At the close of Seinfeld's seventh season, Larry David, the show's co-creator, left the show. David's absence from television would be short-lived, with him returning in 1999 with a special called Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, and a series would follow the next year. Seinfeld's trademark humor returned and Larry played himself, a character that's basically a continuation of George.
However, since the show is on HBO, David was able to take the humor pioneered on Seinfeld and raise the edginess level. Curb Your Enthusiasm essentially became a Seinfeld reboot, but now the characters could curse and the situations could be riskier. While Curb's premise was very different, there still were several Curb storylines that could have been Seinfeld episodes.
The Ugly Section
Slights and people's perceptions were constantly on George's mind on Seinfeld. Larry, Curb's George counterpart, is no different. In this episode, Larry notices that all the attractive people are seated near a restaurant's windows, while the "ugly people," like him, are seated in the rear.
Of course, Larry hates being perceived as ugly and seeks to prove his theory by bringing a very attractive woman to the restaurant to see which side they'll be seated at. Begrudgingly, the maître d brings them both to the attractive side.
The Special Section
On Seinfeld, many comedic storylines were centered around the relationships between Jerry and George and their parents, in particular, when they would do something that Jerry or George just couldn't understand the reasoning behind.
Curb continued this tradition when Larry returns from New York to find his mother has passed away and a funeral was held, but Larry was never notified because his dying mother "didn't want to bother him." This confounds and frustrates Larry to no end, and it's made even worse when he discovers his New York-based cousin attended the funeral.
Interior Decorator
Early Curb seasons employed a documentary-esque aesthetic to them, exemplifying the funny everyday situations Larry finds himself in. As the seasons went on, the show dropped this aesthetic, becoming more traditionally shot with a more scripted feel, and with stories that grew even more outlandish.
However, Curb always found its humor in small things. In this first season episode, Larry doesn't have enough money for parking, so he promises to return to repay the attendant. Unfortunately, when he repays another attendant (The Office's Oscar Nunez), it doesn't find its way to the first one. It's a small story about Larry continually losing money and it would definitely be something found on Seinfeld.
The Shrimp Incident
The key to Seinfeld's comedy was taking the minutiae of seemingly innocuous problems and blowing them up to great comedic proportions. After all, Seinfeld had storylines like Jerry being annoyed having to kiss certain people "hello."
A Curb equivalent is when Larry's Chinese food order gets mixed up with a foe's, and when they trade back the food, Larry notices his foe helped himself to the order's shrimp. First, Larry investigates how much shrimp is in one order, and once he realizes some of his were clearly taken, he confronts the offender, who happens to be an HBO executive, and the ensuing fight leads to a television deal termination.
The Weatherman
Another running Seinfeld storyline-type is the characters often being suspicious that a nemesis was doing something for their own personal gain, like Dr. Tim Whatley converting to Judaism purely to tell Jewish jokes.
On this episode of Curb, Larry becomes suspicious that a weatherman is predicting bad weather to keep people away from the golf course, so he and his friends can have the entire course to themselves. Larry consistently notices the weatherman playing golf happily on good weather days he predicted would be bad.
The Vow Of Silence
A hallmark of Seinfeld was the characters picking up on sly things that other people do to get ahead. In this episode, Larry catches someone striking up a conversation with him while he's in a buffet line and quickly realizes it was a tactic by this person to jump ahead further in line.
Larry accuses this person of doing a "chat-and-cut." The branding of this person's social faux pas is reminiscent of all the names Seinfeld characters gave people or situations, like "re-gifter," "un-vitation," "master of your domain," and the "two-face."
The Accidental Text On Purpose
Part of Seinfeld's character traditions was making them seem like better people than they actually were. George once needed to buy Elaine a gift for helping him get a job, but cheaply bought her a damaged cashmere sweater to make it seem like he went all out.
In this episode, Larry comes up with a ploy where you text someone you're fighting with a message disguised to be for someone else. The message supposedly exposes your true feelings, making you very sympathetic.
Palestinian Chicken
This episode has many Seinfeld-esque storylines. One is that Larry and Jeff get hooked on a controversial chicken place run by Palestinians. Larry loves it, even if he and his friends support Israel. Seinfeld often had characters selfishly enjoying something, despite its detriment to others, one example being Kramer's love for Kenny Roger's chicken despite its sign's blinding light.
The other storyline is Larry's friends using him as a "social assassin." He's the only one comfortable saying honest things to people, so he's tasked with telling a woman she needs to stop saying "LOL," which her husband is too afraid to do. On Seinfeld, Kramer was the social assassin, brought in to honestly tell a woman to change her awful hairstyle, which Elaine was too afraid to do.
The Doll
A running situation on Seinfeld was schemes that go awry. One of Curb's best schemes gone awry is so "Seinfeldian" it made it onto the Seinfeld reunion show within Curb. In this episode, Larry convinces a little girl her doll's hair would be better short, so he cuts it, which the girl is initially fine with until she realizes it won't grow back. Larry and Jeff try to find a replacement doll to deceive the girl into thinking it's the same one, and in doing so, incur Susie's wrath.
Seinfeld's writers are very open about how comedic incidents from their real-life often became Seinfeld episodes. So, when Curb aired the Seinfeld reunion episode, the aforementioned incident made it into the episode, apparently swapping out Larry with Jerry in this particular scenario.
The Car Pool Lane
Seinfeld was full of complicated schemes concocted in order to make their lives only somewhat easier, like Elaine kidnapping a dog so she doesn't have to hear it barking incessantly. On perhaps one of Curb's best episodes, Larry pays a sex worker to ride shotgun, making him eligible to use the traffic-free carpool lane so he can attend a baseball game on time.
This would be another storyline referenced in the Seinfeld reunion episode where, of course, Kramer is the mastermind of this scheme, fitting perfectly with something he would have done on Seinfeld.