Ode To Curb

Mondays is about movies, and sometimes TV. Today, a celebration of one of the greatest, most infuriating and important television comedy shows of the last 25 years. About to hit its final season.

I was talking to my folks on the phone the other day. And it fell into the regular chat, TV recommendations. They’d loved Fool Me Once, so I bit my tongue, said, “good”. They’d seen One Night “ages ago” - and also “loved it”. They’d devoured all of Yellowstone and all of the prequels, and anything with ‘yellow’ or ‘stone’ in the title, just to be sure…

They’re less into movies these days, and it’s all about the limited series, or something with a few seasons to chew on. They’ll still go to the cinema, but they won’t be going to Priscilla. Mum’s too loyal to Elvis (“Why is there even a film about her? She wasn’t anything, until she married him…”) I tried to say that it was worthwhile, and actually as much about him as her at any rate, and that’s when my dad just cut in with, “Anyway, when’s Larry on?”

My reply: “You’ll be able to see the return of your spiritual leader in a day or two - probably Tuesday night on Neon at a guess”.

Larry is Larry David. And Curb Your Enthusiasm is the show that has made “Larry David” - an exaggerated, cartoon-version of the very real-life Larry David (co-creator of Seinfeld) - a star once again. And bigger this time. Curb has been running for pretty, pretty, pretty much a quarter of a century, though there was a hiatus after the first few seasons. And this season, the 12th, will be its last. And not a ‘last’ like a KISS farewell tour, or final-ever Eagles shows. It is the last. Even if the American publications are using words like “allegedly” as they help to spread that and other words about the show on the eve of its first episode.

Perhaps the greatest trick Larry David’s devilish caricature ever played was being the spiritual leader to the boomers. The balding, bespectacled retired white guys angry that their greatest boardroom success stories from 30-40 years ago don’t matter a jot to a generation more concerned with the world burning before them as images blur on their phones. The battle for relevancy. The entitlement of lived, earned experience instantly outmoded in a world with bigger concerns than the best deal anyone ever got - and how it didn’t matter that they could have paid the full price to begin with, what mattered was the victory. And the story they’re now trying to tell about exactly that if you’ll just listen you might learn something!

Larry David as “Larry David” is essentially taking the piss out of those people. Well aware that he also is one, or presents as one, has all the makings of one, and is more successful than just about any of the others. His comedy series has been brutal, awkward, infuriating and mesmeric in its absurdity, pettiness, and brilliance.

In season one, a fresh-faced Bob Odenkirk guest-stars in an episode called Porno Gil. He’s Gil, an ex porn star living in “the house that cum built”. Larry ends up invited to his house for a dinner party. Gil tells the story about how they’d stick Tabasco sauce up his arse so he could maintain an erection when shooting. When Cheryl, Larry’s long-suffering wife (for at least the first half of the show’s run) decides she no longer wants to be at the party and requires Larry to take her home immediately, David riffs, “maybe we can stop off and pick up some Tabasco”.

Porno Gil is just one of a double fistful of episodes of Curb that I think about often, can quote from, don’t need to ever see again, and yet will willingly sit through any time that anyone else wants, particularly anyone previously uninitiated. Beloved Aunt from the first season too, where a typo has a death notice read Beloved Cunt, due to Larry’s manager’s bad handwriting. So of course it’s Larry that gets the blame.

You watch Curb Your Enthusiasm for the improvisation. Skilled actors going at it with just a sketch of a premise. You watch it for the personalities behind the players, and the way that originally bit-part characters worked their way up to being crucial (Susie Essman who plays ‘Susie’, the manger’s wife) or just had to stay in the show long past the reason their walk-on expired (J.B. Smoove as house-guest turned bestie, ‘Leon’). You watch for the sparring between real life comedian friends Larry and Richard Lewis. For the recurring “as themselves” roles of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, for the cast of Seinfeld to cameo, for Michael J. Fox to winningly play himself (S.8, ep 10’s Larry vs. Michael J. Fox, 2011), and for episodes you know by name (The Doll, S.2, ep 7, back in 2001).

There was also that infamous Marty Funkhouser joke in the episode where Jerry Seinfeld couldn’t keep a straight face - just for a change!

In recent years, Larry and Curb have made headlines for not being as funny as back in the day. There are think-pieces questioning the validity of the show in this day and age - and then there are counter think-pieces suggesting there’s never been a better time for Larry’s antics and the smug satire of Curb.

As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Some of the recent seasons’ episodes have missed the mark massively. Particularly the last season’s finale, which had a Trump joke that just fucking missed. It was way too late, too esoteric, too unfunny also…

But there’s also been some humour that’s up there with the best of the show - and in anticipation of season 12 I began watching it again from the start. Okay, so I didn’t get far. I didn’t make it through seasons five and six and on to season ten again. I in fact made it to about episode eight of the first season. But that says more about me than the show’s longevity. I loved watching the eight episodes I saw - each of them for at least the third time, in some cases it was the fifth or sixth. But also, it was the first time seeing any of them in close to 20 years. The early stuff has held up brilliantly. It felt even more potent in some ways.

And, so maybe I’ll carry on with the seasons after I say goodbye to Larry and Jeff and their frenemies. It might be the best way to cope. Because, even if season 12 is the one that finally jumps the shark while shitting in the bed all while making Jewish jokes galore at about the very worst time in modern history for anyone to be making them, I will be there for each and every episode. The way I was for Seinfeld up to and including its piss-weak finale. The way I have been for arguably no other TV show ever.

So, in advance, thanks Larry David. And thank you too “Larry”. Spiritual Leader of the Boomers.