Why I live by the gospel according to David. Well, Larry David.

What is it about Curb Your Enthusiam, preparing to take its final bow, that makes so much sense? If you know, you know.

Creator/executive producer Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiam. Image: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images/AFP

What is the appeal of Larry David and his HBO cult hit Curb Your Enthusiasm? What is its purpose? And how many people are sitting around asking themselves that? Well, I am.

I think about it a lot, particularly now that I am waist deep in season 12, the finale. All good things come to an end.

There has been quite an outpouring over this season of the popular and outrageous series. For me it has taken a few episodes to kick in but now I’m in midstream and loving it.

It turned the corner for me when Mr Takahashi was repulsed by Larry’s testicles. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask a friend.

I watch an episode or a large part of an episode most days. I am a lifelong Seinfeld fan and I live by the maxims of George Costanza. My wife bought me a T-shirt for Christmas emblazoned with one of his profundities: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

People who don’t know Seinfeld don’t get it but never mind. David created “the show about nothing” with Jerry Seinfeld and was a shadowy presence in that series, but he came into his own with Curb Your Enthusiasm which features many of the characters we used to see on Seinfeld, including the core cast. Curb goes much further than Seinfeld in a kind of illogical extension of ideas developed there.

I came to Curb over a decade ago when passing my colleague, journalist and author Matthew Condon, in the carpark at work one day. He stopped me and asked if I watched the show. I told him I didn’t and he said: “You must.”

He’s a very perceptive bloke and he was right. Was there something about me that suggested this series was made for me? There was everything, actually. Now, sometimes I think I am Larry David. I may have to see someone about that. Steve Coogan? (He’s not a real therapist I have realised).

My wife enjoys bits and pieces of Curb but it’s a tad too excruciating for her. I understand. But for me it’s a tonic, a balm for the soul. It’s funny, of course, hilarious and Larry’s social crimes and misdemeanors make for brilliant social satire. But there’s more to it than that. What exactly? Surely someone somewhere is working up a PhD on this subject.

In one sense watching Curb Your Enthusiasm is like watching a disaster movie. I happen to love disaster movies. When I have asked myself why, the answer that I come back with is … because it’s not happening to me.

I grew up on Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno and still enjoy more contemporary films such as San Andreas for that very reason.

There’s a similar psychology, I think, to watching Curb. And Larry says the things that we dare not say, does the things we dare not do. There’s something in that.

I interviewed British musicologist and author Stephen Johnson last year when he was a guest of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville.

His book How Shostakovich Changed My Mind is about how listening to the great Soviet-era Russian composer, as dramatic and challenging as that can be, helped him overcome a depressive illness. Being distressed you’d want to listen to Handel’s Water Music or something like that, wouldn’t you? Rather, by embracing the darkness he experienced release.

Greek tragedy can have beneficial effects, too, for a similar reason, engaging the psychological mechanisms of empathy and catharsis.

There’s definitely something cathartic about watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. Catharsis lowers levels of anxiety and emotional pressure and maybe that’s the kick from Curb?

I happen to be teetotal but, to me, Larry David is like a cleansing ale for the psyche.

I feel better, refreshed, ready to face the day and maybe play a little golf. I never had much of a hankering for that particular sport until I started watching Curb. I love the golfing and country club scenes and on the strength of that I have had some golf lessons and played a few times.

I am now part of a community. I’m on a Curb Your Enthusiasm Facebook group and I have close friends who are also fans with whom I discuss the minutiae of each episode.

My brother, who lives in Vancouver, is late to the party but he is now also on board and sends me cryptic texts across the Pacific, things like … “He’s got long-assed balls” and I know exactly which episode he has just watched.

I don’t know, maybe in future, psychiatrists may start prescribing Larry David. “Go straight to bed and take two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

It could happen. I hope it does.

Phil Brown is the editor of InReview Queensland