Curb Your Enthusiasm: Nine kids, a vindictive waiter and a chatty receptionist
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- October
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Don’t you just hate those chatty types, the ones who could start a conversation about nothing and keep it going endlessly about even less? Their desks always seem to be situated near the rest room, so you can’t avoid them without doing yourself harm.
Aren’t you even more worried you are one of those types?
That right there is the kind of neuroses a half-hour with Larry David is liable to sew inside your head. Last night’s episode, “The Lefty Call” was chock full of such things to worry about. For instance, the next time I eat out, I’m going to be sizing up my waiter for malicious intent in case I say or do something that might inspire him to taint my doggie bag. After all, a doggie bag is called that for a reason.
What I didn’t need illustrated for me was that no matter how many children a couple has, you don’t suggest that it’s because they’re egotistical. Of course, Larry takes it a step further by minimizing the impact of the couple’s recent miscarriage. They don’t call it cringe-worthy humor for no reason.
Naturally, Larry keeps up the inappropriateness the following day at his friends’ father’s retro barber shop. This of course earns him an abbreviated haircut and a beatdown with a barber towel.
Tia Carrere, once of Wayne’s World fame, all but stole the show last night as Cha Cha, the chatty receptionist who has Larry to thank for her job. She repays him by not only stopping him on his way in and out of the men’s room for painfully small small-talk, but by cataloguing and recounting the number and duration of his trips to the lavatory.
Suddenly Richard Lewis is concerned for his bowel health. That’s the kind of friendly concern I don’t need.
Speaking of such concerns, Cheryl’s passion for the environment has translated into drastic measures in the bathroom. That’s right: coarse, eco-friendly toilet tissue, the likes of which you’ll only find in a Port Authority bathroom. I can’t imagine being passionate enough about anything to subject myself to that. And neither can the Blacks, Larry’s refugee family, who conspire with him to hoard Charmin-like contraband. Talk about sparing a square.
Through a typically convoluted turn of events Larry’s bowel woes lead him to a deafeningly loud upstairs men’s room toilet, forcing him to see a doctor about the ensuing damage to his hearing. By this time Cha Cha’s meddling has left him unable to discuss his bowels even with a doctor.
And the Emmy for the best medical advice by a TV doctor goes to…Stay off that ear for a while. So Larry sets out to talk lefty, which naturally leads to an uncomfortable phone conversation with Cha Cha.
In the end, the only one with actual bowel trouble is Susie’s dog, who scarfed down the doggie bag and ended up soiling the Greene house the next day. Seriously, it’s called a DOGGIE BAG.
Now somehow, in the middle of all this, a skinhead issues the vilest of epithets at Larry, who skulks away and seeks advice from Leon. The advice involves closing the door behind you and spray painting the walls. I’m still not sure what he meant by the analogy. Larry must have missed it too, because he tries it out on a chemotherapy patient.
There’s a moral in there somewhere, I’m sure
Photos: Jeff Garlin, left, and Larry David (AP Photo/HBO,Claudette Barius); Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry’s wife Cheryl, teamed up with the Larry King Cardiac Foundation to inspire a quarter of a million Americans to take the Quaker Smart Heart Challenge (detailed here). Quaker Oatmeal will donate $1 up to $250,000 to the LKCF for every person who pledges to take the Challenge between now and February 2008. (PRNewsFoto/Quaker Oatmeal)
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 4:59 pm by Brian Howard.
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Wait a minute! MY desk is near the rest room.
Are you trying to tell me something, Bri?