by Josh Levine
Just before curtain, Larry makes up with David Schwimmer and then has his chance to sleep with Cady Huffman. At least until he sees a photograph of George W. Bush on her desk and realizes that she’s a Republican. Come on, Larry! Is this an excuse or what? You can’t go through with it, can you? Despite all that you might imagine or want yourself to be, the fact is you’re a faithful husband if not always a good one.
And then the overture begins. Mel comes into the wings of the St. James Theater to wish Larry and David luck. We see the chorus sing the opening number in full set and costume, just as it’s done onstage. And then Larry appears in cape and enormous glasses and gives his first line: “The reviews come out a lot faster when the critics leave at intermission.” Nice laugh from the audience and then cut to him singing, “I used to be the king of old Broadway.” And here we are actually seeing Larry singing and dancing as Max Bialystock in the Broadway production. Incredible.
We see the first scene when David Schwimmer, as the nervous and esteem-challenged Leon Bloom, enters Max’s office. The scene is going well until Larry gets stuck on a line. It doesn’t come to him, and doesn’t come to him, and he begins to badly ad-lib. In the audience we see Jerry Seinfeld (his first appearance on the show) making an uncomfortable face. And still Larry can’t find the line. People begin to get up from their seats and head for the exits. So it seems that the show will be a disaster after all, just as we have expected. But then Larry steps forward and he begins to talk to the audience. He talks like the stand-up comic he used to be, pointing out his cousin Andy and joking that he’s the “primary reason for anti-Semitism.” Larry begins riffing on the various uses of the turban worn by another audience member. He’s funny and the audience, laughing, turns and sits down again. Then he finds his line and he and David continue the scene.
Nearby Mel Brooks and his real wife, the fine actress Anne Bancroft (who has since died), are talking about the show. In a brilliant comic turn, their words echo a scene in The Producers. Like Max, Mel actually wants the show to flop. Not to make money but so that he can finally be free of it and return to his normal life. “How did you know that [Larry] could ruin the show?” asks Anne. Mel answers, “Everything he touches he dooms.” Then they toast the death of the show.
Only the show is going great. The audience has been won over and at intermission they pour into the bar where Mel and Anne are camped out. And just as in The Producers, they overhear the audience rave. “I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.” “I thought I’d split my sides.” The lines are right out of The Producers. Larry is a hit.
Larry and David receive a standing ovation as they take their bows. In the audience, Cheryl is glowing. It is quite a feat, making Larry David believable in a Broadway show, but Curb has done it. True, he’s really only barely passable, but with the strong dancers and singers surrounding him, the lights, costumes, set, and the cheers of the audience, he somehow just . . . works. Larry is a success. Yes, despite his social brusqueness, his inability to understand the needs of intimate relationships, his tendency to insult people, get into trouble, cause anger and disruption wherever he goes — in spite of it all, Larry triumphs yet again. And we join in the standing ovation.
Season Five
EPISODE ONE
The Larry David Sandwich / Original Airdate: September 25, 2005 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
A beautiful cerulean blue ocean beach. A lone individual swimming. The camera zooms in on Larry. (Never mind that in a previous episode Larry expressed his dislike of going to the beach and didn’t go in the water.) Suddenly a big wave appears and knocks him under. He struggles, is hit again and again, his body being pushed under while symphonic music swells. At last he manages to stagger onto the sand, breathless.
This near-death has a big effect on Larry. It is reminiscent of what happens to Woody Allen in his film Hannah and Her Sisters when a possible sentence of cancer is suddenly lifted. It is a life-changing experience. Many of the questions of life, death, and identity that occur in the fifth season feel Woody Allen–like. On the other hand, these are big questions that are dealt with — both comically and seriously, if not always in a Jewish intonation — by many artists. Larry is so affected by the incident that he believes there was a divine purpose to his swim and his being saved, as he tells a household of guests at a party. He disagrees, however, with Susie’s suggestion that he now treat people in a more “respectful” manner. But he does want to attend synagogue for the high holidays.
The only problem is that Larry has no holiday tickets. Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah are the most crowded days at any synagogue and tickets are sold as a way to raise funds. Jeff says he will try to get him some.
A life-changing experience isn’t, as it turns out, exactly the same as a personality-changing experience. When Larry finds out that a sandwich has been named after him at Leo’s Delicatessen, he is delighted, but his delight turns sour when he hears what’s actually in it: white fish, sable, capers, onions, cream cheese. Still, he takes his proud father to Leo’s, but when his father chokes on a bite of a Larry David Sandwich and has a stroke, he is rushed to the hospital. It is here in the hospital bed that Larry thinks his father whispers to him the words, “You’re adopted.” Perhaps the best moment of the episode is the look on Larry as he leaves the hospital — a look of wonder, amazement, and liberation. Maybe he is not the son of Nat David. Maybe he does not bear the burden of being a Jew. Maybe he is someone else entirely, a freer, happier someone.
One Jewish critic has noted that the world of Curb is much like the old eastern-European shtetl, or village, of the Jews, where everyone knew everyone else. Larry resorts to buying tickets from a scalper and the scene at the synagogue — attended also by Jeff and Susie, Richard Lewis, and others in Larry’s circle — does indeed make Los Angeles seem like a small village of well-off show business Jews. Larry can’t find the right page in the prayer book, cleans his glasses with his yarmulke, and then gets into an argument with Richard who is jealous about the Larry David Sandwich. Everyone looks their way until finally a security guard throws Larry and Cheryl out for buying tickets illegally. So much for a profound religious experience.
Once he’s better, Nat denies that he ever told Larry that he was adopted. Trying to discern the truth, Larry engages in one of his close staring matches with his father. These staring matches, always accompanied by the same music, usually occur when Larry accuses someone of deceiving or betraying him. As always, the staring match doesn’t prove anything.
The sandwich saga continues, with Richard Lewis managing to get his name on the menu of Leo’s instead of Larry’s, then Larry trying to get his name on the sandwich called the Ted Danson. But let’s stop and think about this a moment. What does it mean to have your name on a sandwich? It means acceptance, celebration, recognition of who you are and what you have done. It’s like having your name carved on Mount Rushmore — only instead of rock, you are immortalized in corned beef or chopped liver. A kind of culinary immortality. But who exactly is this “Larry David” who wants a better sandwich to bear his name? What if he is someone else altogether?
So Larry might find out, if only he would pick up the telephone. The woman at the other end, the old nanny of his childhood, knows the truth. But Larry is having sex with Cheryl, and Cheryl has made it known that Larry is no longer to interrupt their sex with phone answering. The old nanny expires, taking the secret with her.
EPISODE TWO
The Bowtie / Original Airdate: October 2, 2005 / Directed by Larry Charles
After the big setup of Larry’s near-death experience, a viewer might expect some follow-up in the next episode. But while Larry does hire a private investigator, a bowtie-wearing black Muslim named Omar Jones, to investigate the question of adoption, the rest of the episode is devoted to Larry’s relationship with three distinct communities: lesbians, blacks, and the handicapped.
The most minor story involves Larry using a handicapped bathroom stall and getting yelled
at by a guy in a wheelchair, beginning a series of washroom incidents that run through the episode. (I can unofficially pronounce that Larry is shown needing to use a washroom more often than any sitcom character in history.) The second has Larry and Cheryl getting a dog named Sheriff that barks only at black people. Wanda has a very funny scene where she growls, “Where’d you get this dog, a klan meeting?” When Larry asks her about black men wearing bowties she says, “I’m not your link to the black world, okay? Stop asking me shit.” Larry himself adopts the bowtie look, only to get into an argument with some noisy black people dining next to him at a party celebrating Marty Funkhouser’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. One of them calls him “Tucker Carlson” and while Larry the character may be the sort to stay out of politics, it’s clear that he, like his creator Larry David, has enormous dislike for such people as the conservative Fox television commentator.
But the funniest story involves Larry as a “friend o’ lesbians” as he puts it. Larry claims to be loved by gay women, who believe him to be their greatest friend — an assertion that seems proved by the warm hug he gets from Jody Funkhouser, Marty’s daughter. But when Marty mentions that Jody is now seeing a man, Larry’s effusive congratulations make him a traitor to the lesbian community. Soon women everywhere are giving him dirty looks or snubbing him completely. But then Larry meets Jody’s new boyfriend and unnerves him by going on about how it’s hard as a man to compete with Jody’s former women lovers who better understood the “equipment.” The relationship breaks up, Jody goes back to her girlfriend, and the lesbian community — including Rosie O’Donnell — embrace Larry once more.
It’s worth noting a small, seemingly unimportant exchange between Larry and Cheryl during the episode. Larry returns to the house they are renting while their own is being renovated and Cheryl says, “Larry, we need to talk.” “It’s over?” Larry says, wrongly jumping to the conclusion that Cheryl is leaving him. Cheryl accuses him of lighting up at the very thought and although Larry denies it, we’ve seen it too. As last season proved, even with permission Larry is unable to sleep with another woman while he’s married. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a significant part of him that bridles at being under the yoke of marriage. Of course, that may be true of most married people, men and women both, who manage to hide it better. But for Larry, as we shall see, breaking up is like adultery — pleasant in fantasy but something else entirely in real life.
EPISODE THREE
The Christ Nail / Original Airdate: October 9, 2005 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
It is often noted that Larry David says things that other people think but will never admit to. This is particularly true when it comes to some of his observations as a secular American Jew. For the truth is that many Jews just don’t understand how Christians can hold to their beliefs. The virgin birth? The Son of God? It all sounds a little crazy. Maybe this is how most people think about faiths not their own.
Cheryl’s parents represent, for Larry, everything that he finds foolish or incomprehensible in Christians. When her father tells him near the start of this episode that he has a “personal relationship with Christ,” Larry just can’t get it. Maybe, he says, if Jesus had been a woman. “I’ll worship a Jane,” he says. “But to worship a guy — it’s a little gay, isn’t it?”
Being a Jew — or the wealthy Los Angeles version of one — plays a far bigger role in this season than ever before, and far bigger than it was ever allowed to play on Seinfeld, a show that the executives had worried might be too Jewish for a mass audience. Larry’s father is coming to visit and, wanting to please the old man, he decides to put up a mezuzah — a small metal or clay holder that contains a rolled-up parchment with a passage from the Torah in it that is nailed to the outside frame of the door. “So every anti-Semite will know we live here in case they want to burn down the house,” Larry jokes. Of course, being a wealthy Los Angeles Jew, he doesn’t actually put it up himself but asks the ironically named Jesus, the husband of their housekeeper Maria, to put it up for him.
There is a second theme that runs in the episode along with the question of religion. Breasts. Actually breasts have played a significant role in several previous episodes, usually in the form of cleavage spotted by Larry at inappropriate moments. This episode takes a more practical approach. Maria, the housekeeper, is a somewhat overweight woman with heavy breasts. However, she doesn’t wear a bra, which Cheryl finds distracting and mildly offensive. Her answer is to tell Larry to fire her. Cheryl comes off as rather cruel and haughty, and her asking Larry to do the dirty work isn’t flattering either. Larry, however, thinks of another way; he will buy her a bra. Bras figured in several Seinfeld episodes, from “The Doorman” in which Kramer invented a male bra to “The Caddy,” which had Elaine giving a bra to her friend Sue Ellen Mischke, who wore it without a top. And of course there was George’s job as a bra salesman — a job that Larry David once had in real life.
The question is, then, what size? Larry looks at Cheryl’s bra (the size disappoints him) and then manages to look at one of Susie’s, who he believes (quite implausibly) is the same size as Maria. He even holds the bra against himself and juggles it around, a little routine that will naturally come back to bite him when he is caught on videotape. He does, in fact, get Maria a bra that she likes, but at the expense of upsetting her husband, with consequences.
But let’s return to the theme of Jewish/Christian misunderstanding. Cheryl’s father wears around his neck a nail from the movie The Passion of the Christ. Many non-religious or non-Christian people were amazed by the enormous success of the Mel Gibson film, which spawned equally popular souvenirs — including, yes, a nail on a leather thong. Gibson himself was suspected by the Jewish community to be anti-Semitic. Later in the episode, when Larry’s father Nat is pulling up in a car and the mezuzah has still not been put up, Larry looks about for a nail and spies the necklace around his dozing father-in-law’s neck. Using it to put up the mezuzah is extremely funny even as it offers the viewer multiple strange meanings. Does it mock Christianity, Judaism, or both? Does Nat’s approval as he kisses the mezuzah upon entering the house show that symbols mean only what we believe they do, regardless of their actual origin? Is it a sly way of reminding viewers that the Christ story has its origins in the Jewish religion? Is it Larry’s way of commenting on the film?
As a side note to go along with our recognition in the last episode of the number of washroom stops Larry makes, perhaps there has not been another sitcom character who has suffered so many aches and pains either. Back, neck, and now feet as Larry goes to a podiatrist and gets a pair of orthotics. Medical practitioners are an important subset of people who are necessary in Larry’s world, just behind waiters and household servants.
EPISODE FOUR
Kamikaze Bingo / Original Airdate: October 16, 2005 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
Time for Larry David to leave the Jewish/Christian antagonism alone for a while and focus his attention on some other worthy group. How about the Japanese? How about old people? Fun is sure to ensue.
At a sushi restaurant Cheryl is meeting a Japanese sculptor friend named Yoshi. Being a self-enclosed world, it’s not surprising that Yoshi’s father is in the same nursing home where Nat now lives. When he hears that Yoshi’s father was a Second World War kamikaze pilot, Larry voices some skepticism. After all, didn’t they crash their planes into American ships? Why is the man still alive? Did he perhaps veer away at the last minute, deciding that “this kamikaze business may not be for me”?
This suggestion of his father as a coward (or merely self-preserving) is a loss of face for Yoshi who subsequently tries to kill himself. Larry finds out about Yoshi during a poker game at the house of Kevin Nealon, an SNL veteran known more recently for his character on Weeds. It just so happens that Kevin’s girlfriend is Yoshi’s sister. Kevin runs off to the hospital while Larry and company happily continue playing poker and eating pizza — at least until Kevin returns and throws them out.
The second plot involves the nursing home bingo games. Larry is naturally competitive and when a bingo win is taken away from him he suspects that the caller, Lenore, is fixing the game. Meanwhile, Larry’s apology to Yoshi isn’t accepted because he is eating pistachio nuts at the time and so Kevin challenges Larry to a game of bingo. At the bingo game an angry mob of old people wielding canes threaten Larry. But they leave him to Yoshi’s father who, in his motorized wheelchair, finally gets to fulfill his destiny as a kamikaze pilot as he lays on the speed and heads straight for Larry.
Cultural stereotypes have always been useful for comics and the depiction of the Japanese here is just such a use. Viewers might notice that there has been no development of the adoption story arc and the season is almost halfway over. But that second arc is about to begin.
EPISODE FIVE
Lewis Needs a Kidney / Original Airdate: October 30, 2005 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
The title of this episode pretty much sums it up. Due to his earlier years of alcoholism (or so it’s implied), Richard’s kidneys are shot. He needs a transplant, but the only possible relative, the improbably named Louis Lewis, has refused. “The only other option is if a good friend or a buddy comes through,” Richard says pointedly.
The thought of seeing if he is a match to donate a kidney sends Larry into a moral and personal tizzy. He’s not all selfish — he knows that he ought to willingly give up a kidney for his friend. But fear of the operation and its consequences puts Larry — who, after all, would rather not give someone else a lift, never mind a kidney — into a difficult situation. But talking to Cheryl he decides to take the test. Richard Lewis, however, remains insulted that Larry didn’t instantly volunteer.