That’s a lot of high praise. I’ll stick with it for now if not only to try and pinpoint exactly what it is that’s not doing it for me.
Seasons 3-5 is my favorite run of this show, though it gets incredible again in season 8. The first season is probably my least favorite.
It was definitely still finding its footing in season 1, but the storylines are gold. Simple but effective, which IMO is when the show is at its best.
Both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld are at their best when the situation or conflict is just one or two degrees away from reality. The 1-hour special has Larry using an illness of a fake stepfather to get out of the HBO special, and I had a fake brother commit suicide to get out of a test in college. Larry gets invited to a Paul Simon concert but is too proud to call and find out what day they are supposed to go. Getting mad about the way the doctor sign-in schedule works and then getting mad when they change it because it no longer benefits him. Not being able to agree on where people should have a meeting. The show mocks how easily our social contract can be broken and the absurdity of a lot of the norms that we all just sort of follow because we know we will be criticized if we don't. It is a "negative" show, like Seinfeld. I remember @iCarly Rae Jepsen mentioning that it is hard to like the characters in something like Seinfeld so it is not one of their favorites like other people and it was a perspective I had never thought of before. Perhaps it is indicative of my personality, but I see a lot of myself in George from Seinfeld, or Larry from Curb. In both shows it shows the selfishness of many people and their desire to have everyone else follow the rules of society while flagrantly breaking the rules on its own. One of the reasons I don't like post-Larry David Seinfeld, and prefer the early seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, is that they both veer off far too much into fantasy. In an early season of Curb, Larry David has to go to jury duty. He doesn't want to do it so someone tells him to act racist and he will get out. He does so, and it works. The joke is in the fact that a liberal Hollywood type, like many other people, will debase themselves to get out of what is ultimately a minor inconvenience (he doesn't have to work anymore). However, in the most recent season, he appears on Judge Judy for another petty argument, but instead he behaves so over-the-top that the joke is instead that "Larry is crazy". There is still a lot of fun to be had in the new show, and some very true moments (opening the pickle jar) but it has lost that touch.
I only got into this show about a year ago, and I sort of watched it in reverse chronological order. That may have affected my perception, but I definitely think the later seasons are better. In fact, I just rewatched S7-9 fairly recently and laughed my ass off, but I don't have a huge desire to go back to those first few anytime soon. (Honestly, Leon is a really big reason why the last few are my favorite, despite the fact that he's only on screen maybe 20% of the time).