writers wrote them that way. For an episode or two that was funny to me. But then I realized how hateful the characters were & how much I disliked them and the show wasn’t fun for me anymore.
They did a Seinfeld reunion episode within an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was a running joke that cast members kept making comments about how much the Seinfeld finale sucked, which annoyed Larry David to no end.
That was a good set of episodes and well worth seeking out. For a while when they were shooting the “reunion” episode scenes it really did seem like Seinfeld again.
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I got my eye on you. 
Wow, Zipper, I don’t think I’ve ever agreed MORE with a post on SDMB. My sentiments exactly. I’m a huge seinfeld fan, and I’ve been told umpteen times how much I would “LOVE ‘CURB’” I’ve tried many times to watch it, and I NEVER LAUGH. I think he’s such a jerk, I just can’t watch him. Maybe if George was the main character, Seinfeld would have the same problem. It may sound obvious, but I think Jerry was what made Seinfeld so great. yeah, George and Kramer got more of the big yuks for being neurotic and “out there,” but the way Jerry played off of them and Elaine was what really made the show.
I haven’t seen the episode in awhile so I’m a bit hazy on the details but wasn’t it Jerry, Elaine, and George who were making smartass remarks about how fat the carjacking victim was while Kramer just smiled in amusement and filmed the crime on his video camera? Because of that, I thought the hammer would just come down on Jerry, Elaine, and (especially) George while Kramer–as he often did during the series run–would get off easy because he (inadvertently) assisted in the identification and capture of the carjacker.
Of course, they were all probably doomed when they chose Jackie Chiles as their defense attorney who, because Kramer had pissed him off so many times in past episodes, ended up sleeping with a witness for the prosecution during the trial and selling them out.
One of the subtleties of the last episode is Jerry referring to the button on George’s shirt.
In the very first Seinfeld episode Jerry and George are having coffee and Jerry notes that the position of the 2nd button on George’s shirt is too high.
In the final episode when they are in jail Jerry makes the same observation. I think it is the last line of the show.
Yes. They start to discuss it and then someone says, “Didn’t we already talk about this?”
No. There is one more short scene after that during the credits. Jerry is doing stand up in the prison.
I’m also the same way. Curb I can tolerate in short spurts, but I just hate almost every character on the show. That’s not necessarily a bad thing–I do like some shows and books with characters I loathe, it’s just that it’s particularly unwatchable and uncomfortable for some reason. Seinfeld is just kind of goofy and silly and a bit cartoonish. Curb just feels more “real.” Maybe kind of like the difference between the US Office and the UK Office (although, in that case, I like both.)
Seinfeld is fine. I don’t get all the hate for it. Yeah, the characters are a bit self-centered and selfish, but they don’t come across as particularly hateful or hateworthy to me. I’ve always enjoyed the show. Everybody Loves Raymond, on the other hand…
I don’t think I would call a Season 4 episode “very early in the series run”. It only ran 9 seasons; by Season 4 they had already picked up steam and settled on the narcissistic demeanor of the characters.
I’m wracking my brain trying to remember which episode he was talking about, but I distinctly remember hearing Jerry say, either in an interview or in a commentary, that for the first couple of years they just wanted it to be a show about nothing, and then they did one particular episode where the characters did something really reprehensible. And the audience ate it up. “And then we knew”, to paraphrase, “that we could get away with anything, so we tried to.” So my opinion about the OP’s question is no, I don’t think it was part of a master plan to have them act that way.
People always say this. But I can’t see it being true. There are 7 seasons of complications for Larry David, and I almost don’t recall any instance where he was being malicious. It’s almost always the side characters who are breaking the social conventions. Jeff I think is a bad person, though. But you think Larry is worse? What actions are you thinking about?
FTR, Season 1 was only 4 episodes, Season 2 was only 12 episodes.
The Visa was about the 55th episode out 174. Less than a 1/3 of the way through the series run. And that episode was not the earliest episode where they started to figure out how they were going to wrap up the series.
The characters did change over time. In the beginning Jerry could lose. For instance in the show where Jerry said he hated anyone who ever owned a pony. Then at the end of the episode, Elaine says she never saw anyone play baseball as bad as him, on that day.
Jerry thinks that it was his comment coming back to haunt him.
Then later on in the series we see Elaine saying to Jerry, “Something bad will happen to you, it just HAS to.” Jerry replies, “No I’ll be just fine.”
Jerry always breaks even.
ETA, Jerry’s also probably the least jerkish (except for when he mugged an old lady for a marble rye).
I don’t watch Curb…what happens is that my parents turn it on when I’m over there and I skip out after about 10 mins because I can’t STAND Larry.
So, I don’t see all of Larry or all of Jeff. I actually just assume Larry is worse than Jeff because I assume the main character in a show about “awful” people should be the awfulest 
But my parents will tell me from time to time what Larry did, and mostly it’s him not shutting up when he should be shutting up. Oddly enough my dad seems to identify with this trait.
Curb is an excellent primer on what Seinfeld is all about. Really, Jerry and George have all of these ideas about how the world is supposed to work - social interactions and the like, and they want to impose those ideas on the rest of the world, who don’t seem to respect or care about their rules. That’s the friction. A typical plot is someone (Larry/Jerry/George) running afoul of some social convention and having to clean up the mess, or pretend that they do indeed care - or alternately, somebody violates Larry’s/Jerry’s/George’s rules of social interaction and they try to turn them to their way of seeing the world.
Take the finale, for instance. There’s a running joke that goes through where Elaine tries to call a friend with a sick father, and every time she calls George or Jerry criticizes her timing of the call.
I guess I identify with that mindset. Like, when I’m in the supermarket, I always want to tell people, “Would it kill you to walk on the right, like how we drive, so I don’t have the swerve all through the aisle avoiding your directionally challenged asses?”
I thought Elaine was the least jerkish to begin with (remember when she was all for animal rights? that disappeared come The Slicer in season nine) and was pretty nice compared to the other characters, but then she became a megabitch and Kramer, by default, became the least jerkish.
This is actually Larry’s worst character trait. He’s not malicious. While he can be self-centered, he’s not necessarily selfish (in fact, he’s often shown being generous and at least trying to do right by people).
But he always says what’s on his mind when he oughtn’t, and people always over-react in the worst possible way. So he’s not necessarily the cause of bad things happening; he’s usually the catalyst.
Also, he can never quite fathom why everybody doesn’t think the way he does, which is something I can relate to. 
As for Seinfeld, most of what I think has already been said here. Any long-running show will keep doing what works and lose what doesn’t. The first couple of seasons were fairly directionless, and if audiences had happened to react favorably to the characters being good people and upright citizens, then it’s a good bet the show would have gone that way instead.