Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American comedy series starring Seinfeld writer, co-creator, and executive producer Larry David as himself. It is produced and broadcast by HBO.
The series was inspired by a 1999 one-hour fake documentary titled Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, which David and HBO originally envisioned as a one-time project.
The series has been nominated for dozens of Emmys, although it has only won once, and has won a Golden Globe.
Six seasons of the series were produced and aired on HBO between 2000 and 2007. The seventh season premiered September 20, 2009.[3]
Concept
The show stars Larry David as a fictional version of himself, accompanied by fictional re-creations of his real friends, usually played by themselves. Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Wanda Sykes, and Richard Lewis all have recurring roles as characters based on themselves.
The show is set in affluent Pacific Palisades, California, David's real place of residence, and centers around Larry's experiences as a semi-retired famous television producer. Although Larry maintains an office, he is rarely shown working, other than in season four which centered around his being cast as Max Bialystock in the Mel Brooks play The Producers. Most of the show revolves around Larry's interactions with his friends and neighbors. The fictional Larry David is something of a misanthrope, often making inappropriate comments and getting offended or angry when others fail to adhere to his often arbitrary standards of behavior. Despite Larry's often offensive behavior and sometimes wildly inappropriate adventures, few of his friends seem to remain offended for long and the cast has stayed stable throughout the show.
Characters
Main cast
- Larry David — Self-centered, misanthropic and regularly difficult, Larry creates awkwardness and discomfort in social situations. His problems are often caused by his own neuroses and an obstinate faith in his own understanding of ethics and etiquette. At the same time, he usually has good intentions but often finds himself a victim of circumstance and social convention, not to mention most of the people around him are almost, if not more, as self-centered and stubborn as he is. The show's popularity has resulted in the term "Larry David moment," meaning inadvertently causing a socially awkward situation, entering the American pop culture lexicon.[4] The real life Larry David has commented that he could never be the way he is on TV because he is a lot more cautious when it comes to social tension. Larry is known for his probing stare when he doesn't think somebody is telling the truth and often says something is "pretty, pretty, pretty good" when he likes something.
- Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) — One of Larry's few friends, Jeff is his sympathetic manager whose marital problems and avid interest in pornography entangle Larry in embarrassing situations. Jeff often helps Larry with his problems, but that usually leads to Jeff getting involved with the mess. Jeff and his wife, Susie, have a daughter named Sammie (Ashly Holloway). Sammie once said that she would choose her dog, Oscar, over her father if he could not live in the same house as the dog. Jeff Greene often says, "What the fuck?" when things do not go as planned. Jeff frequently engages in sex even with women whom other men do not find attractive, in situations that his wife is almost sure to find out about, or in situations that cause physical danger to himself, which suggests that he is a sex addict.
- Cheryl David (Cheryl Hines) — Larry's long-suffering wife, who often expresses annoyance with his behavior, even in situations beyond his control. She is an active member of the NRDC. Cheryl left Larry in the season six episode "The TiVo Guy" when he hung up on her calling from a plane experiencing turbulence because he was with the TiVo guy (Kevin Heffernan) and "couldn't hear" her.
- Susie Greene (Susie Essman) — Jeff's wife. She has a highly explosive temperament and reacts with near violence to benign grievances. She and Jeff have an "on-again, off-again" relationship. She often uses Larry as a scapegoat for her marital problems.
Recurring roles
Richard Lewis plays himself as a neurotic stand-up comedian who is recovering from alcohol and drug problems. He plays one of Larry's oldest and closest friends, both having moved from New York City to Los Angeles to pursue their comedy careers. Ted Danson plays himself as a friend of Larry's despite constantly butting heads with Larry. Mary Steenburgen frequently appears alongside her real life husband Ted.
In later seasons, Bob Einstein joins as Marty Funkhouser, one of Larry's oldest friends. Despite this, he and Larry tend to disagree on many topics such as whether or not he is too old to be called an orphan, and he also argues that Larry is his best friend, which Larry constantly tries to refute.
Notable guest appearances
In several episodes of the HBO original series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, celebrities, including actors, authors, musicians and athletes, have lent their celebrity to the show, usually playing themselves. Of the guest stars, Richard Lewis and Ted Danson appear as regular characters.
Plots
Episodes are typically named after an event, object, or person which figures prominently in the plot, similarly to how Seinfeld episodes were named. While each episode has an individual plot, each season as a whole contains a plot that stretches across all ten episodes. Season one is the only one without an story arc, instead the style and characters of the show are introduced in mostly isolated episodes. A common theme is Larry and Cheryl's fruitless attempts to have a utility wire in their backyard buried.
In season two, Cheryl is tired of Larry not working, so he begins to develop a new television show, first with guest stars Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as themselves. However, Larry's constant social mishaps ruin all of their chances with every major television network. In season three Larry invests in a restaurant enterprise which finally opens despite many mishaps, most of which are Larry's fault. Mel Brooks casts Larry as the lead in his hit musical The Producers in season four. Larry's friend Richard Lewis gets very ill in season five and requires a kidney transplant. Larry is a match, but he spends the season looking for other sources of a kidney for Lewis. Also in season five, Larry suspects he may be adopted and embarks on a search to find his "real" parents. Season six is built around Cheryl persuading Larry to take in an African American family that is left homeless after a major Gulf Coast hurricane. Later in the season, Cheryl leaves Larry, mimicking Laurie David's real-life divorce from Larry. He spends the rest of the season either fighting for her to come back or looking for a replacement.
The current season, season seven, is loosely centered on creating a Seinfeld reunion show.
Critical response and awards
- List of Curb Your Enthusiasm awards and nominations
Since its 2000 debut, the show has enjoyed wide critical acclaim and a steadily growing, dedicated audience[citation needed] that has helped it emerge from its early "cult" status.[citation needed] It is the sixth-highest rated TV show on metacritic.com. In that same website, the fifth season ranked 91 based on 5 reviews and the seventh season currently ranks 81 based on 18 reviews.
Curb Your Enthusiasm has received 28 Emmy nominations with one win, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for Robert B. Weide for the episode "Krazee-Eyez Killa". The show has also won a Golden Globe Award for Best TV show - musical or comedy, a Directors Guild of America award and a Writers Guild of America award for Comedy Series. The show has been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series since the first season, but has never won one.
Slate magazine named the characters of Cheryl David and Susie Greene as two of the best on television and as reasons they were looking forward to the return of the show in fall 2007.[5] Curb Your Enthusiasm has also received praise from Galus Australis magazine for being more unashamedly Jewish than the Seinfeld series.[6]
Juan Catalan incident
In 2003, Juan Catalan, a resident of Los Angeles, was cleared of premeditated murder charges against a material witness (a crime eligible for capital punishment) after outtake footage shot for the "Carpool Lane" episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm showed him and his daughter attending the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Atlanta Braves baseball game some 20 miles from the crime-scene at the time of the murder, resulting in a $320,000 settlement against the City of Los Angeles.[7] On hearing of the incident, Larry David commented that "Now I've done at least one good thing in my life, albeit inadvertently."
Inspired shows
- In 2005, Danish comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen created the comedy series Klovn, which is inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm.[8]
- UK show Lead Balloon has been described as "Britain's answer to Curb Your Enthusiasm"[9].
- German show Pastewka with comedian Bastian Pastewka is also inspired by Larry David's show.
- South African show Sorted with Lionel Newton is similarly inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm.
- Rapper Cam'ron is working on a TV series which he is dubbing a "black Curb Your Enthusiasm"[10].
- In 2009, Sal the Stockbroker, a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, created the "loosely scripted" series Show In The Hallway for Howard TV. Similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm, it features the cast and crew of The Howard Stern Show as well as occasional celebrity guests (Lisa Lampanelli, John Stamos, Jerry O'Connell, Curb star Richard Lewis and others) portraying versions of themselves.
- Australian series Whatever Happened To That Guy? starring former Fast Forward performer Peter Moon.
- American podcast series Star-ving, which shows Married With Children star David Faustino and his life after the show ended.
- Hong Kong actor Stephen Fung produced and starred in Old Fung Diary in 2006 which is based on "Curb Your Enthusiam" with similar title theme song.
Media
Book
A Curb Your Enthusiasm book was released October 19, 2006, published by Gotham Books (ISBN 1-59240-230-5). The book contains stories from Larry David's past, original interviews and commentary, episode outlines, episode guide, and over 100 full-color photographs.[11]
DVD
The first six seasons have been released in full season DVD sets in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.[12] The seventh season is set to be released one week after the final episode is broadcast.[citation needed]
Music
The show is punctuated between scenes with music orchestrated by Wendell Yuponce (first season), and from a music library company called Killer Tracks (seasons two to five). The opening and closing theme song (not mentioned in the credits) is "Frolic" by Italian composer Luciano Michelini. David heard the music used in a bank commercial years before the show was created and thought it had a lighthearted, joyful quality, so as to balance the show's otherwise downcast, gloomy feel. In May 2006, Mellowdrama Records released an unofficial Curb Your Enthusiasm soundtrack.[citation needed]
See also
References
External links
