Diary of a Curb Your Enthusiasm virgin – Penis cake for everyone!

(Season 6, Episodes 1-2)

I don’t yet know what the season-long arc is going to be, but at this point the possibilities don’t look too good. If Larry David needed to move an entire family into his life in order to get something going for season six, he really should have just quit. Laughs may lie ahead, but at what cost?

6.1 “Meet the Blacks”

I loved seeing Cheryl and Larry hunting down the defective smoke alarm that was going off in the middle of the night, and great tie-in at the end, but I couldn’t help but think that Phoebe on Friends had done a very similar thing in one of the later seasons of the show. Was Larry already running out of material in 2007?

The whole party thing was funny as well. First of all, I loved the conversation between Larry, Richard, and Jeff about how using your kids as an excuse to get out of an obligation is a great reason to have children. I don’t know about it as a reason to have them, but it’s a well-deserved perk for us exhausted parents!

But I really enjoyed the overuse of the “day late to the party” joke. First Larry and Cheryl showing up at Funkhouser’s — why did they bother for him? — claiming they had the wrong night, followed by Jeff and Susie doing exactly the same thing. I love how they all got stuck at Funkhouser’s house, and how it caused everyone to miss Ted Danson’s party. I can’t believe Susie bought that Jeff’s answer to the “who would you sleep with” question was her.

The fact that Larry and Cheryl — followed by Richard and Cha Cha (Tia Carrere) — did it again the next night at Ted Danson’s was awesome. I was shocked that he invited everyone in, but I loved it, and it was funny how it made Larry and Cheryl late to pick up their adopted hurricane family at the airport.

I’ve seen season seven of the show, so I’m somewhat familiar with part of the Black family, but it was nice to see where they all met. The erotic cake shop was hilarious, but why did Loretta (Vivica A. Fox) put her cigarette out in Larry’s cake?

And perfect timing by Ted at the end, showing up at Larry’s the day after his party as Larry’s house burned!

6.2 “The Anonymous Donor”

This episode reunited Leon (J.B. Smoove) from LA with the rest of the Black family. Smoove can be a lot of fun, so I’m excited to see eight more “new to me” episodes with him, but he and Larry make no sense hanging out. They’re just so different.

Even so the Joe Pepitone jersey thing was hilarious. I didn’t see the humor — or the truth — in the law of the dry cleaner, but Larry and Leon trolling LA collecting jerseys was great.

Great cameo by Senator Barbara Boxer, and I loved how she relayed the dry cleaner’s law to Larry. But the anonymous wing thing was lame. Ted Danson is rarely utilized well on Curb, and this episode was no exception to that rule. It’s too bad.

So where are we headed this season? I don’t know yet, but I’m warily looking forward to finding out.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Feb 04, 2011 @ 15:00 EST5EDT