Diary of a Curb Your Enthusiasm virgin – Not a virgin anymore

(Season 6, Episodes 9-10)

I was hoping that my final two new episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm would be hiding some giant, surprising … well, enthusiasm, quite frankly. Season six was kind of bland, and so considering that I’ve seen season seven I was holding out hope that my last hour of new material from Larry David would reveal a diamond in the rough. Oh well.

6.9 “The Therapists”

It’s funny that Cheryl would be wooed by New Larry’s exterior, when she clearly was driven away by Old Larry’s interior. It was the way he interacted with his fellow human beings that finally got to her, not the fact that he wore sneakers and didn’t tuck his shirt in. But it was fun watching Larry try to win Cheryl back at all costs.

I loved the homage to Seinfeld during Larry and Cheryl’s date, when Funkhouser came over to ask if Larry would sponsor him in an Alzheimer’s walk-a-thon. That had caused Jerry to be audited on Seinfeld, after Kramer came over during Jerry and Elaine’s date asking Jerry to donate to a charity that turned out to be a scam. The shout-out was a nice enough touch that I almost overlooked how much it would have killed Larry not to seek revenge on Funkhouser for siding with Cheryl in the separation. No way would Larry have been able to restrain himself.

The mugging idea was all kinds of goofy. Steve Coogan was great as Larry’s therapist Dr. Bright — he needs one, but I can’t imagine Larry ever actually going to therapy — but the tale of fake mugging, arrest, jail, and the phone call in the end was over-the-top. Did Dr. Bright know he was talking to Cheryl’s therapist Dr. Slavin (Winnie Holzman), because he seems the type to have sought out revenge on Larry.

I thought it was funny that Dr. Slavin was falling for Larry and so tried to elbow Cheryl out of the way, but Larry’s Alzheimer’s bit was really distasteful. It played perfectly to get Dr. Bright out of jail, but still.

6.10 “The Bat Mitzvah”

It’s weird, because for me this episode felt like the grand finale of the series. Therefore I expected a lot more than I was entitled to expect, and of course a lot more than the episode actually delivered.

The doctor thing isn’t even worth discussing; neither is Matt Tessler (Michael McKean, who I don’t think was ever connected in any way to Seinfeld). However, Larry getting up at Sammie Greene’s (Ashly Holloway) bat mitzvah to make a personal statement was funny in how Larry it was to do that.

I knew the Blacks were due to move out by the end of the season, and I also had known about Larry and Loretta (Vivica A. Fox) dating, despite the fact that I’d forgotten about the latter. I’ll just say this: if Larry landed Cheryl in his dreams, then he landed Loretta in her nightmares. Not a chance in the world!

It took many seasons before Larry realized he could do it, but I’ve enjoyed the use of Jeff’s client list on the show; it’s as if creatively they forgot about how many more people they could stack in by saying that they’re either represented by Jeff, or that he’s trying to land them. All of which is the long way of saying: nice job booking John Legend. That was a great way to close things out for me.

See you at the next diary!

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 25, 2011 @ 15:00 EST5EDT