'Curb your enthusiasm' by Larry David

Curb started in 2000 on HBO. Five seasons have already been shot. Season six started in September 2007. It is a mocked-autobiographic comedy series about the rich and acclaimed co-creator of Seinfeld, Larry David, in his late fifties, living comfortably in LA, leading a semi-retired and essentially idle life, wandering with his lazy weirdo friends, and the odd celebrity.

Curb develops some of the recurrent themes of Seinfeld: the bitter irony of daily life, embarrassing situations, social blunders, the little moral dilemma. Like in Seinfeld the plots are beautifully knitted so that two or three sub-plots collide perfectly in the last scene. ‘Boire le calice jusqu’a la lie’ is the French expression when already in a humiliating situation something happens to make it even worse. It’s the negative version of ‘the icing on the cake’ and it’s what usually happens to the Larry character at the end of each episode. The show makes a point of the moral non-sense of life: sometimes Larry plays nasty and pays the price, sometimes he gets away with it; sometimes he even tries to be good and deadly coincidences lead to a catastrophic outcome for which he is to be blamed.

Because it’s HBO, the format is more cutting edge than Seinfeld: real location filming with hand-held cameras, a crude look and editing, no canned-laughs to ease the embarrasment, very few written dialogues and a visibly a lot of (brilliant) improvisation (‘retroscripting’) packed with swearing. In one word, an adult series. In addition to Larry playing ‘himself’ and the minimalist ‘cinéma-vérité’ photography and dialogues make the viewer a voyeur of real-life embarrassing situations.

More subversive yet, the themes. Larry David is not afraid to use dodgy and explicit situations (Larry embarrassed by his wife’s pubic hair in his throat…) and politically incorrect themes, making fun of handicapped people, religion, illness and even death: the casual and cynical way with which Larry takes the death of his mother and even exploit it socially. Even more revolutionnary it is a comedy show based on a character that is supposed to be realistic and at the same time not lovable at all: never-happy, unfair, selfish, rude, susceptible, jealous, you name it.

The only reason why ‘Larry’ may be sympathetic to us is because he is a street-wise, working class guy in a rich neighborhood. The grumpy New York comedian lost in smiling LA. The Brooklyn Jew lost in a gentile world. Larry reflects our own fear of social exclusion and social blunders.