HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" returns for a seventh season this Sunday, September 20 at 9 PM.
06/08/2009 - Larry David - Mixed feelings about this series, which has genuinely made me laugh but more often made me wince, experiencing bad LA Talent Agency employment flashbacks making me quickly change the channel. © Rick Stephens / PR Photos
Mixed feelings about this series, which has genuinely made me laugh but more often made me wince, experiencing bad LA Talent Agency employment flashbacks making me quickly change the channel.
Full disclosure: Wasn't a big "Seinfeld" fan either.
Bad taste, odd situational humor and awkward social moments are the playground for the fertile tortured mind of Larry David, the show's nebbishy writer/producer reeling from his estrangement from his popular saint-like wife Cheryl, who all his friends, Maitre d's and associates choose in the post-split "pick the spouse" game.
The new season promises more Susie Greene (Susie Essman) histrionics (she operates at the same volume level in every scene) as she hectors and berates Larry into a corner over all sorts of nonsense including Lyme disease. Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) plays well as always off the neurotic musings and thinking out loud our Larry does best. Garlin is a monster talent, would love to see him in more projects.
The politics of race and cancer are cleverly woven in Larry's New Orleans squatter family that is headed by Loretta Black (Vivica A. Fox) who brings the "black womens' attitude" right up in Larry's hapless Jewy grille. They are very funny together in scene.
The season opens with David trying to artfully, tactfully extricate himself from hosting the Blacks and getting cancer-stricken Loretta out of his bed.
Old stand-by guest stars Ted Danson and Richard Lewis also appear in the season seven David landscape. Loved seeing great comic actress Catherine O'Hara in the series as the mentally fragile sister of Marty Funkhouser (Bob Einstein).
The Seinfeld reunion is woven into this season as the cast including Jerry Seinfeld all reconvene and Larry schemes to get Cheryl back by offering her a plum part on the show.
Fans of the series will eat him and the new season up with a spoon, Those of us who suffered under some heinous Ari Gold-esque agents in the day will shudder and look for smallscreen shelter in Showtime's "Dexter," coming back very soon this September as well.
The seventh season of Curb Your Enthusiasm debuts Sunday Sept. 20 at 9 p.m. on HBO.
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