Week 2 Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Week 2 Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Curb Your Enthusiasm is a series that airs on HBO Sunday nights. The show stars the former head writer and co-creator of Seinfeld, Larry David, who stars on the show as himself. The show premiered in 2000 and has enjoyed critical acclaim and a steady growing audience that has helped the show to blossom from its early days of being a low-profile "cult classic" type of show. Since the show first aired, the show has been nominated for 20 Emmy Awards and won a Golden Globe Award for best television comedy in 2003. Let me just tell you...THIS SHOW IS HILARIOUS!!!! LOL.

For those of you who have NEVER watched the show known as just 'CYE' or 'Curb', you are truly missing out on one of the best shows EVER on television, next to Seinfeld of course!!!! What I love most about this show is that instead of working off of predictable scripts, "Curb" cast members review detailed scene outlines and then improvises and freestyles the entire shows dialogue to make the viewer feel as though you are 'a fly on the wall' watching dramas unfold naturally. You can watch an episode and really feel like the reactions and emotions are genuine. The great thing about this show is that it is really hard to tell what is reality vs. scripted situations, mostly because of the way the show is filmed (with handheld cameras) and the fact that the cast is provided with just story lines and not scripts.

Here is the simple premise of the show - Set in Los Angeles, the show is loosely based on Larry David's life as a semi-retired, multi-millionaire who in a world after the HUGE sitcom success of "Seinfeld", tries to continue to cultivate projects and his career based on his ideas that helped him create a "show about nothing". Viewers are invited into Larry's world and watch as he painfully tries to get himself out of uncomfortable situations. The main characters on the show are (PHOTOS are courtesy of TV.com:

• Larry David as himself. Larry David is the ultimate passive aggressive and has terrible luck in social situations and is often on the losing end of heated confrontations with just about EVERYBODY: waiters, retail clerks, secretaries, business partners, etc. His neurotic tendencies and overly paranoid personality are usually at the root of all his problems. Larry just can't let go of an issue, just like George Costanza from Seinfeld! He can never admit fault, accept blame, or let matters rest. At the same time, Larry is often the victim of circumstances and the situations he finds himself involved in. I think he helps viewers to see how people, as we interact with one another in society, can be overly-sensitive and easily-offended over issues that are blown out of proportion or taken out of context.


• Cheryl: Cheryl David (played by Cheryl Hines) is Larry's long-suffering and constantly annoyed wife. They're now estranged on the show.
  
• Jeff: Jeff Greene (played by Jeff Garlin) is Larry's BFF (best friend forever) and manager. He doggedly sticks up for his client and friend. It seems like Jeff is obsessed with sex too. He is constantly, Jeff often involves Larry in covering up his marital infidelities and hiding his porn collections.
  
• Susie: Susie Greene (played by Susie Essman) is Jeff's wife. She often reacts to Jeff and Larry's shenanigans with angry, profane tirades. When Susie has had her fill of Larry's antics, WATCH OUT! She will curse Larry out and turn the show from PG-13 straight to an R rating in under 30 seconds! LOL. She shows more affection to her dog, Oscar, and her daughter, Sammie, than her husband. The stability of her marriage with Jeff is sketchy at best, based on the number of separations and fights the two have had over the course of the show so far.
  
• Richard Lewis as himself. Richard Lewis is a neurotic, recovering alcoholic standup comedian. He is one of Larry's oldest and closest friends, both having moved from New York to LA to pursue their comedy careers.

• The Blacks: (New to season 6) An African-American family, whose last name is "Black", were invited to live in the home of Larry and Cheryl after their home was destroyed in a Hurricane. The Black family is headed by Loretta Black, played by actress Vivica A. Fox from hit movies like Set It Off, Kill Bill, Kim Impossible, and Soul Food. In the season 6 finale, Larry and Loretta wake up in bed together after attending Sammie's bat mitzvah. The ending scene included flashes of Larry and Loretta involved in a romantic relationship and "The Blacks" symbolically adopting Larry into their family and staying in his house indefinitely. We better stay tuned to see how this plot works itself out next season!
  

A TV Show like Curb goes from cult classic to pop culture when it starts to get main stream references on other TV shows and by other celebrities. Here are some examples, as listed on Wikipedia of when the show "jumped the shark" into pop culture history:

• Some of the celebrities that have guest starred on the show and have named the show as one of their favorites include: Ted Danson, Bob Einstein as Marty Funkhouser, Mary Steenburgen, Wanda Sykes, Shelley Berman as Larry's father, former Seinfeld stars Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martin Scorsese, Alanis Morissette, Hugh Hefner, David Schwimmer, Mel Brooks, Ben Stiller, Jerry Seinfeld, Stephen Colbert, Dustin Hoffman, Sacha Baron Cohen and Bea Arthur.


• In The Sopranos episode "Where's Johnny?", Junior Soprano is seen watching the episode "The Doll". Due to his increasing dementia, he mistakes Larry David for himself and Jeff Garlin for Bobby Baccalieri, and is confused as to why they are on television. Perhaps in reference to this, one plot strand of the Curb episode "The End" revolves around a missing Sopranos DVD.


• In an episode of Family Guy, a flash-back shows Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode IV, just before the assault on the Death Star. In the famous scene Luke calls out one of the rebel pilots who says they will never be able to hit the small power core target, but Luke claims he hunted womp rats on Tatooine so its no problem. The rebel pilot is offended and asks to speak to Luke in private. When he talks to Luke there is a clear reference to Curb. Luke acts defensively like Larry, and won't admit he was wrong to call the pilot out. The scene ends with Luke being called a jerk, the Curb music, and a close up of Luke's face.


• Slate.com named the characters of Cheryl David and Susie Green as two of the best on television and as reasons they were looking forward to the return of the show this past September.
  

THE *GUSTAVE REPORT* POP CULTURE RATING: JJJJJ