by Josh Levine
Loretta is established early as a woman who doesn’t feel she has to express endless gratitude, or take Larry’s guff. When she sees him eating from a cake in the shape of a huge black penis, she puts her cigarette into it. Larry himself didn’t buy the cake at the erotic bakery; Jeff did, not realizing its shape, and brought it to a party that Cheryl wanted to throw to introduce (or perhaps show off) the Blacks to their friends. But if a cake tastes good, what does it matter what it looks like? Unless of course you actually happen to be black.
Loretta’s cigarette leads to a house fire that leaves Larry, Cheryl, and the Blacks standing on the sidewalk with their smoldering furniture around them. The first episode of any season is not traditionally one of the stronger ones, and this one, although busier than most, falls somewhere in the middle. Vivica A. Fox, the actress who plays Loretta, is a promising addition. Fox got her start in television with guest spots on China Beach (1988), Arsenio (1997), and appeared in popular films like Booty Call (1997), Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1998), and Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003). As she says at the end of the episode, “So what we gonna do now?” Good question.
EPISODE TWO
The Anonymous Donor / Original Airdate: September 16, 2007 / Directed by Robert B. Weide
This is the only episode this season to be directed by Robert B. Weide. The documentary director, who helped Larry conceive the original special, was the dominant director for the first four seasons and was still active in season five. No doubt during season six he was busy directing his first feature, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, which would be released in 2008 to poor reviews and small receipts. After that he would return to the documentary field, with a film about the late Kurt Vonnegut.
In this episode, a disgusted Cheryl finds a semen stain on a guest bedroom blanket and wonders who could have done the illicit deed. At first Larry accuses Leon, Loretta’s brother who has also moved in with the Davids (to a new house because of the fire). Leon doesn’t know the word “ejaculate” but once he understands he denies the accusation, insisting that “I brings the ruckus to the ladies.” Leon is played by longtime SNL writer, J. B. Smoove, who is magnificent in this scene.
Larry David has named Woody Allen as someone whose work he admires. No doubt he has noted Woody’s frequent praise of masturbation in his films. (“Don’t knock my hobbies.” “Masturbation is sex with someone I love.”) Before Woody Allen, masturbation was a subject that applied only to horny teenage boys; the idea of grown men doing it — married men, no less — was far too distasteful. Of course, in “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld Larry David already tackled the subject (which could not be named on network television). It has come up again and again on Curb, and in this episode it once more raises its ugly head, pardon the expression.
In fact, it wasn’t Leon. It was Jeff, who freely admits that he got a little randy during Passover dinner and went into the guest room to relieve himself. “What’s the big deal?” Jeff asks. “It’s not like it was Yom Kippur.” (Poor Jeff Garlin; the deeds he has to own up to on the show.) Larry himself may be disgusted, but he doesn’t hold it against Jeff. Unfortunately, Cheryl finds out and does, banning Jeff from the house. Then Susie finds out, accuses Jeff of infidelity for casting his seed in the abode of another, and promptly bans Larry in retaliation. Meanwhile, Anna (Gina Gershon), the sexy orthodox dry cleaner, gets the job of removing it.
None of these repercussions would have happened if Ted Danson hadn’t told Cheryl about Jeff. Of all Larry’s friends, Ted usually comes off as the least likable — snooty, chilly, and without the requisite sense of humor. Often he’s more an enemy than a friend. Here Larry is annoyed because of the flirting that goes on between Ted and Cheryl, and how they constantly phone each other to talk like a couple of “girlfriends.” (Could this be a sign that the character of Cheryl is increasingly unsatisfied in her marriage? In retrospect, it will seem so.) But what bugs Larry even more is that a donation from “Anonymous” has matched his own donation of a wing to the Natural Resources Defense Council building. Everybody knows Ted is “Anonymous” (including real-life Senator Barbara Boxer, who happens to be both a Democrat and a Jew), which means that he gets doubly praised — for his generosity and his supposed lack of egotism. Larry is upstaged.
The episode adds some other business as well. Larry dresses up as a ghost to chase the kids, only to be tackled by Auntie Rae who mistakes him for a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Larry’s favorite Yankees baseball shirt is given to the wrong person at the dry cleaners and Larry refuses to accept the unwritten dry cleaning rule that sometimes you lose stuff there and sometimes you get stuff that’s not your own. In the end, Larry manages to have his name removed from the donated wing, receiving the praise he desires when he also becomes Anonymous. “I don’t need the fanfare,” he says, basking in approval. This is a much funnier episode than the first one of the season and it’s one of those where, in the end, things work out nicely for our Larry.
EPISODE THREE
The Ida Funkhauser Roadside Memorial / Original Airdate: September 23, 2007 / Directed by David Mandel
The only sitcom that I can think of that has had more deaths than Curb is M*A*S*H — and that one was set in the Korean War. Here the casualty is dour Marty Funkhouser’s mother, hit by a car while in her wheelchair. A roadside memorial is set up for her and it provides the opportunity for one of Larry’s most despicable acts.
The truth is, most of the time Larry isn’t that bad. He’s not generous, he hates doing anything that he doesn’t want to, and he likes to make life easier. But he does have a moral compass, albeit one that tends to point toward the most insignificant social transactions. Only once in a while does he do something outright awful, and this is one of those times. He steals three bouquets from the roadside memorial.
No matter that he wouldn’t have had to steal the bouquets if the woman in the florist’s shop would have taken the fifty-dollar bill that Marty Funkhouser gave Larry to pay off a golf bet. But Marty had the fifty in his jogging shoe and nobody wants that bill. Perhaps all rich people walk around with insufficient cash in their wallets; Larry certainly does. He needs flowers to give to the dean of admissions of the private Dryden School. Cheryl and Larry want to send Keysha and Daryl there, and Susie and Jeff want to send Sammy, but Larry has angered the woman by mocking her in an ice cream shop for being a “sample abuser.” He gives her a bouquet and Cheryl and Loretta flowers too, only to be discovered by an angry and disgusted Marty. But Larry’s career as a petty thief isn’t over. He also steals a bottle of Belle Fille perfume that had belonged to Marty’s mother so that he can give it to Cheryl, hoping for the reward of sex. In this too, he is discovered, but Larry manages to create a diversion using that smelly fifty-dollar bill.
It’s interesting how the Black family has quickly become an accepted and integral part of the household, virtually part of the David family. There’s a pleasing ease between Larry and all the Blacks (he makes a better father substitute than might have been expected) and the Davids’ somewhat chilly household has warmed up considerably, if for no other reason than their house (always huge, no matter which one) feels more inhabited. Larry and Cheryl are no longer just a rich, overindulged, under-obligated couple.
EPISODE FOUR
The Lefty Call / Original Airdate: September 30, 2007 / Directed by Alec Berg
Larry David has said that he needs a great idea or premise to write a great episode. Although this season has two good premises for its story arcs (one of which has still to begin), some of the episode ideas are a little less than brilliant. This episode is an example.
Idea one: at work Larry doesn’t want to chat with Richard’s girlfriend Cha Cha every time he goes to the washroom (she has a new job with a desk right by the door). So he goes to a washroom on a different floor, where the tremendous flushing sound from the toilet causes severe pain in one ear.
Idea two: a waiter in a restaurant, not wanting Susie to give her leftovers to Oscar the dog, laces t
he food with a laxative.
Idea three: Larry and the Blacks don’t want to use the eco-friendly toilet paper that Cheryl uses because it’s too rough, so Larry sneaks the good stuff into the house, only to be caught.
None of these are great ideas, although they do all have in common the subject of excretion. Perhaps sensing that they aren’t quite up to snuff, Larry David throws in a couple of side dishes: a skinhead who makes an anti-Semitic remark, and Larry offending the father-in-law of a woman who has had a miscarriage by suggesting it’s for the better since she already has nine kids. The latter does have the dubious honor of being perhaps Larry’s most offensive comment ever. He deserves the vicious towel-smacking that he gets as a result.
EPISODE FIVE
The Freak Book / Original Airdate: October 7, 2007 / Directed by Bryan Gordon
Larry might not exactly be a man of the people, but he sometimes likes to pretend. That is, this fabulously rich man with celebrity friends sometimes likes to imagine he has another life, one where he is working class, ordinary, and even has to deal with the public. So he tries to become a car salesman (season two, episode one) and gets as excited as a kid going to summer camp. Or in this case, a limo driver.
But first that age-old subject of death returns yet again. In this small shtetl-like village of celebrities, people dine, party, pray, and even get buried together. Larry and Cheryl have bought cemetery plots for themselves alongside their friends Jeff, Suzie, Ted, and Mary. Now isn’t that cozy. . . . At least until Larry and Ted have yet another falling out. This one happens at Ted’s birthday party, where Larry first embarrasses himself by laughing hysterically at a photograph book of human “freaks” that he has given Ted and then by insisting that the driver that Cheryl hired to take them to the party be allowed to come in. The driver gets drunk, smashes things, and even gropes Mary. Ted throws Larry out. (Being thrown out is a constant refrain in Larry’s life.) Angry at Ted, Larry no longer wants to be buried alongside him.
Needing to drive the drunken limo driver home, Larry ends up with his car. The view we get of the limo driver’s life — a shabby house, an overweight and unhappy wife in a wheelchair, a miserable father-in-law shouting from another room — is a surprising bit of kitchen-sink realism. When the driver can’t get to a customer the next day, Larry agrees to make the pickup. Wearing a dark suit and chauffeur’s cap, Larry looks like the real thing as he picks up former tennis star and notorious on-court screamer John McEnroe. Like Larry and Cheryl, John is heading to a Paul McCartney concert. Putting on a heavier than usual Brooklyn accent, Larry is very funny as he bombards the morose McEnroe with questions: does he have allergies, believe in God, like to garden? Make-believe Larry revels in the life he might have had if he had never gotten past his real-life job as a limo driver.
Complications naturally ensue: a mourning Italian family and a guest-only party at the concert. Larry and John — wait for it — get thrown out of the party and it’s a thing of wonder to see them screaming “Fuck you!” at each other while an astonished Cheryl, Susie, and Jeff drive by. As for the cemetery plots, Larry settles the matter by buying a new one and giving away the old one to the limo driver so that his wife can bury her just-deceased father. Putting this lower-class man beside Ted the snob is Larry’s idea of a joke from beyond the grave.
EPISODE SIX
The Rat Dog / Original Airdate: October 14, 2007 / Directed by David Steinberg
Larry David has given the blind, the wheelchair-confined, and the mentally handicapped the special treatment. Now it’s time for the deaf. Not to mention lovers of little dogs.
Jean (played by Deanne Bray who has had roles on Heroes and The L Word) is a deaf mother of a kid at Newton Academy, the school where Keysha, Daryl, and a taller and older looking Sammy are now going. Larry not only insults her by saying that her lapdog looks like a rat, but he also insults her black husband (SNL’s Tim Meadows) by making a hand motion that turns out to mean “cocksucker.” Meanwhile Cheryl is in bed with an awful cold — her invalidism turns Larry on — and Leon and Loretta both have job interviews. Larry hopes they might be able to move out.
It’s been a while since Larry’s father Nat has been in the picture. Larry decides his father needs something to improve his mood and sets him up with a masseuse named Lisa who will finish the massage with a “release.” Naive Nat believes the woman “likes me, maybe even loves me” and wants to buy her something nice. He even takes her to the school musical.
Cheryl is too sick to go to the musical, so Larry ends up taking the exterminator he meets at Jeff’s house, a pleasant, rotund man who looks remarkably like the late SNL comic Chris Farley. (It’s his younger brother, Kevin.) The exterminator acts like he’s going on a first date, dressing up and sounding nervous while romantic Italian music plays in the background. But things don’t go well at the school. When Jean’s little dog gets loose, Nat yells “Rat!” and the exterminator goes into action, stomping it to death. Even so, he tells Larry that the night out has been “pretty fun” and almost looks as if he’s trying to plant a kiss.
This is a funny enough episode, but the most important moment in it may be one easily overlooked. It’s Cheryl lying sick in bed, feeling that Larry is neglecting her. We are more than halfway through the season but the second, and more important story arc is only about to begin.
EPISODE SEVEN
The TiVo Guy / Original Airdate: October 21, 2007 / Directed by Jeff Schaffer
There is a famous short story, “The Country Husband,” by the American writer John Cheever about a man who is on an airline flight that almost crashes. Afterward his wife doesn’t understand how shaken up and moved he was by the event and the result is an estrangement between them. The groundbreaking drama Thirtysomething borrowed the plot to good effect, although changing the ending. Whether or not Larry David knows the short story (he’s not a big reader of fiction) or ever saw the old television show isn’t known, but, whether by influence or coincidence, this is his semi-comic version of the same narrative. I say semi-comic because there is a serious side to the story as well. Marriage breakup is not something just to play for laughs.
The person who has the life-shaking experience is Cheryl. Caught in a lightning storm, the airplane she is on shakes, plummets, and struggles through the air. Frightened, she uses the phone in the seat back in front of her to call Larry, hoping he will say some endearing, and possibly last, words.
But Larry is at home with the TiVo repairman, trying to get the television working properly. He’s preoccupied and because of the bad connection he can’t hear what Cheryl is saying. So he asks her to call back and hangs up. Cheryl, fearing for her life, takes the hand of the man sitting next to her.
When Cheryl walks into the house Larry has no idea what is about to happen. In fact, he’s proud of himself for making a dinner reservation at Primo’s. Cheryl says: “I’m leaving.” And then “I can’t do this anymore.” Larry is stunned. He tries to explain, rather lamely it must be admitted, but Cheryl says that the incident is only the last straw. “You can’t do anything like a normal person,” she says, more sadly than angrily. She complains of his many bad habits, including talking about inanities during sex. She tells him about speaking to the man in the next seat, a “soulful conversation” of a kind that Larry is incapable of. Larry tells her he loves her, but she leaves to stay at her sister’s.
The deserted Larry is a mess. He might have often fantasized about being single (both in life and in the afterlife), but the reality pulls the rug out from under him. He goes to see Susie and Jeff and finds Marty, his wife Nan, and their daughter Jodi there too. All of them sympathize. Marty says that people are going to choose sides and they have to stick with Larry.
The social world of the Davids does indeed pick sides. First Larry is uninvited to a party because Cheryl is coming. Then the Funkhousers “choose Cheryl,” as does Ted Danson. Even the housekeeper leaves Larry. There’s a funny and pathetic scene where Larry is eating alone in a resta
urant and so annoyed by a man on a cell phone at the next table that he begins talking loudly to an invisible companion.
Cheryl almost immediately begins dating the man who was next to her on the plane. “I wouldn’t care if she left me for a bald guy,” Larry says, not exactly dealing with the real issues. Needing affirmation, Larry quickly goes into bachelor mode, managing to win a date with no less than Lucy Lawless, the former star of Xena: Warrior Princess. He’s actually almost charming as he tells her, “I’m not a cool guy or anything,” but though the date begins well it ends badly when Larry jumps the gun on the question of sex — which he can’t actually have, due to a groin injury. (Another humiliation in that particular area for Larry.) In the end, poor Larry, abandoned by Cheryl and his friends, sits at home with an ice pack on his groin trying to watch television while the TiVo is on the fritz.
A note on Larry’s injury. Hurting himself, he goes to the doctor who says his scrotum is rather lengthy — “long balls” is Leon’s term for it. Having gotten caught in the fly of his underwear, Larry is told to start wearing No Fly Zone underwear instead, a brand without a fly and which happens to be manufactured by the man who was sitting in the plane beside Cheryl. Larry resists the idea of going “over the top” to urinate, adding yet another phrase to the modern lexicon.
The episode performs an extraordinary balancing act between pathos and humor. Larry looks truly stunned and then deeply wounded by Cheryl’s leaving. When he acts like the old Larry — trying to get Cheryl to phone the doubting hostess of a restaurant and confirm that he cancelled their reservation because Cheryl left him — it seems like a mixture of desperation, adolescent reversion, and denial. And it’s still funny. The way the separation has a ripple effect in their social world says some interesting things about marriage as a kind of social glue that binds like-minded people together. As for Cheryl, she comes off sympathetically — her voice when speaking to Larry is softer than usual — but also remote, as if she has already disconnected from him.