(Season 1, Episodes 1-2)
If you’re thinking that I’m not technically new to Curb Your Enthusiasm, you’re right … and wrong. While I recently covered the seventh season of the show for CliqueClack, I made it clear at the time that I was reviewing it from the perspective of a Seinfeld fan, with less attention paid to the traditional Larry David nonsense, and more paid toward the Seinfeld reunion arc.
Now I’m watching Curb as a regular viewer, starting all the way back in season one (you envy me that, right?). I’m not sure the show is for me, but we’ll save that for later. For now, let’s get into the episodes.
1.1 “The Pants Tent”
I think only Larry David could base an episode plot on the material tent that the crotch of his pants makes when he sits down — and on the pilot episode of his series at that. What’s highly enjoyable about this show, and it was true on Seinfeld as well, is Larry’s ability to tie so many disparate things into one neat bow.
While on the phone with Jeff (Jeff Garlin), Larry calls his wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) “Hitler.” Jeff’s on speakerphone, and his parents overhear. The manner in which that spiraled into a story about Kathy Griffin, leading to dinner at a restaurant where Kathy comes up to Jeff and Larry and blows their lie, was amazing. An overwhelming amount of the jokes are too rough for me — the reason that David was a comic’s comic — but I did appreciate the humor in some of the situations. And now I get the animosity evident in later seasons between Larry and Richard Lewis on the subject of Richard’s girlfriends.
1.2 “Ted and Mary”
Another question mark for me was the inexplicable existence of Ted Danson (and his wife Mary Steenburgen) in Larry’s life. I think it’s hilarious, I just never got the randomness of it. Still don’t, but at least I now understand the origin.
I can’t believe that someone walked out of a bowling alley with Larry’s shoes. How does a person even do that? It’s one of those things that seemingly could only happen to Larry, but again, I enjoyed how that tied into shopping with Mary and her mother, the clerk at the shoe place, and finally the confrontation with the guy who stole Larry’s shoes. By the way, if Larry practically threw up when he drank from Mary’s mother’s water, no way would he put shoes on that someone else had worn, no matter how well they were sanitized.
Great seeing Tim Bagley (Will & Grace) in the very funny role of the shoe salesman. I loved how he stepped in when Larry tried to return the half shirt/half jacket at Barneys. A little obsessive, but funny.
So here’s the question that I put to you, dear readers. The TV Guide channel is airing Curb Your Enthusiasm from season one, and I think that regardless I plan to watch it (for the time being). But should I do a virgin diary on the show? Remember from my coverage of season seven that I do not have wholly positive feelings for Larry David as a person, or necessarily as an arbiter of funny (and yet I keep coming back). Therefore, there is the strong possibility that I will have a fair amount of negative things to say in my diary. Is it worth it? Is a virgin’s take on Curb something you’re interested in seeing regardless?
Let me know in your comments below.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jun 18, 2010 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
Curb was always a show that I liked, but never watched regularly due to not having HBO on a regular basis. When I saw that I could watch it on demand from the beginning a few weeks ago I decided to try it from the start. I’m four episodes in and the show makes me feel uncomfortable. But its also hilarious so I’m going to try to stick with it. So I’d be interested in seeing more Curb Your Enthusiasm Diaries.
*POST AUTHOR*
Thanks! It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, just confused as to where the joke was. I have to watch a bit more and then figure out what to do, but I’m glad to know that someone will be there with me if I continue. :)
I too watched for Sienfeld, and even then I thought the show was rather bad and incredibly stupid.
I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. I love the fact that so much of the humour is based on the little social conventions that most people take for granted, but which Larry feels compelled to question, something that also played a large part when he was writing Seinfeld. A favourite example would be when Larry’s fictional cousin visits, uses the bathroom but takes a magazine from the hall into the bathroom with him. After finishing, he comes out and puts the magazine back on the table: cameras zooms in on Larry staring at the now germ covered magazine lol so he picks it up with gloves on and throws it away, forgetting that Cheryl had written an important phone number on it which leads to other complications and so on. Genius.
*POST AUTHOR*
I do enjoy that Larry doesn’t let things go the way most of us do, and that he does what so many of us wish we could bring ourselves to. But the manner in which he does it….
Never liked Seinfeld – I thought the humor was lame for the most part. Curb Your Enthusiasm, on the other hand, is both hilarious (which I like) and far more crude (which I don’t like). I think if you dislike the humor as well as the crudeness, then you should give it up. If you at least like the humor, then maybe it’s worth continuing.
*POST AUTHOR*
Whoa. Never what? Tell me you’ve never seen it. But never liked it?
I’ve watched several seasons of Seinfeld but not every episode. I watched it because it was supposed to be funny, and if so many people thought it was so great, who was I to argue? But eventually I had to recognize that the Emperor has no clothes… or, in other words, I was not laughing, I was not being entertained, so clearly it wasn’t working for me. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have funny moments – but as a whole, I found it boring. In contrast, Curb Your Enthusiasm has me laughing out loud, even while I’m cringing at the off-color humor.
*POST AUTHOR*
:( My heart goes out to you.
I think good comedy is always going to offend someone. Playing it safe results in things like Friends. Inoffensive, but also unfunny and lacking any kind of intelligence behind it. It’s also the difference between having a live audience that really is laughing at say the Soup Nazi, and having a canned laughter track for each time Joey says ‘how you doin’.
I’m a big Larry David (Seinfeld/Curb) fan. But, for the life of me, I cannot understand why he chose “TV Guide Network” as his syndication vehicle for Curb. We have Comcast cable, which has the TV Guide channel merely as another way of viewing the program schedule, even though Comcast’s own guide is much more user friendly and easy to negotiate. The channel itself is extremely low-definition, worse than what’s left of the non-High Definition channels. And, of course, the program guide takes up the bottom portion of the screen, cutting off part of the picture. Furthermore, the picture breaks up (similar to satellite interference) and cuts out completely for several seconds at a time. All I can say is, they must have offered him a heck of a deal for him to put this quality show on that piece of crap channel.
*POST AUTHOR*
I have DirecTV, so haven’t experienced your issue, but it is an odd choice for other reasons — most people don’t think of The TV Guide Channel as a “channel,” so it would largely go overlooked (maybe he wants it that way?), and censoring doesn’t work great on a show that employs language like Curb does.