The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #4
#4- "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" HBO 2000-PRESENT-----------------------------------------------------------
"Curb Your Enthusiasm" has the same comedic outline as Larry David's previous series "Seinfeld"-- Our hero walks into an awkward and embarrassing situation, and with a little bad behavior, makes things worse as the two or three stories in each episode begin to double-back on one another. It's must-cringe-TV. A television viewer could not be blamed for not liking Larry David. After all, he probably wouldn't like you. It's not that Larry's immoral. He is at times (example: avoiding his friend's party by showing up the evening after and pretending that he had the date wrong), but at other times, Larry's problem is that he's excessively moral. For instance, if a delicatessen names a fish sandwich after you, it makes a bit of sense that you should like fish sandwiches. But naming a sandwich after you was such a nice gesture on the part of the restauranteur, that it's kind of in bad form to ask to switch with someone else because you don't like fish sandwiches. This is the crux of the series. Larry is playing himself, a former stand-up comic made extremely wealthy as co-creator of the hugely-popular "Seinfeld" (#15 on the countdown), but money can't buy patience for social niceties and perceived hypocrisies, and he's very upfront about this lack of patience. Larry's is a "liberated" id. He says what he's thinking, seemingly, at all times, which is hazardous, naturally, but not exactly his problem. More accurately, I think, his problem is that he continues to say exactly what he's thinking, yet is still confounded when other people react badly. These are the little lessons of everyday life, people. That's why this series comes in at #4.
A sample about samples.
posted by CM @ 9:00 PM
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