"To maintain profitability, a busy restaurant needs to generate a certain amount of revenue, per seat, per operating hour. Some restaurants won’t seat incomplete parties because they don’t want diners to treat the table as an extended hangout. A two-hour seating can become three as early diners wait to order, or late ones extend into the time the table is reserved for the next group. When a host at Brentwood Italian restaurant Vincenti (which closed in 2022 due to its rent tripling) won’t seat fictional Larry David until the fourth member of his table arrives, he recruits a woman sitting at the bar as a stand-in. Larry pays her to help the group get seated (viewers don’t see how much). When his friend arrives, he unceremoniously announces the relationship’s end with a transactional, “You need to go now.” It seems that fictional Larry understands that people’s time is worth money, and he is willing to spend for convenience and service. But he still seems unconcerned about using his money to potentially complicate the restaurant’s flow of customers. The scenes in this episode reinforce that Larry, the character, will stop at nothing to get what he wants out of a night out in a restaurant, even at his own expense." - Corey Mintz
