Is The New Season Of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Any Good? Here's What Reviews Of The Premiere Say
After a six-year absence, Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" has returned to HBO to kick off its ninth season. All the reviews of the premiere, "Foisted," assume you know what's up with "Curb" and trust you know your own tolerance level for Larry's bumbling curmudgeonliness. Does it seem like the new season will fulfill the promise of "more 'Curb'" or should it have stayed on indefinite hiatus? Here's what the reviews say:
The Premiere Featured A Mix Of Classically 'Curb' Plots, Complete With A Major Misstep By Larry
On Sunday, it started with one of his patented explorations of the little things in life that annoy people — in this instance, trying to unspin a pump handle on a bottle of shampoo, which then doesn't even work — pivots briefly to Larry not holding the door for a lesbian and ultimately messing up her marriage, veers into how Jimmy Kimmel "foisted" (the episode's title) a gimpy and constipated assistant (Carrie Brownstein) on Larry and how he must "foist" her on someone else and then ends, obviously, with a fatwa on his life.
After getting nothing but positive feedback on a story about Salmon Rushdie's life being ruined by a death threat, David aimed to drum up more interest with a quick appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. The only problem: He angered the actual Ayatollah after a "disparaging" impersonation (thanks for the heads up, Leon) and received a real-life fatwa (death sentence).
Finicky shampoo bottles and ineffective assistants? Always funny. Entwining those bits with humor about an engaged lesbian couple's gender expression and, oh yeah, a fatwa!? Extremely 2017, and classically Curb.
It'll Be (Almost) Instantly Familiar To You — They Haven't Changed The Show's Core One Bit
The primary takeaway from "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" long-awaited ninth-season premiere, "Foisted!," is that the show — its style, its characters, its tone — is almost exactly what it was when it aired its Season 8 finale in 2011. It's welcome, but a little strange, too. Could six years really pass by quite so seamlessly? Could so little, really, have changed?
[Variety]
The episode opens with a shot that might as well have been accompanied by flashing text on the screening, reading "It's 2017, and we bought a drone."
The 'Foisting' Plot In The First Episode Is Pitch-Perfect
Carrie Brownstein, continuing this delightful second act as a comedienne, was wonderful as Larry's assistant Mara, difficult in so many ways — walking with a cane, constipated, absent-minded, lazy (even while complaining that the job was unchallenging) — yet impossible to fire because she was a molestation victim. (If you didn't think Curb was going to go right back to pushing past the barriers of good taste, well, I'll forgive you since it's been gone so long. But come on.)
[UPROXX]
The central conflict arises when Larry's assistant, Mara (Carrie Brownstein), returns to the office after two unplanned days off. She had been seriously constipated and couldn't work. As Larry correctly points out, "The whole world is constipated." There's no reason to stay home for that, especially when you've got people like Leon, who will film a porno and win a hot dog-eating contest while constipated.
In the show's titular "foisting," Larry realizes that Jimmy Kimmel foisted his incompetent assistant Mara (Carrie Brownstein) onto him because it was easier than firing a woman with a limp and a tragic childhood. Larry tries the same method on Susie — pretending that Mara's a great assistant, so that Susie's eager to hire Mara away from him. It works, but when Susie realizes what Larry's done, she gets her revenge[…]
[Variety]
Fictional Larry's Views On Marriage And Gender Presentation Don't Land So Well
Betty, with her short hair, vests, and ties, is more a "groom" in Larry's eyes, while the more conventionally feminine Numa should obviously be the bride. Unfortunately, there aren't many laughs to be had in these particular confrontations. Larry's well outside the realm of progressives and conservatives, but the thinking behind this storyline just feels so outdated. It's just not as elegant a reintroduction of his "equal opportunity offender" status.
Larry's binary bride/groom conception of the wedding is more something he would care about than the two women probably would, but the show has always to a degree filtered Larry's retrograde sensibilities out into the rest of its world, and usually gets away with it because David makes himself the jerk in virtually every situation.
[UPROXX]
The door bit works, because nobody knows how to hold open a door for someone else. The bride bit doesn't. The audience is expected to know exactly what Larry means when he says a woman doesn't look like a bride, but honestly, I think more of the audience has moved well past traditional ideas of brides and grooms than "Curb Your Enthusiasm" realizes.
[Variety]
The Season's Throughline Plot Could End Up Working, But You Might Not Like Its Introduction
I am absolutely here for an entire season-long arc about a fatwa on Larry (especially if his disguise is involved) with Leon as his assistant. It just feels right — especially the fatwa, kind of like this is the only natural place for the show to go.
The fatwa story line — which apparently is going to be a season-long thing — is an even bigger disaster. On paper, I love the idea of Larry becoming an American Salman Rushdie by trying to tell his story in the form of a stage musical[…] Based on what we know about Larry, there's no question that a guy like him would perversely envy Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses deliberately thumbed its nose at authorities daring to tell an artist what he could and could not depict. But the fatwa that's declared against Larry is too predictable and half-assed.
[Vulture]
When The Episode Does Click It Works Really, Really Well
But the most hilarious and successful exchange of the night is, naturally, between David and his longtime friend (and former rival) Richard Lewis. Larry's assumption is that a sympathy text is sufficient after the death of a pet, especially considering a parakeet isn't as exotic as say, a toucan. And it might have been, had he not thrown in the "at least I'm still alive" at the end (which is a much worse way to punctuate a text than a smiley face, I hope Larry knows). Everything from their head-jerking negotiation over who should have to move to Richard's spot-on assessment that Larry's life is lacking in well, "everything," felt like a homecoming.
In this episode, we even got the return of Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) who is fronting a new charity called PAM — People Against Mutilation — to which Larry of course tells her that's a stupid name. "That's the best you could do? It's a cooking spray."
Foisting, like Richard Lewis' complaints about Larry only texting after the death of his parakeet who maybe said "Seinfeld," is the essence of Curb. It's about dilemma and questioning the unspoken social contract and the rules that seem to appear out of nowhere. It's relatable, even when it's reprehensible. This is the part of the show that I think it does best and that part that will fare best in the current culture. We live in a more sensitive time than the last time a new season of Curb aired, and I'm genuinely curious to see how something like the lesbian couple subplot will be received.
If You Found Yourself Getting Tired Of The Show's Attitude Or Formula Back In The Day, You'll Probably Bounce Off
Sunday's ninth-season debut felt like a throwback in a bad way — not just to the earliest season of Curb, but to the Puerto Rican Day episode of Seinfeld, which was so touristy in its absurdism and so cluelessly insensitive that NBC initially pulled it from the series' syndication package. The problem isn't just that Larry is still a rich know-it-all asshole — he's always been that, and it's the wellspring of his anti-charisma. It's that the show feels as if it's not actually doing the homework necessary to get Larry into the comic situations he needs to inhabit with gleeful, acidic verve.
[Vulture]
While longtime fans will take Larry any way they can get him, other viewers may notice a formulaic quality to the shtick. After eight seasons, there can't be that many people in the human race he hasn't pissed off; each episode begins with Larry annoying some innocent person, rather than just finding himself in awkward situations that escalate out of control because of his cluelessness and general obstinacy.
TL;DR
Thankfully, "Foisted!" felt like… well, like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Not a pantheon installment — which, given how many amazing episodes the show has done over close to 20 years, is no sin — but wickedly funny at times, and effective at both bringing us back into the fold and setting up this season's storylines.
[UPROXX]
