Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good

by Josh Levine

  If you dated a woman years before and go on a date with her now, can you pick up with her (sexually, that is) where you “left off”? That’s the question that Larry has for Jeff, who answers a resounding yes. This is a stand-alone episode that feels like something of a throwback to last season. For one thing, although Larry is trying to get Cheryl back he decides to continue dating. Here the woman is Mary Jane Porter, played by Sherry Stringfield. Is it possible that this return of an old girlfriend is a playful take on Sherry Stringfield’s career? Stringfield is famous in Hollywood for being the member of the original cast of ER who quit the show and then, years later, returned.

  None of the other story lines dominate the episode. Our favorite library cop, Philip Baker Hall, returns as Dr. Morrison, whom Larry cajoles into giving out his home telephone number, something he will definitely regret. And then there is Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s party, where an appalled Larry witnesses Christian Slater scarf down more than his rightful “allotment” of caviar, breaking what Larry calls the “unwritten rules of society.” Larry gives Ted and Mary a $300 gift certificate to an Italian restaurant ($300 seems to be the amount that Larry spends on gifts for friends, in case you were wondering how much you should spend), only to become angry when he discovers that Ted and Mary use the money to treat Jeff and Susie.

  Larry’s old girlfriend Mary Jane turns out to have a boyfriend from whom Larry must escape at the last minute. And he would too, if not for a vengeful Christian Slater, smarting because Larry has told on him about the caviar. This episode, half comedy of manners and half sex farce, adds up to something of a dog’s dinner. It’s a bit of a mess, but the dog is happy to eat it anyway.

  EPISODE FIVE

  Denise Handicapped / Original Airdate: October 18, 2009 / Directed by David Mandel

  Has Larry gone bohemian? In this episode, instead of the usual middle-of-the-road or upscale restaurants, delis or diners, we see him in a rather cool-looking café. Later in the episode he’s even drinking an espresso!

  Otherwise it’s the same old Larry. This episode has echoes of “The Terrorist Attack” from season three with Alanis Morissette. Here it’s the renowned violinist Chee-Yun who is slated to give a house concert and Larry happens to be invited. He uses the concert to snare another date, this one with a woman in the café named Denise. Only when she pulls away from the table does Larry realize that she’s in a wheelchair. (Although Larry has used actors with disabilities on the show, the actress here, Anita Barone, is not wheelchair bound in real life. She is another woman who appeared on Seinfeld, however.)

  Dating a handicapped woman has its advantages, Larry discovers. For one thing, Denise carries a parking permit that allows Larry to leave his car right in front of the restaurant when they go out on a date. For another, it gets them a table immediately. Best of all, it raises Larry to a whole new level in the eyes of friends who see them together. It even gets him re-invited to the Chee-Yun concert after he had insulted the homeowners by suggesting to them that one of the biological parents of their adopted child might be “psychotic.”

  Denise is the first woman other than Cheryl who we know for certain has sex with Larry (although we can also count Loretta surely). There’s a good scene between Larry and Leon in which Larry confides that Denise didn’t seem to get aroused during sex. Was it his technique or her handicap? Leon’s helpful response: “You should have broke that ass in two pieces.”

  A little mishap on the beach — Susie throws Larry’s BlackBerry into the ocean — results in his losing Denise’s phone number. By good luck, however, he meets a second woman in a wheelchair and takes her to the concert instead. The only problem is that Denise is already there. Both of the women go after him, aided by none other than Larry’s lesbian friend Rosie O’Donnell, who is angry at Larry for a different reason altogether.

  This and the previous episode (“The Hot Towel”) are the least focussed and the weakest of the season. Even if they weren’t, most viewers would be anxious to get on with the Seinfeld reunion plot. It starts up again in the next episode.

  EPISODE SIX

  The Bare Midriff / Original Airdate: October 25, 2009 / Directed by Larry Charles

  Years ago Larry David suggested that Seinfeld should be based on what he and Jerry talked about to one another, the kind of banter they used to have about trivial things. To know where the idea came from, all you need to do is watch this episode. The scenes in which Larry and Jerry talk about urination, telephone hang-ups, and hospital visits will show you exactly what Larry David had in mind. Plus they’re terrific scenes; these two funny guys are just great together.

  In order to write the Seinfeld reunion, the two old friends now have an office together, with facing desks. They also have a receptionist, a young, pleasant-looking but chubby woman whose short shirt exposes her navel — and her spare tire. Both Larry and Jerry find Maureen’s attire to be distracting and a little distasteful. Larry is elected to tell her. Her response is to quit in a huff.

  The only problem is that Julia Louis-Dreyfus suggested her in the first place and now demands that Larry patch things up. At Maureen’s house, Larry meets her mother Madeline who claims that Larry is the spitting image of her late husband, who was murdered in 1962. What follows is a flashback scene that feels like a bizarre combination of the sensibilities of Larry David and Martin Scorsese. The husband (played jauntily by Larry) is driving in a big-finned sixties automobile with the radio blaring. He honks at a car that cuts him off, the two pull over, and when the husband gets out the man from the other car beats him to death with a crow bar. The audience doesn’t actually see the beating: a spray of blood covers the windshield of the car. It’s too bloody to be funny, too playful to be gruesome, and yet somehow it’s both these things.

  There is a priceless scene in a restaurant in which Jerry and Larry are in a booth waiting for Richard Lewis to arrive. When he does, the two already sitting debate which one should move over to let Richard sit down. Richard gets so disgusted that he leaves. Seeming disconnected from the main plot, it is actually important later on when Larry and Richard, in two separate cars, unwittingly reenact the murder of Madeline’s husband. This time the murder weapon is not a crow bar but a signed Joe DiMaggio baseball bat, which Lewis is taking from his trunk to give to Larry but which Madeline fears is meant as a weapon.

  The main story, however, and the one that caused religious groups and various conservative commentators to condemn Larry David, begins in the scene when Larry visits Madeline’s home. He has been taking pills that cause him to urinate in a mighty stream (like Seabiscuit, notes Jerry) and in the bathroom he accidentally splashes a large picture of Jesus on the wall, which begs the question, who would keep a picture of Jesus beside a toilet? Maureen and her mother see the splashes on Jesus’ cheek and think they are tears. They decide to buy an RV and travel the country, sharing this “miracle” with others.

  Larry David isn’t so much interested in religion as with its symbols and trappings. The idea that an image can have such power for people is what fascinates him, as well as how easy it is for some to look for signs of the divine. Of course, he turns this interest into comedy, just as he did with the Christ nail and the mezuzah in season five. The description of the episode — “Larry urinates on a picture of Jesus” — sounds highly offensive, but the episode itself is not. If anything, it’s Larry who comes off looking ridiculous. Maureen and her mother are perhaps too anxious to believe, but they are not mocked for their beliefs. (It’s her weight that Maureen is mocked for; chubby people apparently have no right to want to feel sexy.)

  A subplot in the episode concerns Larry’s excessive use of paper napkins. When he takes more than allowed by a snarling restaurant owner behind the counter, the owner sics the police after Larry. He ends up in a lineup but, fortunately for Larry, the owner can’t distinguish between him and one other bald man with glasses. The other man is black. “All I see is bald,” the restaurant owner says. Sometimes stupid jokes c
an be very funny.

  EPISODE SEVEN

  The Black Swan / Original Airdate: November 1, 2009 / Directed by Bryan Gordon

  While deaths have been common in Curb, episodes six and seven of this season are notable for murders. Only in this one the murderer is none other than Larry himself. And the victim? A swan.

  A black swan is the pet of the golf club owner Mr. Takahashi (played by longtime character actor Dana Lee). When it attacks Larry on the course, he defends himself with his club. Larry makes Jeff, Marty Funkhouser, and Cousin Andy swear to secrecy. Andy gets dumped on by the others for saying that he tells his wife everything, but he too agrees, a promise he doesn’t end up keeping.

  This episode, with no connection to the story arc, feels like it belongs in the first season. There’s a second death in it, this one being Norm (Paul Mazursky), a slow golfer whom Larry shouts at. Norm, who had high blood pressure, is found dead on the course and Larry is blamed for his demise. It is only Larry who later realizes who the likely murderer of Norm is: none other than the black swan.

  Like Marty, Cousin Andy seems to add to the comedy of any scene simply by his presence. Yet the two are so widely different: one dry, insistent, even humorless, the other broad, expressive, emotional. Larry generously offers to pay for Andy’s young daughter’s college education, which naturally thrills his effusive cousin. But then Larry balks when Andy asks him to pay for his wife to go to cosmetology school. “This is her calling,” Andy insists. “She’s great with lotions.”

  Another story line has to do with Larry asking the stone mason to fix a spelling mistake on his mother’s gravestone. (Actually, it isn’t a mistake. Letters cost fifty dollars each and Larry’s father has tried to save money.) The bad feeling that rises between Larry and the stone mason over their opinions of a baseball player isn’t itself that interesting. But it culminates in Larry enjoying the opportunity to use an expression that one just doesn’t hear often enough. “Hoisted by my own petard,” Larry muses.

  Print that on a T-shirt, Larry.

  EPISODE EIGHT

  Officer Krupke / Original Airdate: November 8, 2009 / Directed by David Steinberg

  It’s official: Larry likes musicals. In “Ben’s Birthday Party” (season four, episode two) he is the only person to enjoy the blind pianist Michael’s club date where he badly sings show tunes. He belts it out in The Producers. And in this episode a chance encounter with a policeman named Officer Krupke inspires Larry to sing the West Side Story tune of the same name.

  This episode is also a good opportunity to note Larry’s relationship with children. In an interview, Larry David has commented on how children are supposed to be treated — as if they’re sweet, charming, wonderful creatures. But of course children don’t treat one another that way and Larry, who quickly finds his inner child in the presence of a real one, can be competitive, mean, fierce, righteous — just like a real kid. What spurs him on here are some kids holding a lemonade stand who are selling an inferior product. Larry gets in quite a huff about that, setting off alarm bells in the children’s mother (played by Carol Leifer, the comic who was the basis for Elaine and later became a Seinfeld writer) who ends up calling on none other than Officer Krupke himself.

  It’s a good thing that the officer is called, for it allows Larry David to finish another story line, one that begins when Susie finds a pair of women’s panties in Jeff’s glove compartment. Perhaps his experience with Bam Bam triggered off his near sex addiction, for it seems that he is straying once more. To hide his tracks he tells Susie that the panties belong to Larry. Not because he’s kinky, but simply because he finds panties more comfortable.

  Larry agrees to go along with the lie, although he’d rather pretend that he’s got some transsexual interest, an idea that seems to intrigue him. In either case, Susie doesn’t believe Jeff, so it’s a good thing (for Jeff at least) that she is there to witness Larry’s later encounter with Officer Krupke. The lemonade kids’ mom has called him, but the officer is interested in a different crime. Seeing that Larry is wearing a pair of trousers with a security tag on it (he took them from a Banana Republic after the store lost his own pants), the officer insists that he remove them. Larry does, showing off a nice pair of red panties. The long setup isn’t hard to spot early on, but it works nicely anyway.

  The story arc gets kicked forward when Cheryl comes in to audition for the part of George’s ex-wife Amanda in the reunion show. Cheryl’s reading is all right, but her friend Virginia (played by Elisabeth Shue, who starred in Adventures in Babysitting, Leaving Las Vegas, and Hamlet 2 alongside Curb guest Steve Coogan) does much better and gets the part. Larry’s jealousy also kicks in when he finds out that Virginia’s husband has asked Cheryl to participate in a threesome. Virginia, however, injures her neck (by going down on Cheryl, Larry is sure) and so Cheryl gets the part after all. Larry’s plan to win her back is finally in place.

  And the final two glorious episodes have, at last, been set up.

  EPISODE NINE

  The Table Read / Original Airdate: November 15, 2009 / Directed by Larry Charles

  This is what it must have been like back in the days of Seinfeld. On the set, dozens of people mill about, waiting for the writers, the director, and the actors to take their seats at the long table for the first read-through of the script. “It’s like going back in time,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus says. Jason Alexander voices skepticism about Cheryl in the role of his ex. When Larry says her audition was the best, he replies with “Who was the next best?” As for Michael Richards, he’s too worried about the possibility of having Groats disease to focus on anything else. To ease his mind, Larry says he’ll have Marty’s cousin Danny Duberstein give Michael a call. Duberstein had Groats too. The only problem, as Larry soon finds out, is that he died from it.

  We get glimpses of other Seinfeld regulars — Estelle Harris as George’s mother, Steve Hytner as Kenny Bania, Wayne Knight as Newman. The table read begins and the show is . . . funny! It sounds like a real episode, only with the characters some ten years older. Elaine has a child, from sperm donated by Jerry. George is not only divorced but has lost over $2 million in the Madoff financial scandal. When the people listening laugh, it feels totally genuine. Quite likely they are hearing the script for the first time.

  Just as in the pilot episode of the show that Jerry and George create on Seinfeld, Larry has used moments from his life for the story. Some of these moments in Larry’s fictional life came from Larry David’s real life, a strange postmodern commentary on reality, fiction, and creativity.

  Larry, however, is distracted by Jason Alexander, who has borrowed a pen that he is sucking on and then sticking in his ear. (Jerry says: “You don’t lend Jason anything. Anything that can be inserted.”) Throughout the episode Larry is bothered by text messages from the nine-year-old daughter of a crew member. Also, he needs to come up with a Danny Duberstein to make Michael Richards believe he’ll be all right. Who does he choose to play the role? Leon. It’s one of J. B. Smoove’s finest performances, as he tells Michael that a Jew has to have a bar mitzvah every thirteen years. He describes the symptoms of Groats disease, something he knows nothing about: “Everything I ate tasted like peaches” and “I forgot how to multiply.” And when he’s on set, he takes one look at Julia Louis-Dreyfus and says to Larry, “So Jerry tapping that ass, huh?” Larry David had good instincts, keeping Leon Black around.

  The episode whets our appetite for more scenes from the Seinfeld reunion but also for the shenanigans going on around it.

  EPISODE TEN

  Seinfeld / Original Airdate: November 22, 2009 / Seinfeld scenes directed by Andy Ackerman / Directed by Jeff Schaffer

  The two story arcs — winning back Cheryl and making the Seinfeld re-union show — both come to splendid fruition in this extended-length episode. As it opens we see George and Amanda (Jason Alexander and Cheryl David) in Tom’s Diner doing a scene about how Amanda pulled her money out before Madoff went under. Cheryl isn’t ve
ry funny and no doubt Cheryl Hines is deliberately making her a mediocre actress.

  Larry, however, tells her she’s “fantastic.” She’s not so sure but she is impressed by Larry’s importance on the set. “It’s your thing,” she says with amazement. “You’re the man.” This is just how Larry was hoping to look. Things get even better when Cheryl asks him to come to her place tonight to work on her lines, but when Larry gets stuck in traffic (due to a subplot involving the set’s coffee guy whom everyone calls Mocha Joe as if that’s his actual name) Cheryl asks Jason Alexander to come over instead.

  Jason? Larry begins to suspect some monkey business between Cheryl and him. As it is, Larry isn’t getting along with Jason, perhaps because Larry finds his other self a little too like him for comfort. At a launch party for Jason’s book Acting Without Acting both Larry and Jerry mock him for publishing a book as thin as a pamphlet. Meanwhile, Cheryl and Jason seem to be growing closer. When Larry tries to take Cheryl out for lunch, he discovers that Jason has beat him too it. In rehearsal again, he tries to re-block a scene in which Amanda and George cozy up to each other, putting Jason in the bathroom instead. At last in desperation Larry shouts at Cheryl, “You’re not attracted to him, you’re attracted to me. I’m George!” Freaked out by his behavior, Cheryl takes a hike.

  It looks like Larry’s grand scheme has come to nothing. In despair, the artiste rewrites his script, changing the ending so that George and Amanda don’t get back together. “It was all bullshit,” he says, refusing the happy ending. But Jason Alexander is so “invested” in the old ending that he quits the show. Even Jerry has had enough. The actors on the show are all “icons” he says. Except Larry. “He’s a no-con.” Larry insists he can play George’s part. He and Jerry rehearse a scene and Larry does a bad imitation of George. Larry gives them permission to do the old ending and then walks out on the show.