“Curb Your Enthusiasm” is coming to an end. Probably.

Howland native Jeff Schaffer, the show’s director, co-writer and an executive producer, has learned to never say never when it comes to the HBO series starring and created by Larry David.

“We’re sort of joking around that the world has run out of problems and there’s no more use for us,” Schaffer said during a telephone interview from his office in Los Angeles. “Look, every season is basically the last season. We never finish a season thinking there’s going to be another one. We took six years off one time. But this season, the way the stories worked out, it just seemed like the right time to end it.”

The 12th (and final?) season premiered Feb. 4, and the third of 10 episodes debuts at 10:20 tonight.

The season started with David traveling to Atlanta as a paid guest at a wealthy man’s birthday party. There David offends everyone from the man paying him to the hotel staff, and the first episode ends with David getting arrested for unknowingly violating Georgia’s election laws by giving a bottle of water to the aunt of his friend, Leon (J.B. Smoove) while she waits in line to vote.

“The idea came around organically,” Schaffer said. “At the beginning of the season, we talk about the season arcs and story ideas. As we started to work through the season, we got a sense of where the stories were going to lead us, and it felt like where they were leading us, it was funniest if it was the final season.”

“Curb” uses a somewhat different format than most series. David and Schaffer craft detailed outlines for each scene, each episode and the entire season, but the actors are given the freedom to improvise their dialogue within the scene.

It’s not that different from the way they worked on “Seinfeld,” which David co-created and Schaffer worked on for the last several seasons.

“We’d talk about the story ideas (on ‘Seinfeld’), work through the story ideas on these big dry-erase boards, laying out the scenes and trying to build the comedy geometry to get them all to intersect,” Schaffer said. “The only difference is with ‘Seinfeld’ we then spent a few days writing the script and with ‘Curb,’ ‘Oh, we have the outline.’ There’s a few lines in there.

“Then we get to the set, and we let these amazing improvisers play with it, and each scene is a live rewrite. We’re trying things and doing things you had no idea you’d be doing, that you never talked about. Then we get all those choices in the editing room, and we write it for a third and final time there.”

Schaffer used the same process on “The League,” the series he co-created with his wife, Jackie Marcus Schaffer, that ran for seven seasons on FX; “Dave,” which Schaffer created for rapper Lil Dicky that ran for three seasons on FX; “Brew Brothers,” the short-lived Netflix series he worked on with his brother, Greg Schaffer; and in his work with Sacha Baron Cohen (“Bruno,” “The Dictator”).

“It’s just Larry and I making the show,” Schaffer said. “I say he does things I can’t do, and I do all the things he doesn’t want to do. We write it together, and then on the set I’m directing and writing and he’s acting and writing. Then we sit on a couch together in the edit room for months and finish it. It’s supremely fun.

“Shooting the show is a dream. It’s a lot of work because you can’t rely on a script, but you’re writing in real time and funny people are saying funny things and you’re moving the cameras around. It’s like directing a live sporting event, but it’s a blast. One of the most fun things in the world to shoot.”

Schaffer was tight-lipped about what viewers can expect from the remaining eight episodes.

“I can tell you we’re leaving Atlanta. We’re back in LA, so we get to see our entire cast — Richard Lewis, Cheryl Hines and Ted (Danson). Vince Vaughn is back for a whole bunch of episodes. From here on you get to see all our main cast in all their glory.

“I really can’t tell you much about the season. Larry hates spoilers. You know how you can go to bed and your skin is clear and then you wake up the next morning with a big pimple on your forehead? That’s how Larry wants the season to show up. He just wants it to be a big pimple on the forehead of television that you have to deal with.”

Most of the season was shot before the writers’ and actors’ strikes shut down film and television production for much of 2023. However, after the season premiere earlier this month, Schaffer and David were back at work doing a couple of days of additional shooting with actors who weren’t available originally. Schaffer said he is scrambling to integrate those scenes into the otherwise finished episodes.

The long lag time did provide some comedic benefits.

“While we had to sit around for a while, (former President Donald) Trump got arrested in Georgia and we had Larry getting arrested in Georgia in the first episode,” Schaffer said. “You got arrested, Trump got arrested, we have to do the mugshot. Everyone thinks that’s what that episode was building toward. No, that’s just a lucky byproduct of us sitting around waiting.”

Schaffer’s mother, Ellen, passed away a few years ago, and his father, Dr. Robert Schaffer, now lives in Sherman Oaks, California, so he doesn’t make it back to the Mahoning Valley very often, but he does come back to Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, where he graduated from high school, to talk to students for an Intro to Hollywood class. He also gets together with his high school friends for his fantasy football draft, which sometimes is planned around a Cleveland Browns game.

Schaffer said he’s busy finishing those final episodes of “Curb,” but there are other projects he wants to do and stories to tell. Some of those stories probably will involve David in one way or another.

“Larry and I still have an office together. He’s right next door. He’s still coming in saying, ‘You’re not going to believe what happened to me today,’ and I’m doing the same. It may be the final season of ‘Curb,’ but I don’t think Larry’s done having spirited conversations with the populace of west Los Angeles. As long as there are terrible people out there, we’ll still have stories.”