Grid Effect

My apologies to those who were expecting a review of Sunday’s episode yesterday morning, but I felt like that Emmys post was sufficient enough to cover me throughout the entire week, much less just Monday morning. Besides, this was a top ten episode of Curb and I wanted to collect my thoughts.

They open with Larry, Cheryl and the Blacks (again, that is their last name, please don’t email me) moving into a new house. Throughout the six seasons of Curb, Larry and Cheryl have lived in four different houses, and despite some light footage in the season two premiere, we’ve never seen them physically move into a house. For good reason, as I now see. This episode didn’t really kick off until the Blacks cousin, Leon (played by JB Smoove, most notably from SNL), who resides in LA and was nowhere near the hurricane, manages to finagle a spot in Larry’s new home. I imagine this is an example of Larry’s white liberal guilt, or maybe he was simply too tired to deal with the situation.

This episode was cameo heavy. Including Smoove, we also got another appearance from Gina Gershon as the temperamental dry cleaner and Barbara Boxer playing herself, hob-knobbing with celebrities, which I’m sure isn’t a far stretch to how she regularly spends her days. Her introduction to Larry and Ted Danson triggered the line of the night. In reference to Ted Danson having his wing of the NRDC listed as “donated by anonymous”, yet having all of his friends tell everybody he is responsible for it, Larry describes the ruse as, “It’s fake philanthropy and faux-anonymity”. It’s really self-deprecating, like the exact opposite of Kanye West, the Danson is so willing to play himself as such a self-satisfied, passive aggressive prick.

All these things come to a heed when Cheryl finds a noticeable cum-stain in the bed Leon spent the night in, assuming he is responsible Larry takes a day to decide whether or not to kick him out, but Jeff admits to being the responsible party, claiming he drank too much wine and apparently couldn’t control himself. The indifferent but nervous look on his face when confining the Ted and Larry about summed up how I figured he would deliver to such a confession.

With Ted and Cheryl now gossiping with each other, Ted leaked the guilty culprit to Cheryl and she subsequently bans him from the house. Seems harsh but fair. Suzy, of course, overreacts and counters by banning Larry from her house, but temporarily lifts it so he can use her restroom when returning Jeff’s sunglasses, only to later accuse him of beating one off on her daughter’s teddy bear. There was no final word as to whether this is actually true, but in my mind it already is.

The thing with the baseball jersey, for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why that was a subplot, and when they showed Larry playing war with Leon in matching Joe Pepitone jerseys after he apologized for accusing him of leaving the cum stain, I figured that would be the climax (really no pun intended, the phrasing just works) of the subplot. But it was a nice finishing touch to have the story come full circle, with the first guy they wrongfully confiscated Larry’s missing jersey from, chase him back to the NRDC building, where he couldn’t get special permission to be let into the building because his name had been changed to “anonymous” on the wing he donated money for.

Writing about these episodes is somewhat of a drag, there is so little to add to any of them, and they’re all so convoluted (in a good way). Larry seems to offend most of his audience, and maybe I’m simply deranged and abnormal, but I tend to agree with him more often than not. Who is so conceited that they donate something anonymously then tell everyone their responsible for it, but still pretends they don’t want credit? Why should anyone expect to have their laundry stolen from a dry-cleaner? These are the life-altering questions Curb asks its audience.

Anyhow, definitely a top ten episode and a significant improvement on the first (which outside of the Newlywed game and all exchanges with Richard Lewis, I didn’t much care for). People seem to be under the impression Curb was on its last legs in the fifth season. While there were some forgettable episodes, I still thought the humor was original enough that it sustained a high level of presentation, and really had nothing but laudatory things to say about it. But if this episode was any indication, everyone dissatisfied with season five should enjoy season six.

Maybe back with a belated Emmy’s follow-up, otherwise a season finale review/recap of Rescue Me tomorrow morning.