Diary of a Curb Your Enthusiasm virgin – Are we sure Larry ended up in the right place after he died?

(Season 5, Episodes 9-10)

There was one moment in the season five finale where I at first found myself shaking my head incredulously, only to quickly change that to nodding in total understanding: Larry sitting by the emergency exit on the plane (since when does he fly coach?) I couldn’t believe he’d try to change seats, but the truth is he likely would just choke under the pressure of taking charge of the exit in an emergency. It’s a lot better for the safety of everyone on the plane that he never be placed in that seat again.

5.9 “The Korean Bookie”

Season five did not live up to the creativity of season four, when Larry starred in a Broadway production of The Producers. The adoption story line wasn’t meaty enough for it to even be mentioned in every episode of the season, so we ended up with off attempts like this one, where nothing about the episode was particularly good.

The beach, the Korean bookie, Oscar the dog … whatever. All of it was kind of stupid. There were moments, to be sure — Larry telling Cheryl to think of him as the third pig who built his house out of bricks, Larry calling roasting marshmallows idiotic (I hear that1) — but the episode was missing a whole lot.

One thing I did enjoy was when Larry spotted Heineman’s (Stuart Pankin) car and confronted him about not using the money Larry gave him to fix his car. That paired brilliantly with Marla (Lauren Katz) yelling at Larry during her wedding ceremony about not using her money to replace the fleece jacket of his that she ruined. That came back at Larry quite creatively. Otherwise, the episode wasn’t good for much.

5.10 “The End”

The supersized season five finale closed both the Richard Lewis needs a kidney tale — nice spot by Craig Robinson as a hospital attendant — and the Larry adoption story. The episode kicked off with Louis Lewis (Bill Saluga) coming out of his coma and announcing that he wouldn’t be giving a kidney to his cousin.

Meanwhile, Omar Jones (Mekhi Phifer) confirmed for Larry what he’s suspected to be true all season long: that he’s actually adopted, and the son of the Cone family of Arizona, played by Hansford Rowe and June Squibb. I loved Larry’s line — “I’m gentile” — when he pieced it together, and Rowe and Larry were dressed like old and young versions of the same person. That was great.

But I found Larry’s sudden metamorphosis when he thought that he wasn’t Jewish to be in poor taste. Okay, I got the joke that now he felt as if he could do all the things that he couldn’t as a Jew — fish, hunt, horseback ride, drink — but the fact that only as a Christian could he be a good person … that was a little much. It did allow me to wonder what Seinfeld might have been like, if it had existed at all, if the real Larry wasn’t Jewish, but the inference that Judaism is what made him a selfish person was beneath him.

The deathbed thing? Eh. Cheryl, Jeff, and Susie fighting over money was funny, but the heaven scene was really bizarre. I always have to think hard about what was happening when these episodes really aired — Larry’s guides were Dustin Hoffman and Sacha Baron Cohen. Hoffman’s been a star forever, but what was Baron Cohen back then other than Ali G? I didn’t even recognize that it was him under that beard. It was nice, however, to see Bea Arthur one more time, as Larry’s mother, in a role I’ve never seen her in.

Onward to season six!

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jan 28, 2011 @ 15:00 EST5EDT