“Curb Your Enthusiasm” — Meet the Blacks
Last season’s Curb (which aired, oh, two years ago) was pretty lousy. It was the type of season where you’d watch an episode and could almost see the cogs turning on the screen. Larry does something jerk-like to a stranger and twenty minutes later the stranger shows up and keeps Larry from achieving whatever it is he was trying to achieve for the other 18 minutes. Yawn. More after the jump…
But enough time has passed. Like a rough breakup you eventually get over it and give the whole thing another shot. Curb Your Enthusiasm is by no means the comedy breakthrough it was during its first, say, three seasons, but the comedy is still fairly sharp, if predictable. The structure was never my favorite part of the series. When it worked, it worked brilliantly (like the season three finale with the chef who had tourettes), but more often then not things became a tad too “wag the dog.” For me, the joy of Curb is in the throwaway lines. The off-the-cuff comments Larry or Jeff or Ted Danson may toss out mid-ramblings.
Which brings us to this season. The running plotline involves Larry and Cheryl taking in a family who had been displaced by a hurricane. They are, conveniently, named the Blacks. As for this episode, Larry realizes that he can get out of going to parties by showing up a day late. This leads to various awkward situations we’ve become increasingly familiar with over the past seven years.
The best news I can give is the episode made me laugh a lot. Whether it was Larry bashing the smoke detector with a baseball bat (something I’ve wanted to do all my life), or the visual of him eating a giant penis cake at his kitchen table, it was a pretty enjoyable 30 minutes of television, and in a way the perfect match with Tell Me You Love Me’s stark reality. I’m actually looking forward to the season, something I haven’t been able to say for several years.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
The Newlywed Game scene was hilarious.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:15 am
That cake was the most obscene thing I’ve seen in a while. It made me giggle.