Is it necessary, 11 seasons in, to sing the praises of Curb Your Enthusiasm? Whatever schmohawk doesn’t know about HBO’s classic is unlikely, at this point, to pick it up, and longtime fans are already sold on the show’s special blend of graciousness, forbearance, and moral virtue. (That was a test. Curb Your Enthusiasm contains none of those things.) Certainly, it would make sense to grant emeritus status to the series and leave its newest episodes unremarked upon. Yet to do so would ignore the crucial fact that talking about Larry David’s comedy treasure is almost as much fun as watching it.
As in previous seasons, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s plot machinations read like a police blotter from the wealthier precincts of Clown County. Awakened from sleep in his Los Angeles mansion, Larry discovers a burglar floating facedown in his swimming pool. Having failed to erect the obligatory fencing, our hero soon stumbles into an extortion scheme conducted by the dead man’s brother. Unless Larry will cast his tormentor’s daughter in a Netflix pilot, the blackmailer will release a torrent of litigation certain to aggravate all involved. Larry, ever the pragmatist, quickly overcomes his reluctance and agrees to do as told.
Though the resulting high jinks are predictably funny, with guest star Keyla Monterroso Mejia doing stellar work as the “actress” in question, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s overarching storylines have long been mere strands on which brighter lights are strung. Just as Season 10’s “spite store” narrative gave way to mishaps involving artificial fruit, restaurant discrimination, and the ironies of our prevailing sexual harassment politics, Season 11’s central arc yields to the daily misunderstandings and incongruities that comprise the lifestyles of the rich and obnoxious.
As always, the source of many of these blunders is a supporting cast that ranks among the funniest in television history. Concerned that his dental hygienist girlfriend may have faked a pregnancy, Larry’s manager, Jeff (Jeff Garlin), concocts a scheme to sniff her out with deductive reasoning. (“How do you get an abortion and clean someone’s teeth on the same day?”) An inveterate sofa “plopper,” Jeff’s wife, Susie (Susie Essman), causes a wine spill but shifts blame to Larry with all the acerbic brio that viewers have come to love. Returning for a sixth season of effortless scene-stealing, eternal houseguest Leon (J.B. Smoove) has parted ways with his girlfriend and must find an identically named replacement lest an airline ticket go to waste. To be sure, these subplots sound (and are) ridiculous, but their cumulative effect is a comic universe in which anything goes. Curb Your Enthusiasm may not be overly worried about plausibility, but there is little the show won’t do in pursuit of a good joke.
Among the consequences of this freewheeling style is a delightful indifference to the ever-evolving rules of wokeness. Hence the inclusion, in the third episode, of an amusing sequence in which Larry receives script notes from gender nonconformists. (“They liked it? Or ‘they’ liked it?”) Hence, too, the season’s gags concerning COVID-19 overreaction, early onset dementia, and a TV executive’s ostentatious Jewishness. As the aforementioned abortion quip should make clear, Curb Your Enthusiasm is no more protective of the Right’s sacred cows than it is of the Left’s. An equal-opportunity iconoclast, the show manages to generate something unusual in the neutered world of American comedy: not applause, not admiring think pieces, but actual, spontaneous laughter.
Operating alongside this playful irreverence is the series’s utter refusal to resolve its tensions at the end of each half-hour. Instead, following his famous Seinfeld formula of “no hugging and no learning,” Larry David brings each installment to a crescendo then cues the credits, relying on the audience’s astonished hilarity to serve as a de facto denouement. An uproarious example of this phenomenon was last Sunday’s episode, “The Mini Bar,” perhaps Curb Your Enthusiasm’s finest outing since Season Seven’s “Denise Handicap.” Having combined a dinner party bore, inadvertent door-slamming, and a “Goebbels-level lie,” the story ends not with apologies but with a deranged hot dog-eating contest. Though you had to be there, it is fair to say that this conclusion made perfect sense at the time.
Indeed, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s organizational signature has long been to bring its plot threads into a state of hilarious entwinement. Though this work is as deftly handled as ever in the newest installments, one could be forgiven for wondering if the series has begun to proceed with a bit of a wink. After crashing multiple characters into invisible glass, for instance, the season premiere wraps up by telegraphing a final collision that simply doesn’t happen. That David & Co. sidestep another pratfall can’t possibly be a sign of maturity. Rather, after more than 100 exquisitely constructed episodes, we’re on to them, and they know it. It’s only right that they should serve up the occasional tease because total predictability would make the audience’s laughter somewhat less spontaneous.
Given the Soviet humorlessness of the Left’s cultural watchdogs, it is something of a miracle that a series as impertinent as Curb Your Enthusiasm continues to air. Then again, perhaps even today’s puritanical crybabies are hesitant to go after a show that is so beloved by so many. Whatever the explanation, it is nearly impossible to imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm scraping before the mob, even if doing so might one day extend its run. Say what you will about Larry David’s unhinged and flailing protagonist. The man is not sorry.
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
