by Josh Levine
Some Christmas traditions Larry doesn’t seem to mind as much. One is tipping the staff. He walks about with a mittful of bills like some Rockefeller, peeling off a few for the gardener and the housekeeper, the waiters at the club. There’s a complicated plot involving the housekeeper Dora whom Larry has to take out to lunch, and a lie to protect Jeff who seems to have made a late night call to another woman, with the result that Dora quits and Susie throws Jeff out again. And then there’s that pesky pubic hair caught in Larry’s throat. The sound he makes trying to get it out is enough to cause any viewer to run screaming from the television.
Wanting to be the big sport and make up with Cheryl and her family, Larry hires a live nativity scene — a bunch of actors dressed in period costume, complete with straw and stuffed animals. He sets them up on the lawn but when Larry comments to Joseph (or “Joe” or “Joey” as Larry likes to call him) on Mary’s sexy figure, Joseph takes offence and tackles him. In the wrestling match between them, Joseph bangs on Larry’s back, inadvertently dislodging the pubic hair from his throat. Now Larry doesn’t have to suffer from it, and we don’t have to listen to that awful sound. If only he didn’t have to look up and see Cheryl and her family standing there.
I used to go to a deli that had on its sign the words You don’t have to be Jewish. Well, you don’t have to be Jewish to laugh at Larry eating a nativity scene, ogling Mary, or wrestling with Joseph. But it might help a little. On the other hand, if some Christians were offended by Larry David’s cavalier attitude to their faith, they didn’t make much noise about it. Not this time anyway. An episode in season seven, however, will not slip by so easily.
EPISODE TEN
The Grand Opening / Original Airdate: November 17, 2002 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
The story arc last season of trying to create a new television show for Julia Louis- Dreyfus needed to come to an end in the last episode more as a matter of obligation than anything else. Viewers knew very well that the show would never get on the air. But this season is a different matter. Will the restaurant open at last? Will the opening be a disaster? Or perhaps the question ought to be — just how will the opening be a disaster? The story is stronger this season and has created some genuine buildup and even, I daresay, suspense.
Before getting to the opening, Larry David is going to make his characters jump through some hoops. One line involves the mean restaurant critic Andy Portico whose “thumbs down” can sink any new restaurant before it even has a chance. The character is clearly inspired by Roger Ebert who gave one of his own famous thumbs down to Larry David’s movie Sour Grapes. Paul Wilson — who began his acting career in the seventies and had regular roles on Cheers and It’s Garry Shandling’s Show — plays the curmudgeonly Andy Portico. Larry gets to face off with Andy in a friendly dodgeball game that turns fierce, finally throwing a shot that breaks both of Andy Portico’s thumbs.
Perhaps it’s an act of vengeance on the reviewer’s part that he suggests to Larry a chef named Guy Bernier (played by Paul Sand, recognizable for his recurring role as Rabbi Polonski on Joan of Arcadia). Once again the restaurant has lost its chef, this time because Larry discovers that his fellow baldy actually wears a toupee. Other than a few peculiarities, such as a refusal to put salmon on the menu (“I won’t buy it, I won’t broil it, I won’t bake it”), the Portico-recommended chef seems ideal. At least until the investors discover he suffers from Tourette’s syndrome and every so often begins to shout obscenities from the open kitchen that is visible to the restaurant. But Larry has seen numbers on his arm and, concluding that he’s a concentration camp survivor, won’t fire him.
There’s other busywork going on — a rift between Cheryl and Susie. Who even knew they had been friends? And Cheryl’s use of a product called “Colon Cleanse” that causes her to run out of a car wash and head for a toilet. Is it just me, or does Larry David seem to try to humiliate Cheryl these last episodes, first with the pubic hair story and now with diarrhea? But all of it leads to opening night at Bobo’s.
Orchestral music swells. We see the restaurant packed with people, including many familiar faces from episodes past, like a sort of homecoming. Customers look happy as they ring their little bells for the waiters. The investors are glowing. Even Larry’s discovery that the numbers on the chef’s arm have been written with a pen doesn’t spoil the mood. And then . . .
The chef begins to shout obscenities. He stops just as suddenly but the restaurant has grown silent. Everyone is stunned, appalled. And then Larry makes his move.
Earlier in the episode Larry had seen a group of boys who had shaved their heads in solidarity with a friend undergoing chemotherapy. He’s been touched by their act and now, remembering it, he does the same by shouting out his own obscenities. Understanding, Jeff does the same. And then Michael York. Cheryl swears too — only Susie, just entering, thinks Cheryl is swearing at her. Soon everyone is joining in. Even Larry’s father calls out, “Tuchus-licker!” Barbara the widow, Richard Lewis, and Jeff’s parents all join in, swearing and laughing and raising their glasses. Bizarrely, it’s actually a very sweet moment.
And there is Larry, smiling, in the middle of it. For this — all of this — has he made.
Season Four
EPISODE ONE
Mel’s Offer / Original Airdate: January 4, 2004 / Directed by Larry Charles
In an Italian restaurant, with Cheryl looking more glamorous than usual in a black dress and pearls, the Davids talk about their upcoming tenth wedding anniversary. Cheryl wants them to renew their vows and is surprised when Larry actually agrees. But the reason for his being so amenable soon becomes clear; he remembers a promise that Cheryl made to him before they were engaged.
Flashback ten years, Cheryl with curly locks and Larry with enormous glasses and brown hair. Cheryl addresses Larry’s hesitancy about getting married by saying that if they do she will give him an unusual tenth anniversary gift: permission to have sex with another woman just one time. Back to the present, Cheryl laughs at the memory but sticks to her promise for the simple reason that she thinks Larry is incapable of picking up a woman. Later when he tells an astonished Jeff, Larry says, “She actually challenged me to do it. She was laughing at me.” And so Larry’s pursuit of a one-night stand begins. The question viewers might ask themselves throughout this little adventure is: does Larry really want to sleep with another woman? Or is he too decent, or sensible, or puritanical, or frightened (or a combination of all four) to go through with it?
Larry and Cheryl set off for a karaoke party that Larry, rather surprisingly, is looking forward to. (In real life, Larry David dislikes karaoke, which means having to look like you’re enjoying yourself.) When they walk in, Mel Brooks, looking fit and energetic, is crooning “Just in Time.” Jeff sends Larry over to a pretty woman to practice his pickup skills and his hilarious monologue on bowling — or more specifically, on buying a bowling ball — bores her into silence.
Larry’s own turn up at the microphone singing “Swanee River” shows him in surprisingly good form. (The choice of the popular 1851 Stephen Foster song is perhaps in itself a joke, since it was usually sung in blackface.) Larry’s performance earns him a meeting with Mel Brooks, one of his “idols.” He and Jeff go the next day. Mel’s receptionist is just one in a long line of receptionists and secretaries whom Larry alienates, and this time when he hears that the unsmiling woman has a “partner,” he gets off one of his most memorable phrases about marriage. “I have a wife,” Larry says. “Not exactly a partner. More like a rival.” Worthy of Bartlett’s Quotations, that one.
The meeting gets delayed when Mel Brooks smacks a door into Larry’s head, opening a wound requiring stitches. The doctor turns out to be the same actor who played the infamous library cop on Seinfeld, Philip Baker Hall. But when the meeting finally takes place Mel offers Larry the part of Max Bialystock, made famous first in the original film version of The Producers by Zero Mostel and then in the Broadway musical by Nathan Lane. Lar
ry is understandably hesitant, but Mel assures him that he’s got what it takes. What’s more, he’ll be playing opposite Ben Stiller in the role of Leopold Bloom, which Gene Wilder played in the original movie and Matthew Broderick on Broadway. There is a Seinfeld connection: it was, of course, Ben’s father, the squat, powerhouse of an actor Jerry Stiller who played George’s father in Seinfeld. It is, indeed, a small world that Larry David lives in.
Mel may have confidence in Larry, but his associates do not. “Giant fucking mistake,” says one of his two elderly henchmen, played by the film director Paul Mazursky (Down and Out in Beverly Hills). Nor is Ben Stiller so thrilled when Larry and Cheryl run into him and his real wife Christine Taylor at the Los Angeles production of the show. “May I ask you something? You act?” Ben asks skeptically. If only Larry hadn’t refused to shake Ben’s hand after Ben sneezes — the first in a series of perceived insults that doesn’t bode well for their relationship, on or offstage.
In the production that Larry sees (and falls asleep in, due to a painkiller he has taken) the roles of Max and Leon are played by Lewis J. Stadlen and Don Stephenson, who were indeed in the show.
This is a good first episode and it’s fun to see Mel Brooks, master of comic improvisation, in his early act with Carl Reiner. Also enjoyable is Stiller, performing his well-known tightly wound persona. There are some minor subplots (one involving a man in a wheelchair) that do what they’re supposed to do even if they’re not that funny, but for the most part this episode is intended to set up the fourth season’s two arcs. It’s what comes after that counts.
EPISODE TWO
Ben’s Birthday Party / Original Airdate: January 11, 2004 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
The first two seasons of Curb gave the viewer more opportunities to cringe with embarrass- ment for Larry. But there’s no question that the scene for which this episode is named has the highest cringe factor rating of any scene to date. It’s an excruciating festival of jerkness. And when Larry’s not being a jerk, he’s being unbelievably thoughtless.
The scene has already been set up by Larry’s response to Ben’s invitation to the party. Since Ben’s actual birthday was two weeks ago, why is he bothering to have a party now? Then when he and Cheryl arrive, he discovers that he is the only one to have taken the insistence on “no presents” seriously. He tries to chat up the attractive Cady Huffman who plays the sexy Swedish secretary Ulla in The Producers (in real life, Huffman won a Tony award for the role) by complaining about Ben having a party too late. We really can’t blame her for becoming first annoyed, then bored, and finally walking away.
After that social success, Larry joins Susie and a bunch of kids in a game of broken telephone. But when a boy whispers to Larry and he has to tell everyone what he has heard, he comes up with “I love tits.” After Susie tells him off, Cheryl drags Larry away. But it seems that Larry hasn’t made enough of an impression. First, he refuses to sing “Happy Birthday” and then, holding a kabob skewer, he demonstrates a golf swing to Jeff and smacks Ben in the eye, scratching his retina.
Some of these faux pas aren’t intentional, but enough show Larry off as ungenerous and mean. Some people are forgiven for such flaws because of their enormous talent, but in the rehearsal hall for The Producers Larry doesn’t prove himself one of them. “Thank God you stopped,” says the gay choreographer Steve after watching Larry dance. At a later rehearsal Larry seems to have a series of dance steps down, but then Steve tells him the tempo has to be much, much faster. Larry tries, his face straining with effort and worry. He looks like a hopeless amateur and, for a moment at least, we feel the pressure and sympathize with him. His failing efforts to learn his lines are equally painful to watch.
This is one of those episodes without a single dominating story line. One involves Richard Lewis whose friend’s daughter wants to have breast implants. Richard calls on Larry to help him talk her out of it. Also going on is the story of Michael, the blind man from season one who has turned out to be the rehearsal pianist for the show. A short, round, balding man with a whiny voice, Michael (played by Patrick Kerr, best known for his role of Noel Shempsky on Frasier) nevertheless insists that his girlfriends must be beautiful. The only problem is that his current squeeze, Rhonda, has lied to him about being a model. In reality she’s, frankly, less than ordinary. Larry naturally tells him the truth but says, “What’s the difference what she looks like? You can’t see her anyway. That’s one of the advantages.” Eventually Michael dumps Rhonda and Larry has to be her substitute, food shopping, taking Michael to buy shoes, even taking him out for lunch (where Larry steals bites of his dessert). Larry and Cheryl go to a nightclub to hear Michael play piano and sing show tunes, but his voice is so awful that he chases everyone out of the place — everyone except Larry.
This is one of those episodes where the viewer can hardly decide whether to feel repulsion for Larry or sorry for him. Toss a coin.
EPISODE THREE
The Blind Date / Original Airdate: January 18, 2004 / Directed by Larry Charles
One of the upsides of Larry’s bluntness and his lack of social grace is that he often treats people equally. And so when the blind Michael says that an attractive woman should like him because it’s what’s inside that counts (at least for her supposedly), Larry replies that he is the most superficial person he has ever met, “blind or sighted.”
Sometimes it seems that if he doesn’t think one story line is strong enough, Larry David will pile on three or four more, and this is one of those episodes. Larry’s deteriorating relationship with Ben Stiller continues when Ben gives Larry a lift and Larry refuses to move from the back seat to the front passenger seat. “I’m not going to drive you around like I’m your chauffeur. Get in the fucking front seat,” yells Ben. Hearing the two of them call each other “a baby” is not exactly mature, but it is amusing.
Then there’s Cheryl’s little cousin Stuart, a boy of perhaps thirteen. Stewart knows a card trick, which he fools Larry with. But he won’t reveal the secret, insisting that Larry is not a magician. The kid, played by Anton Yelchin (later the star of the film Charlie Bartlett), does a good deadpan. Jeff reveals to Larry that when he was masturbating the other day, Cheryl “popped” into his head, a bit of information that for some reason he thinks will flatter Larry. Larry insists that Jeff never think of her again but Jeff says a person just isn’t in control of who might “pop” in. This truth will come back to horrify Larry when, pleasuring himself at the thought of Cady Huffman, the image of Susie “pops” into his own head. Not just Susie, but Susie in a dominatrix outfit that she wore for Halloween. For Larry, sex seems to be fraught with dangers — even sex with himself.
Anxious to find a new girlfriend for Michael that will get him off chore-duty, Larry hits upon the idea of setting him up with a charming woman he meets who happens to be Muslim and wears a burka. With her face covered nobody will be able to know what she looks like, therefore giving Michael a “level playing field.” It isn’t surprising that Larry makes no effort to depict a devout Muslim authentically, since he depicts Jews, Catholics, and other groups in equally unrealistic ways. It’s a shame the date doesn’t end well.
As if all that action isn’t enough, Larry befriends a group of mentally challenged adults who are holding a car wash. The friendship is a rather long setup for a couple of lame jokes. In one, Larry is mistaken for being mentally challenged himself by Mel Brooks’s assistants. And in the other, one of the men (Judah Friedlander who plays Frank on 30 Rock) figures out the card trick that has baffled Larry. Hey, even retarded people are smarter than Larry!
Larry isn’t exactly disappointed to hear that Ben Stiller has quit The Producers. Or that his place will be taken by David Schwimmer from Friends. Bring on those guest stars!
EPISODE FOUR
The Weatherman / Original Airdate: January 25, 2004 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
This is another mishmash episode, made up of various story lines. It also continues with a theme
that Larry David has been developing over the series — that the humiliations of the mind are closely related to the humiliations of the body. This episode touches on tooth decay and plaque, urination, stomach upset, back pain, and the biggest humiliation of all — death.
The first humiliation involves the mouth, for Larry has lost a crown. The dentist, Saul Funkhouser, takes a photo of the raw tooth that will end up being seen by Jeff and Susie’s daughter Sammy who will scream in terror. Saul’s elderly uncle Leo has Hodgkin’s (“yeah, but it’s the good Hodgkin’s,” Larry insists, distinguishing it from the more fatal form) and there is going to be a testimonial for him at the golf club. (Leo’s son Marty is played by Bob “Super Dave” Einstein.) The second humiliation is that Larry — who has begun to pee sitting down, believing it to be more convenient — falls into the toilet one night when the seat is left up. He has to hobble with a cane. Next comes Cheryl’s awful stomach ache, a result of Susie’s bad cooking.
In Larry’s small world of major and minor celebrities (and the people who service them), everyone knows everyone. Even the television weatherman, who Larry decides has been deliberately giving false reports of rain in order to keep other golfers off the course. The weatherman, who happens to be invited to the testimonial, denies this accusation. Although Larry seems to be right, the one day he defies the weatherman’s prediction he ends up on the golf course with Stu Braudy, playing in the pouring rain.