Diary of a Curb Your Enthusiasm virgin – Larry takes down an old lady

(Season 5, Episodes 3-4)

I don’t fully understand Larry’s enthusiastic drive to discover whether or not he was adopted. It’s not like he has a strong desire to find his birth parents, it’s just that he wants to determine that he was adopted. Was childhood for him so miserable? Does he feel inhibited by the religion he pays no attention to in the first place? I’m not getting Larry’s motivations.

5.3 “The Christ Nail”

Something about Larry’s squeaky orthotics in this episode was oddly familiar. Do they come back later? Has it been done before? I don’t know, but I felt like I’d heard Larry squeak before.

I saw Tooth Fairy with Dwayne Johnson right before watching this episode … I don’t think it had any affect; I just thought I’d share. Seriously, though, Larry ruining the Tooth Fairy for Sammy (Ashly Holloway) with his shoes was dumb. It’s interesting how Susie — and Jeff too — only notices Sammy when Larry’s doing something “detrimental” to her. They might as well not have bothered with the character.

The bra thing was also weak. There should have been nothing wrong with Larry peeking at  Cheryl’s bra, so why was she quizzing him on what he was doing? But then why would Cheryl tell Larry to deal with the bra-less Maria (Lydia Blanco)? The entire thing was weird. And Larry dancing around in Susie’s bra? The only worthwhile part of the incident was Larry’s exchange with the saleswoman (Lydia Cornell). Now that was awkwardly funny.

What was funny, and you’ll have to excuse the sacrilegious nature of this, was Cheryl’s father (Paul Dooley) and the Christ nail from the production of The Passion of the Christ that he bought online. Larry using it to hang a Mezuzah on his doorpost was hilarious … as well as equal opportunity blasphemous. I can’t even imagine that the nail would have worked, but I loved how Larry’s mind was working there.

5.4 “Kamikaze Bingo”

Another mixed bag from season five. Yoshi (Greg Watanabe) and his still-living World War II Kamikaze pilot father was a little too insulting to an entire nationality, not to mention beyond cheesy at the end with the wheelchair and the sound of the plane.

On the other hand, I loved the poker and the bingo stuff. At the game at Kevin Nealon’s house was none other than Phil Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond fame. I loved how the group decided to keep playing at Kevin’s house after he and his wife Miyuki (Elaine Kao) ran to the hospital.

And the bingo was funny only in how excited Larry was to win the dollar that was up for grabs. But his feud with Ruth (Angela Paton) went too far. Do we really need the misunderstanding going around that Larry was threatening to kill an old woman for allegedly cheating at bingo?

The doctor versus the pharmacist thing was kind of funny. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of someone weighing those two opinions before, but I laughed. I can’t remember, but that’s not the same pharmacy that Larry went to back when Cheryl needed a prescription, is it? Because I thought he was banned from that place.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jan 07, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT