Larry David Finally Makes a Reunion Show
Seconds into the first episode of Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm – before any gaffs have been committed or any social contracts breached – we notice something amiss. Could it be our TV?
No, it’s the footage itself – it looks polished. As in “series premiere at 8/7 central” polished. The camcorder docu-style has given way to aerial shots and color corrected frames.
Likewise, the first faux-pas feels…well…broad. Upon entering a building, David holds the door a moment to look back at a squat, close-cropped woman approaching. He pauses, considers, then lets the door close. The gag is that he assumes a butch lesbian wouldn’t want him to hold the door open. While we are impressed at David for braving the Eumenides of left-wing outrage-bait, the whole conflict feels weak – like Larry David knock-off. Surely, the real Larry David would have never hesitated for someone so far away from the door in the first place.
The show’s new season feels more like a staggered reunion episode than a successor to season 8, which saw David moving to New York in order to avoid appearing at a charity fundraiser. Watching each character – Jeff, Susie, Cheryl, a haggard Richard Lewis – deliver his shtick after such a long absence, we could be watching a scripted show. All that’s missing is the stock applause as each character makes an entrance. Gone is the anarchic spirit of Curb, reaching a nadir with a guest spot by Jimmy Kimmel. They work him in by having Larry going on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote a new project called Fatwa: The Musical, a concept that would have been funnier around the time Team America World Police was released. Who cares about the Ayatollah in the age of the ISIS?
Even J.B. Smoove, reprising his Leon character, falls flat. When Larry visits the sometime counselor and fulltime mooch now living in his guest house, the repartee is all out of date – a trite exchange about black slang. Still, it’s hard to keep Smoove’s charisma down. When he explains how Larry must “foist” his low-energy, disabled secretary onto someone else, Smoove quite nearly convinces us that the scheme is fresh and fun. Then we think “wait wasn’t there an assistant plot back in season 7?”