Curb Your Enthusiasm Recap: The Divorce

Larry David is an asshole. Or at least he pretends to play one on TV.

Last night was the season premiere for Larry David’s eighth (and hopefully not final) season of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. If there is any doubt who exactly made Seinfeld the most successful sitcom of its time, just watch last night’s episode and tell me you don’t see the genius behind the asshole that is LD.

Last night’s episode, aptly titled “The Divorce”, was, for all intents and purposes, a great way to send off one of the best characters to enter our living rooms. Continuing last season’s storyline of his divorce from long-time wife Cheryl, Larry David finds himself in the trenches of divorce proceedings. Armed with the “sharpest Jewish divorce lawyer in town”, Larry is confident that he’s going to come out of this thing with the “top of a Dutch apple pie”. An off-handed suggestion here and a chance encounter there will alter the course of events drastically enough, causing LD’s dream factory to come crashing to a halt.

Question: What would you do if a Girl Scout had her first period in your living room?

Yes, that is just one of the real-world issues that Larry David tackles in this episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. There really is no way to go about that situation with any sort of tact, which makes the entire proceedings after that even more remarkable. He was technically doing the right thing — but nothing LD does ever works out to be “the right thing”. You can’t help but laugh at this man’s struggle to do what he deems is right regardless of what society dictates. Shit, I’d have done the same, except I’d probably end up arrested instead of in the owners’ box of Dodgers Stadium.

Centered around Larry David’s divorce from Cheryl, who is looking as good as ever, the episode deftly dances around what can only be described as a stressful situation by questioning the “Jew-ness” of LD’s lawyer, Andrew Berg. Honest mistake, right?

And here is where sticking to his principles gets Larry into trouble. Not only does he fire his lawyer because he’s a Swede and not a Jew, LD ends up getting punched in the face for having lost O’Donnell’s Dodgers, then wakes up to see Cheryl with a tampon up his bloodied nose… as she’s telling him that he’s got 24 hours to vacate the house he just lost in the divorce.

Thankfully, the episode ends well for The Funkhouser, who’s getting a much wanted divorce thanks to a throw-away suggestion at the brunch table. Well, that’s just rich. Throw in some screaming from Susie and some screen time for Leon and what you have is comedic gold. Pure. Unbridled. Genius.

By the way, who slams the door on Girl Scouts? Larry David.