Let's just examine the layers of this thing:

• Curb Your Enthusiasm is a fictional show about Larry David. In it Larry David plays Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld.
• On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David the character divorces his fake wife Cheryl in a parallel to the real life Larry David divorcing his real wife Laurie.
• In order to win back his fake wife, the fake Larry decides to try to have a Seinfeld reunion show.
• Jerry Seinfeld, playing a version of Jerry Seinfeld on Curb, tells the fake Larry David that he said he would never do a reunion because they're always stupid. The real Larry David said the same thing.
• Both the real and the fake Larry David got over it.
• Now, the fake Larry David goes to all the Seinfeld stars, playing fake versions of themselves, trying to convince them to do a fake Seinfeld reunion when they've already agreed to do a real reunion by appearing on the show.
• Faux Jason Alexander wants to be on the fake reunion show to make up for the really disappointing real finale to the original series.
• Ersatz Michael Richards is distracted by pictures of real boobs and he can't concentrate on the fake reunion. It's just like real life!
• What we see is the making of the reunion and all the petty grudges that David stirs up when he brings the old gang back together again.
• The end result is a bunch of fake action surrounding the fake reunion show, but it is really the real reunion, because they're all back.
• But Larry David was never on Seinfeld (at least in a substantial role) and they're making the reunion for NBC even though the show is airing on HBO.
• The whole stunt will end as the characters disappear in a vacuum rift caused by the fission of real and fake in mass quantities that is the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

So, Seinfeld on Curb Your Enthusiasm has replace the old meta king—Broadway's [title of show] a "musical about two guys making a musical about two guys making a musical"—to become the ultimate in fake/real self-referential comedy. The construct of one show about the maker of a show engulfing both the real and fake versions of his own show is the logical conclusion of this type of comedy, and the Seinfeld/Curb non-reunion reunion is the non plus ultra of the genre. Thanks for killing it, David.

After this, there is officially no more outrageous concoctions of show-with-a-show or actors-playing-themselves that can be made and think it's still original. Congrats, Curb, you've won the Post-Post-Modern Olympics. Now, like Michael Phelps, you must go smoke a lot of pot while counting your gold metals and leave us alone.

The assumption when any television show hit ends its run is that the stars will go on to fame and fortune and other projects. Sometimes that happens and we never hear from them again (see Friends and inexplicably Full House) but when it doesn't, they all rush back to familiar territory to jump start their careers. Here's are scale from the worst to best.

Dynasty
Final Episode: May 1989
Breakout Stars: Heather Locklear, Emma Samms (just kidding)
Reunion: Dynasty: The Reunion aired in August 1991. The came back for another go-round Dynasty Reunion: Catfights and Caviar in 2006.
Cause: There were some cliffhanger plotlines to tie up, and really, nobody was doing anything else. Also, shoulder pads were about to go out of style, so they had to do it to save on the wardrobe budget.
Held Out: 2 years
Respectability: So bad it's campy.

Firefly
Final Episode: August 2003
Breakout Stars: Does anyone beside us and hardcore Joss Whedon fans even remember this?
Reunion: Serenity hit movie theaters in September, 2005
Cause: To try to get someone, anyone, to finally watch this thing. It failed.
Held Out: 2 years
Respectability: Did it have any to start with?

Sex and the City
Final Episode: February 2004
Breakout Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker, who was the biggest show when the series started. Everyone else found out there really aren't any roles for women over 30.
Reunion: Sex and the City: The Movie came out in May 2008 and broke box office records. A sequel is planned
Cause: These ladies needed a way to make some money. And, obviously, cosmo-swilling Midwestern "fashionistas" demanded it.
Held Out: 4 years.
Respectability: Shameless.

The X-Files
Final Episode: May 2002
Breakout Stars: David Duchovny, who was only a recurring character on the show's final two seasons, is doing quite well on Californication.
Reunion: X-Files: I Want to Believe, the second movie based on the show, failed at the box office in July of 2008.
Cause: We still haven't figured this one out.
Held Out: 6 years.
Respectability: Pretty lame.

Seinfeld
Final Episode: May 1998
Breakout Stars: All of them, but the biggest has been Larry David, now of Curb Your Enthusiasm who wasn't even an actor on the show. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is still holding down The Adventures of Old Christine. Jerry Seinfeld sits in his house and counts his money, only leaving occasionally to do stand-up, American Express commercials, and The Bee Movie. Jason Alexander had a few failed sitcoms and KFC commercials. Michael Richards had a racist rant that ruined his career.
Reunion: On the cover of Entertainment Weekly August 2009.
Cause: They'll all guest on Curb Your Enthusiasm this year, where a Seinfeld reunion becomes a meta plot point. For a giggle. They're all still rolling in residuals.
Held Out: 11 years.
Respectability: High.

Facts of Life
Final Episode: May 1988
Breakout Stars: Nancy McKeon was a Lifetime fixture before going to rock the tween set on the Disney Channel's Sonny with a Chance. George Clooney did two seasons.
Reunion: The Facts of Life Reunion aired on ABC in November 2001
Cause: Because the gays thought it would be fun and Mrs. Garrett wasn't getting any younger.
Held Out: 13 years.
Respectability: Surprising good. This also seems to be the exception that proves the rule, either that or all the girls have given up on acting careers.

Saved by the Bell
Final Episode: May 1993 (we're not counting The College Years, which ended in 1994)
Breakout Stars: Mark-Paul Gosselaar did the later seasons of NYPD Blue and is now a hit on cable's Raising the Bar. Tiffani Amber Thiessen did 90210, Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place, Fastlane, and Good Morning, Miami. Elizabeth Berkley did Showgirls and became a Hollywood punchline, Mario Lopez danced with stars, and Dustin Diamond released a sex tape.
Reunion: The cover of People in August 2009.
Cause: Because it was either that or Jimmy Kimmel.
Held Out:16 years.
Respectability: Amazing!

• 13 Arrested In Seinfeld-Type Scam [Liveleak via Breitbart]

The AP brings up an angle we'd never considered regarding the Michael Richards Racist Tirade Incident: How might the public's lowered opinion of the man once universally beloved for playing Cosmo Kramer affect the sales of Seinfeld-inspired Festivus poles? Sales have been brisk so far this season, leading a representative from the $20,000-a-year unadorned metal rod industry to state that fans are understanding enough to look past the regrettable actions of an actor with rage issues to the real meaning of the fake holiday:

"Fans know it was a Costanza holiday, not a Kramer holiday," he said, referring to characters played by Jerry Stiller and Richards. "Anyway, Kramer eventually rejects the holiday at the end of the episode."

Gabriel Morales, 32, of Atlanta, said Richards' tirade didn't keep him from ordering a Festivus pole earlier this month.

"You know, people make mistakes, they say stupid things," said Morales, an information technology analyst who held his Festivus party early this year to coincide with a monthly dinner club. "No one at the party really cared about that either."

While it's heartening to read such expressions of forgiveness, we can't assume that all revelers will be as charitable as the one quoted above. For those having a harder time making peace with Richards' behavior, we suggest they make a powerful statement of their displeasure by hanging an effigy of the actor from their poles, giving them a symbolic target at which to direct their cathartic ire during Festivus' ritualistic airing of the grievances, and which might finally allow them to move on from the ugliness tainting their cherished holiday.

[Photo: FestivusPoles.com]

• 'Seinfeld' spurs Festivus pole sales [AP]
• Me and My Festivus Pole [FestivusPoles.com]

• Santa Loses It by aweekofkindness.com [YouTube via BestWeekEver.tv]
• Previously: Kramer's New, Racist Material Not Exactly A Hit At The Laugh Factory [Defamer]

"Technically, not having been born by blood as Jewish and not formally going into a conversion, it was purely his interpretation of having adopted Judaism as his religion," Rubenstein told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "He told me, `I'm Jewish,' when I asked him.

"He said there were two mentors who raised him and who had a big influence on his life, and they were Jewish. He said, `I agree with the concepts and the religious beliefs of Judaism and I've adopted Judaism as my religion,'" Rubenstein said. "He really thinks of himself as Jewish."

What do some Jews think?

"You can't feel Jewish. It's not a matter of feeling. You can convert to Judaism. You can't not convert to Judaism and then be Jewish," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately for Rubenstein, this lack of acceptance for Richards' claim of membership in a group he's recently offended completely derails the flack's strategy for combating Jesse Jackson's unexpected call for a boycott of Seinfeld DVDs, as any future statements that the actor considers himself an Afro-American because of the meaningful role his childhood friends played in the formation of his racial identity will likely be dismissed as cynical, damage-controlling ploys.

• Michael Richards: Jewish by association? [AP]
• The Michael Richards Apology Tour: Kramer Tells Jesse Jackson About His Quest For Closure And His Black Childhood Friends [Defamer]

While Michael Richards has not been having, to put it mildly, the greatest of weeks, the actor has already set upon the long road of "personal work" and Jujitsu of the soul that might ultimately deliver him from his shocking inability to launch snappy, epithet-free retorts at comedy club hecklers. A Road To Kramer's Redemption Round-Up:
· "Some of my best friends are Afro-American civil rights leaders!" Richards' newly acquired publicist, Howard Rubenstein, says the actor spent the day calling Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to let them know how sorry and not racist he is. [TMZ]
· A couple claims they were subjected to yet another racist comedy club outburst, in which Richards screamed at a heckler at The Improv, "You fucking Jew. You people are the cause of Jesus dying," before storming off the stage. Richards would later insist what he meant to say was, "Save your breath for your inflatable date!" but his gut told him the crowd wanted something more "Jew-hatey." [TMZ]

· A dissection of David Letterman's single joke about the incident the night of Richards' satellite apology ("I blame it on Borat,"), which calls the awkward, titter-inducing appearance the "first recorded incident of the 'Borat' effect: guerrilla comedy intertwining with reality until it's a shoelace you can't undo." Still, the logical penance of having a naked Al Sharpton mount and smother Richards is considered by most to be too extreme, even for his egregious offenses. [LAT]
· Industry types wonder if the event is bad enough to not only effectively end whatever career Richards still had, but also negatively affect Seinfeld DVD sales and syndication ratings, making the one winner to emerge from this entire PR disaster "The Seinfeld Curse." Suck on that, middling CBS hit The New Adventures of Old Christine! [NYT]
· And finally, the inevitable T-shirt (pictured), which impressively veers from the "graphic of face with memorably offensive catchphrase" motif to offer a subtle and interactive racist-outburst-mocking experience. [CafePress]

Inevitably, one of the unfortunate side effects of having a video of your racist meltdown (and subsequent, cringe-inducing apology to the "Afro-American" community) played in front of virtually everyone with either a television or an internet connection is that some troublemaker will comb through the deepest recesses of your IMDb profile and eventually turn up something that's going to look a lot less amusing in light of recent events and slap it up on YouTube. We can't say we've ever seen Whoops Apocalypse, but we're sure there was a compelling dramatic reason why Michael Richards had to portray a jive-talking blind man while wearing blackface that makes C. Thomas Howell's self-tanner overdose look convincing.

Bonus clarification: The Jewish Journal points out that Richards is not a Jew, no matter what Paul Rodriguez might mistakenly think.

[Video via The Assimilated Negro]

Those of you with "interests" and "lives" may not have caught Michael Richards' appearance on The Late Show last night, in which the actor appeared via satellite to apologize to the world for allowing his N-bombed-tinged heckler revenge fantasies involving fork-based sodomy to come spilling out in one ugly, unhinged, onstage tirade. But through the magic of YouTube, you now have the opportunity to spend the next seven or so minutes experiencing the cringe-inducing awkwardness that permeates the interview, complete with Richards' multiple references to the "Afro-Americans" he offended with his "crap," mea culpa enabler Jerry Seinfeld's scolding of a studio audience who, obviously confused over whether or not this was a comedy bit, tittered through parts of the apology, and Richard's questioning of whether Letterman's show was even the right venue for sincerity. (Answer: Probably not so much. Maybe if he'd hired a publicist to handle the situation, he could've gotten a spot on Oprah's couch, or some face time with established crisis diffuser Diane Sawyer.)

After the jump, some "remixes" of the now-infamous meltdown using footage from Seinfeld and UHF, Richards' two most celebrated projects. Enjoy these brief clips of questionable taste once you feel you've squirmed in your office chair enough for one morning:

• Kramer Is A Racist, Remix [YouTube]
• Michael Richards Stanley Spadowski Racist Rant from UHF [YouTube]

I was at CBS Television City today. As I was walking out, who should be ahead of me walking down the corridor (lined with photos of David Letterman, et al) but Michael Richards of Kramer meltdown fame. He was walking with two women who appeared to be part of his management team. He was approached by CBS Evening News producers to see if he would answer a few questions on camera, but he declined.

As he was walking out, he said to the women accompanying him, "...so you go on these shows and apologize and apologize but it's never good enough." One of the women murmured something about him having a PR person to handle this kind of thing and he replied, "I don't have anyone handling this. If I did, I wouldn't have gotten into trouble in the first place." He looked pretty good - for Kramer, that is. Dressed neatly in dark jeans and a dark silk shirt.

A clearly frazzled Richards seems to have forgotten the basics of the celebrity/publicist relationship: No flack can stop a client from spewing potentially career-immolating racist nonsense; all they can do is release a carefully crafted statement after the fact blaming their fork-wielding inner demons for voicing their intolerant, ass-kebabing intentions.

In case you didn't know, Jerry Seinfeld is scheduled to be on The Late Show w/ David Letterman tonight. Well, they got Michael Richards to be on the show via satellite. He apparently insists that he's not racist, even though he kept referring to "Afro-Americans" through the interview.

Ouch.

Richards is obviously well-coached; not only has his crisis management team made sure he's quickly making a public apology in front of millions of viewers, they've already trained him to drop the unfortunate business about sodomizing African-American hecklers with forks. Our tipster further says that Richards is claiming "rage issues," avoiding the "alcohol made me do it" family of excuses made pass by Mel Gibson. More information as it becomes available...

UPDATE: TMZ has confirmation from Seinfeld's reps that Richards appeared and apologized.

• Previously: Kramer's New, Racist Material Not Exactly A Hit At The Laugh Factory [Defamer]

• Extra [ExtraTV.com]
• Previously: Kramer's New, Racist Material Not Exactly A Hit At The Laugh Factory [Defamer]