Curb Your Enthusiasm

Mazel tov! I've been to my share of crappy b'nei mitzvot (there was a time, just over a decade ago, when I could have filled my entire closet with shirts that said, "I Had a Blast at [X]'s Bar Mitzvah!"), but even I am not sure where on the awkward scale that party fell. Between Larry's vigorous defense — which started out with "There's a guest here spreading a vicious, nasty, scurrilous rumor about me and a gerbil," and unfortunately ended with "I do have a tickle in my anus…" — his admission to wearing "No Fly Zone" underwear, and apparently ending up with Loretta (if it wasn't just a St. Elsewhere dream), well, it might just belong on a scale all its own.

Oh, Larry. Where do we even start? It seems pretty clear that he wasn't crushed by the loss of Cheryl, per se, it was more just that he was worried he'd never find someone else willing to put up with him. His flirting technique indicated that he was right to worry ("Let me ask you a question: Did you ever go out with a bald guy?"), though perhaps he should have thought twice about picking up girls at the gastroenterologist. As he even pointed out, no one goes to that type of doctor just for a checkup. Especially not the type of girl who leaves with six minutes left in a movie, never to be heard from again. I still think she got the better end of the deal (no pun intended, except now that I think about it, I do intend the pun), because who, even in jest, says he stuck a gerbil up his ass?!

While even Leon didn't believe him ("Maybe the gerbil got in an elevator, hit 'Up' and went up your assh--e?"), his sister, Loretta, did. And I guess that's what love is. It's believing someone when he says, among other things, that he did not, in actuality, stick your son's gerbil up his ass — and leave it there for two days — and defending him when someone like Susie comes to curse him out. I guess I have a lot to learn about relationships.

I should have kept a running tally of the number of "F--k you, Larry!"'s we heard this season. Tonight, we got to add at least one more, from the mouth of Matt Tessler, played by the incomparable Michael McKean. We can add Mr. Tessler to the long list of careers LD has ruined. Not many people get their just revenge on the self-described improver (but not inventor), so three cheers (l'chaims?) to Tessler.

In the best-lines category, I submit my humble list as follows:
• Leon calling Larry "Mopey D--k."
• "I've worked here for four years and I've never had anyone come in and cruise the names for any reason."
• "My son has an office on the right hand of Jesus!"
• "You called [Bin Laden] 'Ben.' It's almost like a Jewish name."
• "He probably read 'Gerbil' magazine and you're f--king on the cover!"

So maybe Larry finally did find happiness. Is it the end of Curb? Who knows. There's still an awful lot of misery and angst out there in the world from which LD can mine gold. After all, last season he died but still managed to come back for another season. He might be wishing us a "Happy Holidays from Larry and the Blacks," but to him I say, "God bless you and keep you, bar mitzvah boy."

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Let’s get this recap going before I forget what happened. Now, there’s misanthropy and there’s being a flat-out bad person, and tonight, LD seriously towed that line. Between faking Alzheimer's and getting his therapist thrown in jail, I’m not sure where this so-called new Larry David is. If there’s anything different about him, it’s the fact that he’s now ruining people’s lives on purpose as opposed to just incidentally.

OK, Doctor Bright (Steve Coogan) was probably the world’s worst therapist, considering he told Larry to give Cheryl an ultimatum on moving back in with him ("You have until Monday"). And sure, he might be ridiculously stupid, because he went along with Larry’s fake mugging plan, that even Loretta and Auntie Rae wanted to put a stop to. But did he really deserve to go to jail? He obviously hadn’t spent enough time counseling Larry, or he would have known that his client wouldn’t be helping him get out of his dire situation.

Now Cheryl’s therapist was no prize herself, because I’m willing to bet that there are probably ethics rules against advising your client to never speak to her husband again, just because you’re interested in him. Plus, if she’s interested in LD (and believed his spiel about having "a quarter" Alzheimer's), she’s about as bright as Bright; they’re probably soul mates.

This show doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the psychiatric profession.

On the upside for Larry, he made some headway in getting Cheryl back, though the whole Slavin/Bright mugging episode may have canceled that all out. If she hadn’t been on a Ferris wheel when finding out about this, I’m pretty sure Cheryl would have run screaming and never turned around, but maybe this forced togetherness will allow them to talk through their problems.

Forgetting (though not in an Alzheimer's way) about warped reconciliations for a minute, let’s go through some of tonight’s best lines:
"I raise money. I don’t walk."
"Sometimes when you become friends with someone in this situation, they’re your friend for life."
"I’m mugging you! I’m mugging you!"
"He runs around the house all day, naked, chasing himself."

It was nice to see Marty Funkhouser back this week, but I’m going through Susie withdrawal, so I can hardly wait until next week’s season finale, which is taking place at Sammie’s bat mitzvah. Let’s see if Larry actually becomes a "real person, not an eighth grader," or if he continues his downward spiral into serious threat to civilized society.



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I never knew being bald was such a burden. Look at our good friend Jeff: With a full head of hair, he's getting extra food and high-profile clients. As a baldie, well, he's just a fatter version of Larry, though, it must be said, without years of bitterness about his condition. Fortunately for him, his hair will, as he pointed out after cursing Larry, grow back. Larry's bald forever.

Larry's not just bald, though. Larry's bald and single. And the single part is what prompted one-half of tonight's debacle (though the baldness didn't help). Why did Auntie Rae have to hug for longer than five minutes? He never would have mentioned his groin problems to Doctor Flomm (played by braless wonder Sue Ellen Mischke's alter ego, Brenda Strong), he wouldn't have been "massaging" himself in the car. With but one strike to go against the Blacks, he just had to be caught saying the N word. One can only thank god that Jeff's doctor shaved his head instead of fixing his snoring problem ("that motherf--ker swallowed a kazoo!"), or the Blacks might never have moved back in with LD.

So Larry is bald and single, but the fact that he's a stall man contributed to his problems as well. If he'd been the urinal type, maybe that bigot in the bathroom wouldn't have used the N word, thus saving Larry a lot of grief and offense. But who, in repeating a story like that, would actually use the word?! I've changed my mind: Larry's totally to blame for Jeff's shaved head.

Discounting the whole N word thing for a moment, I have to admit that I was just as perplexed as Larry at Doctor Flomm's behavior; talk about someone whose work has taken over her life. Her sister sits at something rather like a receptionist's desk in her own house while elevator music plays, and the good doctor herself keeps a professional scale in her bedroom. Larry must have been really hard up for a date if these weird "decorations" as it were (not to mention the doctor-speak while setting up a date) didn't set off the warning bells, let's face it, nothing ever will. Larry needs Cheryl back, as that montage demonstrated. Whether his estrogen pills or his loneliness brought it on, it was still a treat to see that car-wash scene again.

I refuse to use the N word myself, so I rather carefully picked out the best lines of the night:
• "He was just a despicable bald man." "Bald? Did he by any chance wear glasses?"
• "You hugged my auntie, man, and you be stabbin' her in the stomach?"
• "F--k you, Larry, and your monkey ass!" (accompanied by Auntie Rae's middle finger)
• "I've got people in my house. They're black, but their name is Black. She's got… brothers and sisters!"

Larry's life could never be better without the Blacks, no matter what Doctor Flomm claims, but he's not the same without Cheryl either. Here's hoping that they get back together over the course of the remaining two(!) episodes this season.

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Knowing what any good Curb viewer already knows about Larry David's real life — namely that he and Laurie, his actual wife, recently divorced due to "irreconcilable differences" — this episode was uncomfortable to watch. Yes, if I called my husband from a rolling airplane and he asked me where the warrantee was for the TiVo, I'd be pissed, and I'd probably leave him, too. Actually that's a lie; my DVR means more to me than any man ever could. I'd probably be the one to be left. Like Larry, there's no other side to Leah. This is pretty much it.

Can we blame Larry's friends (and restaurateurs) for siding with Cheryl? This is, after all, a man who wants to talk about the difference between real and fake crab during sex, and then claims he's complex. In the settlement, Cheryl gets Ted Danson, the Funkhousers (so much for Marty being Larry's best friend, eh?), Primo's, the cleaning woman, Simon, and by extension, the $10,000 Larry lent to Simon, since he's not getting it back. Who is Larry left with? Jeff and Susie — a woman who already hates him most of the time anyway, and won't let him make a call during dinner — the Blacks, and… nope, that's it.

Meanwhile, Cheryl's already moved on to Glenn, the "No Fly Zone" underwear magnate who's better than Larry because not only does he carry mints, tissues and a pen at all times, but he has hair ("This is a betrayal!"). Larry's attempt to revitalize his love life started out promising: He goes out with Lucy Lawless (in a who-knew-she-had-it-in-her hysterical performance) but ends the night with an ice pack on his testicles and a frozen TiVo. If only he'd worn underwear without a fly! The only real positives to come out of this were the fact that Larry got to tell off one of those beyond-obnoxious people who talk loudly on cell phone headsets in public places, and his awesome new nickname, Long Balls Larry.

But in Curb-land, the unhappily ending marriage produces more comedy than tragedy, as evidenced by these classic bits of dialogue:
• "Well, if you must know, my wife left me."
"OK, Mr. David. In the future it'd be nice to get a little more notice."
• "The penis needs an option, just like everyone else."
• "Oh… He's an assh--e." (Lucy Lawless, regarding Ted Danson)
• "I'm a man of mystery."
"And you're a Jew!"

Is it really all over for Larry and Cheryl? I hope it's not, because I'd miss Mrs. David. But beyond that, I'd miss those that sided with her: The Funkhousers and Ted Danson. It's that old tree in the forest thing: If there's no one to react to him, does Larry really make a sound?


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I think Larry David spies on me. Until this week I could have chalked everything up to coincidence (the smoke alarm, "shmo-hawk" and disturbing car rides), but when he devoted every other scene in this episode to a toaster that doesn't actually toast anything, well, I had to wonder where he keeps the surveillance camera. The idea that it could take 15 minutes to toast some bread (and still have it be bread and not toast) hits incredibly close to home, and as funny as it is, I'm starting to get creeped out. On the other hand, maybe these are just the universal truths of the human condition that Shakespeare never got around to examining.

So what kind of mayhem did this so-called toaster cause? Well, in the rush to get out of the house, Larry and Leon accidentally switched up their identical cell phones, and Loretta missed her job interview. But the misfortune didn't end there (does it ever?); Larry rejected Leon's job offer, thinking it was a telemarketer, and Leon insulted the already-incensed Hal (Tim Meadows) by talking about "tapping [Hal's wife's] ass", thinking it was a different Hal, and then proclaiming, "Barack Obama, motherf--ker! Barack Obama! I'm the president of hitting that ass." So in the end, thanks to the toaster, Larry's dream of Loretta and Leon leaving the house ended in a hail of "F--k you"s and inadvertently obscene sign language.

For once though, Larry wasn't solely responsible for the debacle at the middle school's production of Grease. It was Jeff who recommended Lisa the "masseuse" to Larry (for his dad), and it was his exterminator that invited himself to be Larry's date to the play. Because all ingredients come together just right on Curb for complete mayhem, Larry's dad invited his "lady love" out for a night on the town to the play with Larry and the exterminator. If that dog hadn't looked so much like a rat (I'm a dog lover and even I agree), perhaps Larry's dad wouldn't have screamed, the exterminator wouldn't have trampled it, and a whole auditorium would have been spared the therapy bills that are sure to follow. Furthermore, let's not forget that it was Cheryl's illness and her subsequent demand for toasted toast that caused the rush out of the door before Loretta's job interview — not to mention that if she had just sucked it up and gone to the play with Larry, a dog might not have lost its life.

JB Smoove's Leon is without a doubt one of the funniest characters on television right now, so it seems only appropriate that the list of this episode's quotables starts with a couple of his lines:
• "You can't pause toast!"
• "How do you know I haven't flipped your ass?"
• "Please tell me you're not coming on to me." "No good?"
• "I guess since she can't hear, she's not able to detect tone."
• "She did things that say 'love.'"

Alright, I'm going to go check for evidence of wiretapping. Please refrain from attempting sign language for the next week, and if you hear of any sales on toasters, let me know.


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When I heard that this episode would feature a meeting of John McEnroe and Larry David, I was almost giddy with excitement. This was the highlight of the show, but unfortunately, the rest of the story just fell flat. Maybe I'm just scarred because that ride from the cemetery to the Staples Center gave me Vietnam-style flashbacks to a horrible Friedman family car ride, because of the screaming and the threats, but after a stellar four shows, many of the scenes this week just hit awkward notes.

Larry's usually good for a decent party disruption, but bringing a "freak book" as a present and insisting on reading it with Jeff as Ted Danson continues opening gifts didn't strike me as the kind of hyperreal situation that Curb usually goes for. Instead, it felt like a setup, and this show has always been better than that. Even the should-have-been hilarious Susie scene didn't really go right. I can understand not wanting to be buried next to Larry David (who would?), but her excuse, "Even your best self, I'm not interested for all eternity," didn't seem true to her usually profane sense of self-expression.

I'm all for uncomfortable humor (obviously, or I wouldn't be a Curb fan to begin with), but the part of the story concerning the drunk limo driver with the wife in a wheelchair ("This is the s--tstorm of my life. It's s--t.") just pushed it a little too far.

I didn't hate this episode as much as I'm making it sound; I did think that the John McEnroe scenes were worthy of a few guffaws. In fact, most of the best moments came from those scenes, and here were my personal favorites:

• "How does a John McEnroe have fun?" "I like to be quiet."
• "Hey Mac, I'm s--tfaced. We're gonna need a driver."
• "It's a human pig!" (Shades of the pigman, anyone?)
• The extended "F--k you!" exchange between two of the angriest men in North America.

Being more than a casual viewer of Seinfeld, it's natural that I find some overlap between that show and Curb. However, never has it seemed more overt to me than with the issue of the overly chatty limo driver. It was the exact same gag tonight as it was almost exactly 14 years ago in "The Lip Reader." What can I say? I guess I'm just a little disappointed that LD didn't take advantage of the fact that he's on HBO now to tweak this a little.

I do love Larry David, and if anyone could make this episode as good as it was, it's him. It's just hard after "The Ida Funkhouser Roadside Memorial" (fast becoming my favorite episode ever of anything) to see something that doesn't live up to that show's promise. Bottom line on "The Freak Book": A huge step up from last season, but not quite up to par for this year.


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Folks, I attempt to make this a family-friendly blog, so I'm not going to quote any of Leon's advice to Larry about how to best deal with the skinhead (advice that included spray-painting and eating Snickers bars inside of said skinhead's southern orifice), but I will say that the whole thing had me laughing so hard, I was afraid I might hurt myself. Luckily I'm OK, because I certainly didn't want to end up in the doctor's office where I'd be quizzed on my bathroom habits. I do have to agree with Larry, Loretta, Leon and Aunt Rae, though, that anything less than two-ply is wholly unsuited for human use and is at the same level as the Port Authority.

Compared to last week's episode, in which everything tied together so tidily at the end, tonight's episode wasn't quite as neat. It was more like just variations on a theme: Larry goes to the bathroom more than "normal," Cha Cha monitors these habits because she works across from the bathroom, Cheryl forces everyone to use recycled toilet paper — though I do have to admit one of the more inspired lines of the night was her drawing a direct line for the Blacks between nonrecycled toilet paper, global warming and hurricanes, "Which is why you're here!" — and doggie food poisoning. Larry's ear and his comment about miscarriages ("They do have nine kids") seemed mostly unrelated to the rest of the episode, unless you count the fact that a bathroom flush acted as a sonic boom.

Just because it didn't all come together in the final 30 seconds doesn't mean it was a subpar episode. Quite the opposite, when you consider some of the gems we got:

• The aforementioned, "Get in that ass" speech. So brilliant, I had to bring it up again.
• "You have one of those healthy cars, how does that work?" "You put your foot on the gas."
• "I've got a beautiful colon!"
• Re: cutting hair, "It's like the bongos, who can't do that?"
• "Why can't I make it to the toilet?" "Because it's more dramatic that way!"

Aside from all of those, we had some wonderful Larry facial expressions, including his silent scream when the toilet flush busted his ear, his abject horror at the Blacks watching him go into the bathroom, and his patented truth-telling visual examination of the waiter. If Larry David looked at me like that, I'd slink away. In fact, to paraphrase Leon, I wouldn't do s--t and I'd punk out.

Lessons learned this week? Use two-ply, stay away from doggie bags and don't question Chinese population-control laws. What divinely misanthropic teachings will LD bring us next? "We shall see…."


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What would Larry David do? That's going to be my moral barometer from now on. Think about what he would do and do the opposite (hey…). On the other hand, while I wouldn't toss 50 bucks to the floor just to get out of a funeral, I'd probably be one of the vultures diving for it, so should I really be one to judge?

Let's try to follow the chain of events. Larry reams out a woman for abusing the ice cream sample policy — a woman who later turns out to be dean of admissions for the private school that the Davids, the Blacks and the Greenes are all hoping their children will attend. Because Larry can't purchase flowers for the dean with the money that came from Marty's jogging shoe, he has to steal a bouquet from Marty's mother's roadside memorial. To patch things up with his wife and Loretta, he steals two more bouquets. Since Marty keeps track of the memorial (and has a freakish sense of smell), he discovers what Larry has done, and after more sample abusing and grave robbing, Larry and Cheryl have to flee from Ida Funkhouser's funeral under cover of money. As Susie, in her infinite wisdom, pointed out to Larry: "Just knowing you is a liability."

And what's the fallout from all of this? We know it's bad when even Jeff loses it ("I am f--ked, and you f--ked me!"). First and foremost, little Sammy Greene may not get the best education in Los Angeles. Second, Marty has threatened to pop Larry's head off of his neck for desecrating his mother's memorial, and finally, Larry still can't get no satisfaction. Luckily, he's a self-identified expert in apologizing, since he's "been apologizing to people since [he] was 6 years old, on a daily basis."

While Larry works on breaking things down and rectifying them, take some time to look over some of the greatest WWLDD? insights from this episode:
• "You're a little too old to be an orphan."
• "In fact, the customer is usually a moron and an ass--le!"
• "I don't particularly like children. That's why I don't have any. But I like being called Daddy."
• "Did you take those flowers from my mother's site?" "How many flowers does she need?"

I'll meet you all back here next week. I've got to go now — I heard some change hitting the floor in the hallway.

Not even Joe Klein had so much trouble being anonymous. Then again, no one ever accused Mr. Klein of using a teddy bear as an aphrodisiac. Episodes like this make you wonder whether Larry David really ever thinks about anything but being master of his domain.

Not that we should complain, because even if it is his main concern, we get to hear Susie say stuff like this: "You what? You jerked off in their house? That is sick! You have wrought your semen outside of our home, Jeff? That’s adultery!" Then there was her husband’s explanation that he had had too much Manischewitz at Passover and as such it was excusable, considering, "It’s not Yom Kippur, I would never do it on the high holidays." The Greenes make me swoon, but I pity their poor daughter, Sammy. That little girl is in for a lifetime of serious therapy.

We also got the triumphant return of Gina Gershon’s Anna, the Orthodox Jewish dry cleaner. Thank god someone explained the "Law of the Dry Cleaner’s" to me. (I’m going to have to invest in that Dryell stuff, because I only really have three pairs of good work pants, and I can’t afford to lose them.) I could totally understand the look on Larry’s face when he found out that Senator Boxer was, "part of the problem." If we can’t trust our government, who can we trust? Maybe he should have sent Leon after her. Of course, Larry’s incredulity that more than one Pepitone jersey could possibly exist was baffling in and of itself. But good for him and his new buddy, Leon, ending up with a "matching set."

In the end, even if Larry ended up getting the ever-loving crap beat out of him due to his status as a dry-cleaning vigilante, at least he’s won the latest battle in his cold war with Ted Danson. To the greater public, they’re both anonymous, but thanks to his flirtatious taps with Cheryl, Ted is now considered to be the greater of two perverts by Susie.

Greatest throwaway moment of the night? Auntie Rae tackling Larry for chasing the kids around in a white sheet, then saying, "Ghost is not the first thing you think about. You think about KKK." Second greatest? Larry calling Ted Danson a "little yenta."

Until next week, put the following on your agendas: Write your congressman regarding what I’m calling Larry’s Law, and for god’s sake, stay away from the Manischewitz.


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Evening everyone. I’m here for the recap. What’s that? What do you mean the episode aired Sunday night? Well, you’re already here and you don’t have any plans, so why not read the recap? There are plenty of leftovers, and they don’t include any (ahem) black log cake.

So it was a pretty, pretty good episode. We got our overarching storyline for the season in the Blacks. To make up with Cheryl after a typically horrendous evening — the two of them and the Greenes all showing up accidentally on purpose at Marty Funkhauser’s party a day late — Larry agrees to "adopt" a family of victims of a Katrina-like disaster. Maybe he should have just blamed his appalling behavior at the after-party on the fact that he didn’t get any sleep. After all, he did have to destroy a malfunctioning smoke detector with a baseball bat. How was he to know that Loretta Black (nicely underplayed by Vivica A. Fox) would be an indoor smoker?

Of course, since things can never start off on the right foot with Larry, he makes real shmo-hawks of himself and Cheryl by picking the Blacks up from the airport late. As if that weren't enough of an affront, he introduces himself with the absurd, "So let me see, your last name is Black? That’d be like if my last name was Jew — Larry Jew, 'cause I’m Jewish." Happy Rosh Hashanah, Larry.

But what does Larry get for his largesse? A burned-out house, a pissed-off wife, two sets of angry friends who think he’s punctuality challenged, and an addiction to erotic cakes from the 26th Street Bakery.

I’m not sure whether it should scare me that I can completely identify with many of Larry’s situations. Who hasn’t stumbled around half asleep in the middle of the night searching for a beeping smoke detector, or bungled an introduction? How many functions have we all tried to get out of by making up ridiculous excuses? It’s the whole "show about nothing" concept taken to a new, horrifying level.

So between now and Sunday, you can play a thousand pickup sticks for money, sing improv karaoke or use the awesome term shmo-hawk when someone cuts you off, but the one thing you don’t have to worry about is me showing up on time to the airport. Yes, I’ll be there, and I won’t even make fun of your last name.