Bruce Springsteen Getting An Acting Emmy Nomination Before Richard Lewis Would Be the Most ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Moment Ever

Curb Your Enthusiasm has submitted the late, great Richard Lewis to be nominated in the category of Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards for the first time in his career. But if the event is directed by Robert B. Weide, we’ll only be celebrating Bruce Springsteen’s EGOT come September.

Yesterday, Larry David’s legendary sitcom submitted its final list of prospective Emmy nominees with a whopping 35 suggestions to add to this year’s ballot. Curb Your Enthusiasm probably won’t manage to get every candidate into the voting pool and add the honor of Emmy nominee (or, possibly, Emmy-winner) to so many creatives’ Wikipedia pages, but given the gravity of the critically acclaimed sitcom making its final attempt at awards gold for its important players, you can anticipate that many such artists will have their names read at this year’s ceremony.

Naturally, Curb nominated itself for Outstanding Comedy Series, and David will attempt to compete in the crowded Lead Actor in a Comedy Series category. Along with Lewis, Curb submitted longtime series regulars Jeff Garlin and J.B. Smoove for Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. But by far the funniest outcome of the campaign would be for Curb to bring home just a single statuette for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, with the honor going to The Boss for playing himself in three episodes over the final season. New Jersey could beat New York for once. 

Despite having accrued 52 separate Emmy nominations over the course of 12 seasons, Curb Your Enthusiasm has won just two awards at TV’s most prestigious ceremony, winning for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for A Comedy Series at the 2012 Emmys for the all-time classic episode “Palestinian Chicken” and Outstanding Directing for A Comedy Series in 2003. Lewis, however, has been left out of even just the nominations every single year he has appeared on the show.

Now, it’s worth noting that the Emmys are notoriously terrible at recognizing incredible talent in TV comedy — for instance, Steve Carell never won an award for playing Michael Scott on The Office, and the entirety of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has just three nominations in its entire 16-season run, all for stunt coordination for some strange reason. But when the Emmys announce the nominations for this year’s ceremony, they have the opportunity to demonstrate their stupidity in the funniest possible way by choosing The Boss over one of the best scene partners David ever had.

Springsteen has already been nominated for three Emmys in different variety special categories, and when the Emmys considers him for this year’s ballot for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, he’ll be evaluated alongside other Curb cameos like Steve Buscemi, Ted Danson, Saverio Guerra, Sean Hayes, Greg Kinnear, Conan O’Brien, Jerry Seinfeld and Vince Vaughn. 

While Springsteen and Lewis are prospects for separate categories, the non-zero possibility that Springsteen gets a nod and the late legend Lewis doesn’t is so dumb and so plausible that the stage could very well be set for Lewis’ last great Curb gag.