People bash seasons 8 & 9 all the time, and what everyone has to understand is that Larry David left after season 7 and it became a different show. For me, i'd rather die than watch anything from season 1 and I think you can cherry pick some funny episodes from seasons 8 & 9. I'll admit that, overall, those two seasons were not the quality of seasons 3-7, but I still have some favorite episodes from those last two seasons.
Although the shows are at a different pace than the earlier ones, I love almost all the episodes from season 9. They are much less subtle and George's character has become a total raving lunatic, but I still laugh at most of them.