“Back to basics”
Six years have passed since Curb Your Enthusiasm left our screens, and Larry David is back with the same old shtick. But at least it’s some good shtick.
Larry David (co-creator of Seinfeld) plays a fictionalised version of himself, albeit a more honest and opinionated version, without your typical social graces, even getting in on strangers, telling them how they should live their lives.
The main arc of the season starts after Larry talks about his new musical based on Salman Rushdie‘s life, titled Fatwa! After making an impression of the Ayatollah on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Larry David is issued a fatwa calling for his assassination (like what happened to Rushdie). This also gave us Larry’s brilliant disguise, complete with wig and fake moustache (see below).
Famous faces make a reappearance, including Jeff Garlin, Ted Danson (also seen in currently airing The Good Place), Mary Steenburgen and Richard Lewis, all playing hyper-realised versions of themselves. As a further extension of this bizarro world, this season, real-life couple Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen have gone through a divorce in the show, but are actually still married.
The comedy structure is the same as it was when the show started in 2000: a set of Larry’s seemingly unrelated social misadventures somehow become entwined and climax in a joke built on what happened earlier, usually, Larry and his own undoing. The classic “call back” of comedy, but it happens at the end of every episode. As entertaining as these first two episodes were, I didn’t find the endings satisfying or funny. I may have had unrealistic expectations but this is what happens you base a whole episode around a single joke payoff at the end. At least the journey was fun.
Curb Your Enthusiasm—if you liked it before, maybe six years is enough time to come back to the same show with the same old structure. But if you’re binge watching this show for the first time, it might get old hat.
| Show Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season Nine |
| Network HBO (US), SoHo (NZ) |
| Release Date 1 October 2017 |
| Episodes S01E01 “Foisted!”, S01E02 “The Pickle Gambit” |
TV has always been a part of Michael’s life, but since the influx of streaming shows now he can’t stop (someone send help). He also dabbles in films and video games, and has a mean board game collection.
Michael has a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. He has previously written about video games for publications including Game Console, Salient, and ButtonMasher.
