PASADENA, Calif. — If you were disappointed by the series finale of "Seinfeld" — and who wasn't? — be cautious about expecting too much out of the "Seinfeld" reunion that's coming this season on "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

If you have to recognize the problem before you can deal with it, Larry David is in no position to improve on that much-maligned finale episode.

Eleven years later, the co-creator/writer/executive producer of both "Seinfeld" and "Curb" calls that "Seinfeld" finale an "excellent show. Excellent show."

And all those people who didn't think much of it?

"Morons. Morons," David said.

Sigh. Denial is a terrible thing.

There's a certain irony in the fact that the cast of "Seinfeld" will reunite on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at David's behest. He's ridiculed the idea of any kind of reunion since "Seinfeld" went off the air.

"I mean, I would always say, 'No, there's no reunion. There's not going to be a reunion show. We would never do that. It's a lame idea,' " David said. "And then I thought — but it might be very funny to do that on 'Curb.'

"And I kept thinking about the idea. I started to think of different scenarios and how we could pull this off, and I called Jerry. And Jerry was game. And I said, 'Well, I'll call the others,' and I did. And we did it."

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" returns to HBO for its seventh season on Sept. 20. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, David plays a fictionalized version of himself. Episodes are improvised — the actors work from an outline, not from a script.

And the "Seinfeld" reunion won't be an episode of "Seinfeld." In the upcoming season of "Curb," we'll see David, Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards getting together with the production staff to work on the reunion show.

"We're going to see writing," David said. "We'll see aspects of the read-through, parts of rehearsals. You'll see the show being filmed. And you'll see it on TV."

Well, we'll see "parts of the show" on TV.

"You will get an idea of what happened 11 years later, and it will be incorporated into regular 'Curb' episodes," David said. "So the cast members will be playing themselves on 'Curb' while all this is going on."

There won't be a single "Seinfeld" reunion episode of "Curb"; it will be "scattered through the season."

"Jerry's on five shows, I think," David said. "The others will be on at least four. Maybe one or two of the others will be on five. I'm not sure."

Which is kind of the way he works on "Curb Your Enthusiasm."