"Seinfeld" Surprise

By JERE HESTER

Updated 4:21 AM EST, Fri, Mar 6, 2009

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A report that the “Seinfeld” cast is showing up on next season’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is reason to celebrate nothing – or, rather, the return of nothing.

Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards are set to appear in a multi-episode story arc of the HBO series starring cantankerous “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David, Entertainment Weekly’s Hollywood Insider reported.

Details were scarce, but if true, the report would be welcome news more than a decade after “Seinfeld” left NBC and headed off into a syndication sunset.

No matter what the plotline, the return of the cast isn’t going to be some cloying mush-fest, ala past TV sitcom reunion gimmicks.

The news, in a way, is less about “Seinfeld,” than it is about “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which is headed into a seventh season of delivering unabashed doses of scorn and misanthropy.

David basically plays himself on the show, constantly digging deeper into a pit of misery by saying exactly what he thinks at any given moment, and alienating friends, family and celebrity pals along the way. Imagine a successful, foul-mouthed, even more self-absorbed version of George Costanza.

The heavily improvised show will give the “Seinfeld” crew a chance to play unvarnished versions of themselves, making up their own yadda, yadda, yadda as they smash their own sitcom images. Seinfeld, Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus have appeared on memorable past “Curb” episodes, though it would be a first for Richards, who has laid low since his controversial racist rant in 2006.

There’s no word yet on when the shows, which reportedly have just started production, will air. But seeing the “Seinfeld” crew on “Curbed” will be the greatest Festivus gift of them all.

Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multi-media NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is the former City Editor of the New York Daily News, where he started as a reporter in 1992.