Diary of a Curb Your Enthusiasm virgin – Did Treeger cash a check for this one?

(Season 1, Episodes 7-8)

I’ll admit it’s growing on me. While I find some of his humor to be too much — for various reasons — I am enjoying the comedy on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think the inconsistencies in story quality is surprising, but then again I believe that Larry’s looking to disperse as many threads as he can in one episode and then tie them all together every time; doing so is likely to produce some avenues that are weaker than others. Still, when he’s on, he’s on.

1.7 “AAMCO”

I’m not a car person in general, but can anyone out there really tell me that Jeff’s turquoise ’57 Chevy Convertible was a thing of beauty? Even the steering wheel was turquoise … I know car people only care about what’s underneath the hood, but at least try to make the outside pleasing to the eye.

How can Larry be unfamiliar with the AAMCO commercial? Everyone knows “Double A, beep beep, M, C, O.” But the way he reacted to the car stopped behind him and Jeff at the light was great, as was the person intentionally rear-ending Jeff’s car. Crazy to think that someone would do that to their own car, but I can see Larry David driving one to that.

Great guest appearance by Friends’ Mr. Treeger (Mike Hagerty) before he was Mr. Treeger. The whole thing with his taking Larry’s seat at the dinner table was funny, but I really loved his questions about Seinfeld reruns (odd that he’d recognize Larry in that capacity, no?), and whether Larry got a check every time an episode aired. That entire dinner conversation between him and Larry was great.

I think it’s not just that only Larry could get into the leftover problem with the caterer, but also only Larry who’d think it up. To take the food back after doing a home catering job? And not only that, but to give the leftovers to Jeff, the caterer’s neighbor? I suppose it was the only way to bring the story around full circle, but talk about some crazy business practices. Has she ever had a repeat customer?

1.8 “Beloved Aunt”

I got multiple Seinfeld vibes in this episode. First, the season four episode, “The Implant,” where George is getting nowhere with his girlfriend Betsy until he makes the ultimate of boyfriend gestures — he becomes Consolation Guy. Not quite the same as the guy trying to break up with Larry’s sister-in-law right before she got the news about her deceased aunt, but the vibe came through nonetheless.

I did enjoy seeing Larry being asked for break-up etiquette. Are there even words to describe how big a mistake that is? That’s like half of the conversations Jerry and George had on women, where George was just making it up as he went along.

The obit typo thing went over my head a bit … the episodes airing now are edited for a general audience, and the word replacing “aunt” in the obituary was blurred out. But the big outcry over something like that, whatever it may have said, was a bit much.

Great line about how rude it was for Cheryl’s aunt, who committed suicide, to have not left a note. The comedy is a bit dark, but funny is funny.

The second Seinfeld vibe was the throwaway story that Larry told about being asked to do stand-up for a friend who was sick in the hospital. Pachyderm, anyone? It may have been Larry’s real story that Jerry was using in the season five episode, “The Stand-In,” but now it’s Jerry’s story. It sounded like Larry had run out of material on Curb.

Larry trying to leave the family mourning session was funny, and I loved Paul Dooley, playing Cheryl’s father, talking about the unlimited mileage on his rental car, and how he’d hate to not take advantage of that by driving whenever he could.

The episode did dip, however, when it delved into the gift that Larry bought for Jeff’s mother. Jeff’s parents have been out of place since the beginning, so to watch as Larry shops for sunglasses, and then accidentally grazes Jeff’s mother’s breast, was tedious at best. Why are these people a part of Larry’s life?

I did like the gift wrapping odyssey that Larry went on, though. The fact that the store couldn’t wrap it for him was bad enough, but that he couldn’t find an alternative (or buy his own paper)? And the ongoing dialogue about finding paper, scissors, tape, and a card all in one place was really funny.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jul 09, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT