"Curb Your Enthusiasm" is so wickedly devious and brazenly funny that every time I sit down to watch an episode or two, I can´t help but howl with laughter at Larry David because of his quirky antics and his unreasonable behavior. At the same time, I also get this uneasy feeling that I am going to be so embarrassed for him. Look, if Larry is a friend of mine, I would definitely sit him down and tell him to just keep his motor mouth shut around strangers. I mean, this guy is a total nightmare--an accident just begging to happen. Apparently, the filter in his brain, you know, the one that usually keeps the bad thoughts from traveling to one´s mouth, is either broken or non-existent. Every time Larry opens his mouth, someone is sure to get insulted in a big way, be it his own family and friends or a person whom he has just met.
"Curb Your Enthusiasm" is a half-hour improvisational comedy show about the daily faux pas in the life of "Seinfeld" co-creator, Larry David. The fact that it is filmed in a cinema verite-style, much like a reality show, gives the audience a unique fly-on-the-wall access to and perspective on Larry´s life. Also unique is the style of delivery by the actors, where they are given a free rein to improvise their lines from just an outline of the story, which more or less puts the show in an entirely new genre in terms of television sitcoms. I would categorically refer to "CYE" as art imitating life because post-"Seinfeld", Larry´s now a pretty well-known guy and of course, he is rich and he knows more than his share of Hollywood celebrities. Essentially, the life of the rich and famous is pretty much like a piece of expensive art to us regular folks--you can look but you can´t touch. Therefore, to have a show spoofing the life of celebrities, whether the situations are fictional or otherwise, and making fun of them in the process can be pretty funny and weirdly satisfying as the same time.
While Larry David plays himself on the show, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Garlin and Susie Essmann play the roles of his wife Cheryl, his manager Jeff Greene and Jeff´s wife Susie respectively. Other semi-regulars on the show include comedian and a close pal of David´s Richard Lewis and comedienne Wanda Sykes, who both play themselves. While the second season of "CYE" did not impress me as much as the first one, this third season of the show is able to put the brakes on what looked like an inevitable and painful downhill slide and manages to pull itself back into familiar comedic territory. The variety and the quality of the stories in season three are so much better than the previous season and most importantly, much funnier.
Season three starts off with a storyline that carries over into most of the ten episodes. Larry and Jeff are asked to invest some capital in a new restaurant together with a couple of other celebrities like Ted Danson and Michael York. Of course, Larry being Larry, goes "slightly" overboard and tries to impose his own peculiar views on how the restaurant should be run, like his idea of providing bells to patrons to summon waiters or to serve apple sauce. He even has time left over to insult the restaurant´s chef, be rude to a fellow investor by making a remark about his son´s ample "asset", unknowingly stalk a woman and spike a tray of brownies with Benadryl in order to medicate a practicing Christian Scientist. And that are just for starters. You should also see how Larry deals with a death in the family, a corpse-sniffing dog and a nativity scene in his own sick way, proving once again that embarrassing oneself in front of friends and family can be ruckus fun and very funny indeed.
Every once in a while, some celebrities will drop by and in this season, you will get to see cameos by Ted Danson, Michael York, Joan Rivers, Martin Short, Alanis Morissette, Paul Reiser and Martin Scorsese. However, missing from this season is the "Seinfeld" duo of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander, who played such prominent roles in Season Two. Actually, their absence is not such a bad thing. I find that while the presence of Louis-Dreyfus and Alexander on this show gives fans of "Seinfeld" something to talk about, it tends to prove a sore point that they cannot succeed without invoking the sacred "Seinfeld" formula. I´m glad that Larry David has decided to move on in Season Three with fresh ideas and a better perspective of what "CYE" should be, instead of dwelling on his past success. Given that all other factors remain the same, I think this is indeed the main reason why Season Three is so much better overall than the previous one.
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