Curb Your Enthusiasm

[Guest Nanks]

Excuse my ignorance on this one, but what's the deal with that Larry David show Curb Your Enthusiasm?? Am I wrong in thinking it's just a really weirdly scripted show? Or is it an even weirder kind of shoot comedy, if you will??? I'm just watching an episode of it now, and frankly, I'm confused. Someone enlighten me??

[Guest Anorak]

I haven't seen much of that show but it pretty clearly fits into a new kind of comedy show which has signalled a move away from the traditional sitcom style of TV comedy. Similar shows which have preceeded CYE include 'Larry Sanders', 'The Office' and 'I'm Alan Partridge'. These shows deliberately focus on what you could call 'comedy of embarrassment', there is no canned laughter, smart one liners or familiar flow that we all know from regular sitcoms. In its place these shows rely on awkward silences, personal ignorance & offensiveness from their often unbelievably prickish main characters. The main characters in all the shows I've mentioned are either arrogant, selfish, deluded or insecure. The more subtle, realistic and sometimes downbeat nature of the settings and dialogue are purposely deployed to make a programme that makes you wince as much as laugh.

[The Dames]

EQ and I have the same opinion on it. It's like an uncensored Seinfeld. It makes sense that it would have that feel to it too since Larry David helped write Seinfeld for the most part.

 

The season finale of this past season was hilarious.

 

Dames

[Guest El Satanico]

Seinfeld without the limitations of Network tv is exactly what I consider it as well.

 

Call it whatever you'd like...all I know is that it's hilF'Narious

[Guest EQ]

Great show. I am eagerly awating the eventual DVD release.

 

Anyone have any info there, btw? Is there a date for it yet?

[Guest Lethargic]

Excuse my ignorance on this one, but what's the deal with that Larry David show Curb Your Enthusiasm?? Am I wrong in thinking it's just a really weirdly scripted show?

It's not scripted at all actually. The situations and settings are planned out but the dialogue is improvised. I watched some making of show about it on the last free HBO weekend preview thing and they said that.

[Guest ElectricRaccoon]

Hm. Considering I normally loathe improv and everything it stands for, I'm even MORE impressed with this show now (first saw it like two months ago when Showcase picked it up in Canada). Either Larry David is the greatest character actor of our time or one of the absolute biggest bastards, because man, his character is just on the inside edge of evil, but totally believable at the same time. He's kind of a hero to me, actually.

[Guest El Satanico]

You really see him as being a bastard...that's interesting.

 

I don't see him as being a bastard at all. To me he's a guy that means well, but what he does often comes off badly and he ends up getting misinterpreted and then yelled at.

 

I can understand his situration...It happens to me from time to time. I'm a smartass that always jokes around and sometimes it comes off badly and I seem like an asshole when I'm not.

[Guest NoCalMike]

I was listening to a radio show a month or so ago and the actress who plays Larry David's wife said she just finished up on doing commentary tracks for the first season of the show for the DVD. So hopefully everyone else has done their stuff and they can get whatever(if any) extras prepared, and then release it......SOON~!

[Guest Nanks]

He's great. He made some gay guy cry during a poker game in the episode I saw last night because he called him a cunt for folding when he had a good hand allowing Julia Louis Dreyfus to win with a bluff. Then the whole table went nuts at him. Hilarious