Article on Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dimitrios Paskoudniakis
Back to 'Curb' and Getting a Kick
HBO Sitcom Still a Side-Splitting Vehicle For Larry David
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Has anyone ever played a more merciless version of himself in an
autobiographical enterprise than Larry David as Larry David in "Curb Your
Enthusiasm," the fearlessly irreverent sitcom that returns Sunday for a
seventh season on HBO? You're saying "Maybe Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry
Seinfeld?" No, sorry; "Seinfeld's" Seinfeld had many flaws, but David's
David is one large wart upon the landscape -- a cynical cyst, a catalytic
corrosive and an accident that doesn't wait to happen because, well, who has
time to wait?
Funny we should mention "Seinfeld," though. Well, not funny exactly -- but
appropriate, because this season, the continuing story on "Curb" has David,
for his own selfish reasons, trying to arrange a reunion edition of the
classic comedy he and Seinfeld created together back at the dawn of the
nutty '90s. The four key members of the original and illustrious "Seinfeld"
cast will first show up together on the third episode of "Curb," airing two
weeks from Sunday. They will appear in four more after that, probably
including the 10th and last.
Within the first 15 minutes of the season premiere, the character called
Larry David gets into, oh, maybe seven fights -- arguments that escalate
into shouting. One is about whether it is proper for guests in someone's
home to help themselves to cans of soda from the fridge. Larry goes
ballistic about this; he always throws his entire being into whatever
idiotic point he is trying to make.
Then there's the matter of "if there's anything I can do." Larry says it to
his friend Marty Funkhouser (Bob Einstein, one of our greatest living
deadpans) when he learns that Funkhouser has been trapped into caring for
his "emotionally disturbed" sister, Bam-Bam, just sprung from "the nuthouse"
and played magically and hilariously by Catherine O'Hara, the brilliant
"SCTV" alumna who was a funny pretty woman long before Tina Fey or Kristen
Wiig of "Saturday Night Live."
Now, of course, when Larry says "if there's anything I can do," a phrase
that one need not even carry through to completion (although "If there's
anything I can do, please don't hesitate to ask" is fairly common), he
doesn't mean it. He is just being polite. And so he becomes apoplectic when
Funkhouser doesn't hesitate to ask and promptly comes up with something
Larry can do. Larry excoriates his friend for failing to grasp the reality
of the phrase, and the friend comes back with a maxim that probably
qualifies for that select etymology we know as "Words to Live By":
"You can't make an empty gesture to a Funkhouser."
If there's a funnier show on television, let me at it. Which is not to say
there isn't, only that it is hard to think of one at the moment. (Maybe the
Glenn Beck show, but that's not funny on purpose.) David is TV's reigning
king of caustic comedy, at least in sitcom form, and with "Curb," he really
invented a hybrid, a sort of reality sitcom, because much of the dialogue is
improvised by the actors after they grasp the scene parameters and episode
storyline that David comes up with. Each year he perfects it further;
eventually it will blow up or melt down. And then watch out, brother!
When we last left Larry -- reluctantly, but then again, not that
reluctantly -- he had finally triumphed. The beautiful Loretta (the
beautiful Vivica A. Fox) had moved into his house with a few of her family
members and taken over the half of Larry's bed formerly occupied by wife
Cheryl, played by Cheryl Hines. As any regular fan could have predicted,
Larry wants Cheryl back (unlike the real-life Larry, who is divorced from
his real wife, Laurie) and so the first two episodes concern Larry's efforts
to oust Loretta.
Why would he want to eject such a gorgeous woman from his life and home?
Because she has cancer. Gasp!!! Herewith a warning to sensitive viewers, or
maybe just sensible ones: Many of the laughs this season come at the expense
of cancer. The disease itself is never found to be in the least bit funny,
but Larry's clumsy, tactless interactions with cancer patients are in the
most bit funny. To say the least. Watch his face crinkle and crumble as a
doctor describes the life of a cancer patient's caregiver; it is a role that
calls for far more dedication and selflessness than Larry could ever muster,
even on his best day and even if there were 10 of him.
And so the joke is really on Larry -- on the man too wrapped up in his
idiosyncratic and mollycoddled existence ever to dedicate himself fully to
another human being. That even goes for Cheryl, who explains the main reason
she sought refuge from Larry. It was because he didn't have a job and spent
too much time at home, and hence for her, there was too much Larry in her
life.
But when he was working on "Seinfeld," he was at the studio until all hours,
or on the golf course, and "that was the right amount of Larry" in her life,
she explains, without offending him at all. He knows himself. He can
understand. His curse in life is really that he has to spend every waking,
and sleeping, moment with Larry, but he makes up for that by asserting
himself at every opportunity, even the most trifling and ridiculous ones.
It is good to see the "Seinfeld" kids together again, although Michael
Richards soiled his reputation badly after the show's run by uttering a
racist insult from the stage of an L.A. comedy club. This is hard to forget
or overlook, but at least his presence is minimized, in Episode 3, anyway.
There are certainly no pratfalls (at least not yet) nor burstings through
the door.
Jason Alexander looks larger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (the only cast member to
have gone on to another hit series) looks taller somehow, and Seinfeld
himself seems to have terminal 5 o'clock shadow. But as mythic iconic
quartets go, they are a sort of modern-day equivalent to Dorothy and her
three friends from "The Wizard of Oz." Remember, I said "sort of"; you can
get away with almost anything if you stick a "sort of" near it.
Obviously, watching three new episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at one
sitting can skew one's perceptions, which is what happened to your obedient
critic. Even so, sitting down to a new batch of "Curbs" is always an
occasion filled with rueful anticipation. You know you will laugh, but you
know you will cringe. You know you will guffaw, but you'll also likely
wince. It's hard to imagine comedy that's any edgier, without being topical,
than this.
Larry "Curb Your Enthusiasm" David is the best thing to happen to TV comedy
since Larry "Seinfeld" David -- and now, in a strange combination of
Pirandello and Kafka and Buster Keaton -- they will occupy the same time and
space in the temporal universe. It's as terrifying as it is funny -- well,
sort of.