‘Curb’ just keeps getting funnier
By BYJACKNEWORTH CHANNELSURFING
I’VE BEEN A FAN OF COMEDY ALL MY life. On occasion I attempt to write some. (This may not be one of those occasions.) Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld” and star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” plays one of the most obnoxious characters in television history. He’s self-centered, opinionated, rude, and if he’s ever shows any compassion, it’s because it suits his purposes. That said, “Curb” is the funniest show on television and perhaps, among the funniest of all time.
David’s character (I’m told not that different from his own) is in good company with a slew of comedic giants. W.C. Fields was a liar, a braggart and a drunk. Groucho Marks was mean-spirited, scheming and egocentric. The immortal Jack Benny’s character was vain and cheap. And every character in “Seinfeld” was remarkably selfish and shallow. In the last episode they even went to jail for it.
I first discovered “Curb” in 1999 as a one-hour mockumentary in which David was preparing for an HBO special only to panic at the last moment and back out, using his mother’s stroke as the excuse. (Of course his mother had-n’t had a stroke.) When the distraught HBO executives ask how long the stroke might prevent him from performing, David answers shamelessly, “You never know with strokes.”
“Curb” recently began it’s sixth season. If you don’t get HBO, you ought to rent the previous seasons on DVD. The show has received 20 Emmy Award nominations (winning one) and won a Golden Globe for the best television comedy in 2003. At the ceremony David held the award and said proudly, “This is a bad day for the Golden Globes but a good day for Larry David.”
Set in Los Angeles, “Curb” is loosely based on David’s life as a semi-retired multi-millionaire in the world after “Seinfeld” with $400,000,000 in the bank. (The real figure is reported as $200,000,000, his share of the “Seinfeld” syndication fees.) And yet with all his money, Larry is subject to all the annoyances of every day life and causes more than his share.
This season David and long suffering wife Cheryl, (played brilliantly by Cheryl Hines) have taken in a black family who are homeless as a result of a hurricane. Larry agreed only when he sees it might lead to sex with Cheryl. He later confesses to his friend/manager Jeff (played by his friend/manager, Jeff Garlin) that when he wants sex he can be nice for the whole day but afterwards he goes back to being his normal self. When the David’s pick up the family at the airport, (hours late) Larry remarks on the coincidence that they’re black and their last name is also Black. He says with no regard, “That’d be like if my last name was ‘Jew!’”
One of the more remarkable features of “Curb” is that it is shot without a script. Scenes are discussed to cover plot points, but the dialogue is improvised. As a result the show feels very natural and not at all like a contrived sitcom. One of my favorite “Curb” stories happened in real life. A man was in jail serving 25 to life for murder. His alibi was that he was at a Dodger game. While in jail he remembered there was a TV show being shot. It was an episode of “Curb” where Larry had picked up a hooker just so he could ride in the diamond lane. When the court reviewed the video, sure enough, the man was in the footage. He was released from prison within a week. Straight-faced, David said he was so moved he was “quitting show business and devoting the remainder of his life to freeing innocent people trapped in our prison system.”
The fourth episode of the new “Curb Your Enthusiasm” season is on HBO this Sunday at 10 p.m. Be prepared to despise David and find him a comic genius at the same time.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 5, 2007. Read the original PDF.