November 8, 2009 | 9:45 pm

Curb Your Enthusiasm Review: November 8, 2009

Posted by Eddy Friedfeld

This week’s entry of Curb is a weak entry at best.  When Susie finds a pair of panties in the glove compartment, the philandering Jeff scrambles.  “I told her that they were yours,” he tells Larry.  “That you like wearing women’s panties.”

“Oy, Ve’is Meir,” Larry replies.

“It’s my best one ever,” Jeff says.

Meanwhile, while trying on pants in Banana Republic, there is a fire alarm and the building is evacuated.  Larry leaves his own pants in the dressing room.  He is told there is a two hour wait by an “Officer Krupke,” who does not know the character in West Side Story, even after Larry sings a few bars.  Larry does not want to wait for two hours to get his pants back and leaves with the pants he tried on, which were still tagged.

Back at Jeff’s house, Larry leaves Susie and Virginia Sloane (Elizabeth Shue) and her husband (John Schneider) for a walk because “I find “how we met stories” clawing and annoying.” He is urged to take a walk around the block till the story is over.”

Larry buys the worst lemonade he’s ever tasted from a kid’s stand and his altercation results in a rebuking and threat from their mother (Carol Leifer).

Virginia is auditioning for the part of George’s ex-wife in the Seinfeld reunion and nails the audition. Cheryl’s audition painfully relives the experience that precipitated their divorce.

“We’ll talk later- it’s a formality, right? Cheryl whispers to Larry.

“You should be glad that there’s no chance of you and Cheryl getting involved again,” Jerry tells Larry.

Still wearing the tagged pants, Larry returns to Banana Republic, to find (of course) that his pants are gone.  “How could I pay for the pants if you lost my pants?”

“They’re not lost, they’re gone,” the salesperson tells him.

The inevitable Susie Green inquisition about the underwear begins.  “I’m trying to play slight transvestite,” Larry tells Jeff.

“You’re Larry David and you like the comfort of women’s panties!” Jeff instructs him.

Other than the fun cameos, this episode was pareve, neither fish nor fowl comedically, formulaic and uninspired, even with Krupke returning and making Larry remove the tagged pants, revealing red panties.  Neither particularly controversial nor especially funny:  I look forward to next week with the reunion of the Seinfeld cast.  Larry and company are at the free-throw line:  With two episodes left, they have two chances to sink two buckets.  Hopefully with no net.

See you next week.

Eddy Friedfeld is a film and entertainment journalist and the co-author of “Caesar’s Hours” with Sid Caesar and teaches the history of comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

November 2, 2009 | 10:32 am

The Leo Frank case isn’t dead

Posted by Jay Firestone

T.R. Knight

From LATimes.com:

On Aug. 17, 1915, Leo Frank, a Cornell-educated Jewish industrialist, was lynched just outside Atlanta. The atrocity marked the culmination of an ugly conflict that began with the 1913 murder of a child laborer named Mary Phagan, who toiled for pennies an hour in Atlanta’s National Pencil Factory. Frank, the plant superintendent, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, though he always maintained his innocence. He appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, losing each time, whereupon Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. The decision so angered the general populace that a mob organized by a Superior Court judge, the son of a U.S. senator and a former governor abducted Frank from a well-guarded state prison and hanged him from an oak tree.

The lynching of Frank seems like an incident out of another America, one of gray-bearded Civil War veterans and Jim Crow, Model Ts and ragtime. Woodrow Wilson was president. “The Birth of a Nation” was playing in theaters. The story, however, remains very much alive. Throughout the fall, “Parade,” the Alfred Uhry musical inspired by the affair, has been drawing crowds to the Mark Taper Forum. On Nov. 8, KCET will broadcast “The People v. Leo Frank,” the first full-length documentary to explore the topic.

Read the full story at LATimes.com.

Read more about Leo Frank and the historical musical “Parade,” here.

Leo Frank, Revisited

When T.R. Knight chants the Shema blindfolded and with a noose tightening around his neck in the role of Leo Frank, his character’s terror is palpable. The scene takes place as the inevitable tragic dénouement of the historical musical “Parade,” now playing at the Mark Taper Forum, the story of the anti-Semitic trial and lynching in 1915 of a pencil-factory manager accused of brutally murdering a 13-year-old girl. In this production, Frank lives again via this boyish, 36-year-old actor best known for his part in the original cast of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Read More.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

November 1, 2009 | 11:04 pm

Curb Your Enthusiasm Review: November 1, 2009

Posted by Eddy Friedfeld

This week’s relatively tame installment begins at the cemetery where Larry is at his mother’s grave with his father and cousin Andy (the great Shelley Berman and equally great Richard Kind).

The tombstone reads “Past Away.”  “I know how to spell it-it’s $50 a letter- I wanted to save money,” Larry’s Dad tells him.

Larry offers to spring for the 100 bucks to remedy the error.

At their golf club, Andy orders the omelet with the well done onions against Larry’s direction and the extra ten minutes causes them to lose their foursome spot to a slower team.

Caught talking on his cell phone in violation of club rules, Larry lies about his father having quadruple bypass surgery to Mr. Takahashi, the owner of the club.

Yet another debate over tipping ensues, with Larry protesting an 18% percent built-in tip included and doesn’t want to add an extra tip

“Don’t make me do math at the table,” Larry says.

“So you’re protesting math,” the waiter says.

Larry’s foursome, which includes Jeff, Andy, and the fabulously droll Funkhauser, is stuck behind the slow team, which prompts a yelling match with Norm (the legendary Paul Masursky in a fun cameo).

Back in the locker room, Larry is admonished, “You don’t yell at someone with high blood pressure- they die.” Which is exactly what happened to Norm.

“I heard so many stories about you when I joined this club and I can’t believe that so many stories were true about one person.”

“You’re a murderer, Larry, at least guilty of Manslaughter,” Funkhauser tells him.

Andy’s wife makes hats so she can pay for her daughter Skylar to go to college.  Larry graciously offers to pay Skylar’s college tuition.

A subsequent phone debate with stone mason devolves into whether Derek Jeter is overpaid.

Back on the golf course, Larry swings his club at an approaching swan and kills it.  The swan is Mr. Takjahashi’s pet. 

Takahashi interrogates the standing foursome and gives Larry Larry’s own patented stare of incredulity.

You’re stupid,” he tells Jeff.

“I’m not stupid.”

“Yes you are- you marry a big mouth wife.”

Andy asks Larry if he would put his wife through cosmetology school.  “She’s great with lotions.”

“A generous offer to pay for daughter’s college education and now you’re asking me to pay for cosmetology school.”  (I find it better when Larry is the rare reactor, not the instigator of socially inappropriate behavior).

And of course, at Norm’s funeral Larry badmouths the stonemason in front of the stonemason.

Larry gets an email from Jeff- he wants him to come clean about the swan.  At Norm’s funeral service Larry can’t turn cell phone off and tosses it to the back of the room.  The phone is retrieved by the waiter who reads Jeff’s email and which is followed by an 18% tip shakedown.

“A man who can give such a generous tip can never kill a swan,” Takahashi says.

And just when Larry is about to get away with it, there is a great close- to the newly altered tombstone by the vengeful stonemason.

For die-hard sitcom trivia fans- Takahashi was also Arnold’s real name from Happy Days.

See you next week.

Eddy Friedfeld is a film and entertainment journalist and the co-author of “Caesar’s Hours” with Sid Caesar and teaches the history of comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

October 25, 2009 | 9:03 pm

Curb Your Enthusiasm Review: October 24, 2009

Posted by Eddy Friedfeld

This week’s masterful episode begins with the sound of Larry urinating, which sounds like a waterfall.

The chemistry between Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David is palpable:

“What do you have Seabiscuit in there with you” Jerry asks, as Larry walks out of the bathroom in his office.

“I’m taking new medication.”

Jerry proposes Lisa Kudrow after Meg Ryan has scheduling conflicts.

“You want an unknown for this,” the sneak Larry says, still trying to get ex-wife Cheryl back into the show and his life, “that happened to Cheryl in real life.”

“What’s real got to do with what we do? You think Nixon could’ve been Nixon in Frost Nixon?”

The two pals and colleagues whisper over how to deal with their new assistant, Maureen, who bares her midriff, showing with a flabby stomach.  They would fire her, but Elaine got her the job. 

“I can’t do that- I don’t want to,” Jerry says, “this doesn’t call for eloquence- it calls call for charm.”

The conversation with Maureen does not go well.  “You can take a break in the flaunt,” Larry tells her.  The upset Maureen quit, refusing to go on anymore vitamin runs for Larry or buy his socks.

Jerry and Larry debate honking an irate driver, as they take one on.  They then debate Larry’s excessive use of napkins at lunch: “How many napkins does a person need to get through a sandwich- you should bring a bath towel.”

Richard Lewis joins them for lunch, and then leaves while the two decide which one moves in closer to share the booth.

Cheryl runs into Jerry and thanks him for already having given her the part.

“Jerry was strange,” she tells Larry, “I thought I had the part.

“It’s like winning an election but waiting to get sworn in. The audition is the election.”

Elaine berates Jerry and Larry for firing Maureen:

“You can’t go up to a woman and tell her that her shirt is distracting, that’s the style.”

“We don’t live in your fancy LA young crowd,” Jerry tells her.

“Larry lives in Los Angeles.”

“He lives in his own mind, he doesn’t know anything about it.”

Larry apologizes to Maureen.  Her mother drops the groceries when she walks in, declaring him the spitting image of her late husband. 

Flashback to 1962, the lookalike Larry drives with his new bride and takes on an irate driver who assaults him with a tire iron (coincidentally, the lookalike also refers to bad drivers as “Schmohawks.”)

“They kill you for honking, they don’t kill you for shushing,”

His racehorse-like stream splashes the picture of Jesus near the toilet which causes a tearing Jesus, prompting a religious epiphany.

“Have you ever witnessed a miracle?” Maureen asks.

“I think every erection is a miracle,” Larry says.

The rest of the hysterical episode, includes Maureen’s stomach literally saves Larry’s life.

“Maybe tomorrow we can dress up as Kaufman and Hart,” Larry tells Jerry.  And while the reference is funny, it’s also intriguing- watching these two geniuses at work does harken back to the legend of the Broadway masters.  This was a brilliant and hysterical installment.  I keep thinking of the roles Larry and Jerry could play in a future series.  I see the two of them as detectives, both eccentric, who banter endlessly while occasionally solving crimes.

See you next week.

Eddy Friedfeld is a film and entertainment journalist and the co-author of “Caesar’s Hours” with Sid Caesar and teaches the history of comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

26 Comments — Leave your comment

October 18, 2009 | 8:27 pm

Curb Your Enthusiasm Review: October 18, 2009

Posted by Eddy Friedfeld

Weaving his web of self-made crises, Larry David continues to straddle that line between marginal social acceptability and “destined to be cared for by the state.”

In a coffee shop, while singing to the music on his headset, he apologizes to a woman, Denise, at the next table, who turns out to be a big fan of the artist.  Larry has been invited to a private concert with the artist.

He makes a “pre-date,” with Denise of course who rolls out from behind her table in a wheelchair.

“You could be a creep,” she says.

“I’m a very big creep,” Larry replies.

In another scene, only Larry can have a wrestling match with Rosie O’Donnell over whom should pick up the check (“It’s the inviter who picks up the check,” Larry declares, as opposed to Rosie’s position as the grabee of the check)

It is also fun to see Rosie O’Donnell poking fun at herself, lecturing Larry about being mean and insensitive). “My kid never stops calling me,” Rosie tells him.

“Wheelchair girl,” as Denise is now referred to by Larry, go to a restaurant without a ramp.  Instead of going back to the car, Larry offers to carry her up a long flight of stairs.

But he can barely carry her up the stairs- (Maxwell Smart once had the same problem).  Wheelchair girl now has a problem with Larry’s follically-challenged head.

The ever-annoying Larry asks what the proper term for her condition is. “Are you challenged?”

“Right now I am.”

Their substantive romantic rendezvous consists of Larry trying to figure out how to kiss a woman in a wheelchair in a funny acrobatic play.

Later, an ethnically insensitive remark about a couple’s adopted Asian baby gets Larry dis-invited to the private concert.

Leon is still living with “LD,” and counsels Larry to break up with his newest girlfriend.  Taking her out once more in order to so, Larry gets to park in the handicapped spot and get a table at restaurant immediately with a long line and without a reservation (as well as complimentary champagne), reason enough for Larry to continue dating her.  Being seen with Denise even gets him re-invited to the private concert.

Even “a day at the beach” is a problem for Larry when he hesitates to rescue Susie and Jeff’s daughter from drowning to protect his blackberry, prompting Susie to throw his blackberry into the ocean.

Larry, who doesn’t know Denise’s last name (he had her in his blackberry as “Denise Handicap”) tries to find her by roaming her neighborhood with Leon.  He sees a woman in a wheelchair and decides that she and Denise probably know each other.  Leon, Larry’s new sidekick and validator, supports Larry’s logic:

If you lived in an all white neighborhood and there was only one other black person, you’d know him, wouldn’t you?

Wendy, also in a wheelchair, does not know Denise, but is also listening to the artist’s music.  Larry takes her to the concert, as if no one would know the substitution.  As if that were not enough, Denise managed to find her way to the home as well. I like Larry when situations happen to him, but less when he creates it for himself, but the showdown was hilarious, including a funny payoff which I won’t spoil if you haven’t see the episode yet.

See you next week.

Eddy Friedfeld is a film and entertainment journalist and the co-author of “Caesar’s Hours” with Sid Caesar and teaches the history of comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 11, 2009 | 9:17 pm

Curb Your Enthusiasm Review: October 11th 2009

Posted by Eddy Friedfeld

This week’s episode began with Larry’s newest pet peeve:  Men wearing shorts on airplanes.  In the latest entry the plot is still intricately weaved.  Larry reminds me of “Q” in the James Bond movies:  The gadgets that Q gave 007 at the beginning of each film are like ticking time bombs-we know that they are going to be used at some point.  Larry’s Q plants the seeds of idiosyncrasies and new characters who all converge and make his life ever more miserable.

After burning himself on the little hot towel given to him by the Flight Attendant in first class (it could only happen to Larry) and then cajoling his doctor’s (well played by the stoically sardonic Philip Baker Hall) home phone number out of him “just for emergencies” (“I don’t want to be in your wallet,” he tells Larry), Larry calls him by accident and then proceeds to chit chat with him, annoying him even further.

Coincidentally (not that there’s ever one in this world) running into an ex-girlfriend Mary Jane Porter, he gets asked out.  “I’ve changed,” he tells her, which is not only a lie, but would be a tragedy.

“She is a ‘big bowl of out of your league” Jeff Garlin tells her.

Larry solicits dating and sexual advice from the slightly less clueless Jeff about how far he can go with a rekindled romance.  “Everything you’ve done before counts sexually.”

At Ted Danson’s party, Larry patrols the buffet area, admonishing Christian Slater about taking too much caviar, reminiscent of George Costanza’s double dipping, and then rats him out to Mary Steenburgen.

We learn of yet another life-long aversion of Larry’s-hearing people singing in public.  He abruptly curtails Jeff and Susie’s daughter for singing at Ted Danson’s party.  He also cuts a singer off at an Italian restaurant.

Larry’s reunion date with Mary Jane is less than successful.  While the Seinfeld cast was nowhere to be found this week, there was also a reminder of George’s “switching sides” trick, with Larry’s injured wrist.  He has to take off quickly when Mary Jane gets a phone call from the boyfriend she neglected to mention.

The next day, a phone call from Mary Jane that she has given her angry and jealous boyfriend his address and phone number, sends Larry to the streets in his shorts, seeking refuge first at his doctor’s house, who throws him out, then at Susie and Jeff’s who throw him out after he yells at their daughter for singing.

The day after that when he goes back to apologize to the singer at the restaurant, he runs into Mary Jane and tries to run away from her boyfriend, escaping from the restaurant.

And while his escape was about to be successful, he gets busted by Christian Slater, who in complete retribution, directs Mary Jane’s boyfriend to where Larry is hiding.  Larry loses again, and we as the audience clearly win.

Mozzrella? Nah!

See you next week.

Eddy Friedfeld is a film and entertainment journalist and the co-author of “Caesar’s Hours” with Sid Caesar and teaches the history of comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 4, 2009 | 8:19 pm

Curb Your Enthusiasm Review: October 4th 2009

Posted by Eddy Friedfeld

Eddy Friedfeld and Larry David

“You know those reunion shows never work…,” Larry David tells manager Jeff Garlin.

“You criticized and downgraded people for doing reunions,” Jerry Seinfeld tells his former producing partner.

And yet…

Larry has hatched perhaps his most daring plot of all- using the much requested and much refused Seinfeld reunion as a ploy to get ex-wife Cheryl back:  Cast her as George’s ex-wife and use the time spent together to court her.

Will it backfire?  Of course it will.  It wouldn’t be a Larry David scheme if it didn’t.

It’s fun to see them together- especially older.  To see Jason Alexander eating lunch (and arguing over the tip) with his doppelganger/alter ego-is like looking into a fun house mirror.  The older Alexander is now way too good for his character’s creator, he is rich and respectable and iconic, ironically for personifying Larry’s foibles and character flaws.  Watching Larry cringe as Jason unwittingly described George’s flaws which were Larry’s:  “He’s a jerky, schmulky little character…”

“Well he’s not little,” is all Larry is able to come up with.

Larry David systematically and effectively manages to alienate all of his former colleagues and the head of NBC.  And will hate himself more than normal for apologizing

Last Friday night, with David sitting in his guest chair, David Letterman marveled at the prospect of the reunion of the Seinfeld cast.  “How did you employ the logistics of accomplishing that?

“I begged.”

David also tweaked both Letterman and himself by saying that he had “broken the record for the least amount of sex for a person with his own television show,” which set the table nicely for the show within a show.

The challenge of a reunion like this is to balance expectations with novelty.  The old gang hasn’t been together in over a decade, and they can’t let us smell the mothballs. This Fab Four was almost as famous as the original and the best comedy quartet since Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel.

Television audiences had never seen anything like this before and it hooked me and millions of others forever.  The series created a subculture, introducing phrases into popular culture ranging from “sponge-worthy,” to “yadda yadda yadda,” to the often quoted “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”  “The Restaurant” episode has been compared to “Waiting for Godot.” “The Contest” broke television ground:  An episode about a taboo subject without ever mentioning the operative word:

“Are you master of your domain?”
“I’m king of the castle!”
Even on a subsequent episode, when George went on a job interview, when asked if he had self-control, he responded “I won a contest.”

Michael Richards looks a little bewildered (and seem to forgot the entire conversation he had with Larry about a reunion show)-  and looks too fragile for one of his trademark slides or limber pratfalls.  One of Elaines signature “Get out!” pushes may land him in the hospital.

Jerry makes it seem like their relationship was solidly based on both mutual affection and a healthy mistrust.

And with this episode closing with Meg Ryan agreeing to play George’s ex-wife, Larry is thwarted, at least for the short-term.

I think he should continue dating and in true Seinfeldian tradition, characters should return: Lucy Lawless could get Warrior Princess on poor Larry, Gina Gershon as the Orthodox dry cleaner, coupled with returning Seinfeld characters as a string of ill-fated dates and micro-relationships:  Low talking, man-handed women, masseuses who won’t massage, maids who won’t clean, and perhaps a virgin thrown in for good measure.

The most Desperate of Housewives Teri Hatcher (who played Sidra of questionable authentic-breastedness (yes, I know it’s not a real word)) could guest as herself and taunt Larry over dinner: “They’re still real and they’re still spectacular!”

Larry could get say something wrong (shocking) and get sued and we could see Greg Morris return as the Johnny Cochrane-esque Jackie Chiles, quicker than you say “Hello Neeewman!”

Or maybe even- another contest- this time including Larry.

Eddy Friedfeld is a film and entertainment journalist and the co-author of “Caesar’s Hours” with Sid Caesar and teaches the history of comedy in America at Yale and NYU.

0 Comments — Leave your comment