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Enthusiasm' works
Artfully crafted around a not so likable personality
By Ed Robertson
HBO’s on a mission this summer. After launching “Sex and the City” on its final season and securing “The Sopranos” through the end of 2005, the premium cable champion is now using its sleeper hit to gain momentum heading into the fall.
“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the award-winning comedy from “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David, returned to the schedule last month as part of HBO’s summer lineup. Back-to-back episodes of the show’s first three seasons air Mondays at 8 p.m., with encore presentations Fridays at 8 on HBO2. (HBO also repeated the original, hour-long pilot for “Curb” this week, and has scheduled additional showings throughout July at various times.)
“Curb” was HBO’s biggest surprise this season, netting a Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series while averaging 4.5 million viewers a week. Airing after “The Sopranos,” the show’s casual pace proved a welcome counterpart to the high intensity of its mob drama lead-in.
The summer encore allows viewers who may have discovered “Curb” midstream to watch the show from the beginning. It also provides us with an opportunity to commend David for succeeding in areas where similar shows have previously failed.
For one, television audiences traditionally reject protagonists who aren’t exactly likable. This is known as the “Dabney Coleman rule,” in homage to Slap Maxwell, Buffalo Bill Bittinger, and other malcontents who, despite sharp writing and critical acclaim, nonetheless failed to catch on. Peter Dragon, the caustic Hollywood agent played by Jay Mohr in “Action,” also succumbed to the same rule.
Not only does David play a man who is grating and annoying, he neither looks nor sounds like your conventional leading man—which makes acceptance of his character even more of a challenge.
Granted, the word “character” is used loosely. The Larry David we see on “Curb” is really more caricature than fully fledged character. Basically, it’s the George Costanza persona from “Seinfeld” and then some.
Going back to the First Law of Spinoffs, most caricatures in television have short shelf-lives. A character must have enough depth and potential for growth in order to sustain audience interest. So a show centered around a George Costanza type isn’t supposed to work, as Jason Alexander himself proved with the failure of “Bob Patterson.”
Then again, “Curb” doesn’t completely revolve around David — at least, not in the ordinary sense. Unlike “Seinfeld,” “Curb” relies heavily on improvisation, allowing co-stars Cheryl Hines and Jeff Garlin, as well as the guest actors, tremendous freedom while also enabling them to shine. Hines, who plays David’s wife on “Curb,” is particularly adept at improv, having honed her skills onstage as part of the L.A. comedy troupe The Groundlings.
“Curb” also bucks one other rule from history: great television writers do not make great TV series leads. The classic example is Carl Reiner, who started as a writer for Sid Caesar on “Your Show of Shows.” After “Shows” disbanded, Reiner wrote, developed and starred in a pilot called “Head of the Family,” about a staff writer for a successful TV variety show who successfully juggles family and career.
CBS executives liked the concept, but didn’t care for Reiner as the lead, so Reiner hired a talented, rubber-faced actor and cast him in the role. The result was the long-running, Emmy Award-winning “Dick Van Dyke Show.”
David’s “Seinfeld” alumnus Carol Leifer, the real-life inspiration for Elaine Benes, likewise failed make the transition from writer to star. Leifer’s 1997 sitcom “Alright, Already” died shortly after its premiere.
So how has “Curb” managed to succeed? Three reasons come to mind:
(1) It’s funny. Unfettered by traditional network standards and practices, “Curb” takes the basic “show about nothing” premise of “Seinfeld” a step further, creating moments that are as often outrageous as they are hilarious. Case in point: the unfortunate typo in last week’s episode that turned the otherwise thoughtful obituary that Larry wrote for Cheryl’s aunt into an embarrassingly vulgar remark.
(2) The unscripted nature of the show, which, again, takes much of the edge off of David’s character, figuratively as well as literally.
(3) Like any good comic, David knows when to make an exit. This is particularly important, considering that the character he plays on “Curb” really is someone best taken in small doses.
Perhaps that’s why a typical season of “Curb” is so short—10 episodes, compared to the standard 13-episode allotment of most other HBO series. Just when David is about to overstay his welcome, the season suddenly ends, leaving viewers with a healthy nine-month “buffer zone” (as David himself might put it) before he comes their way again.
“Sex and the City” may still be No. 1 as far as HBO comedies are concerned, but it’s clearly sagging with age. Ratings have dropped nearly 50 percent in the two weeks since the execrable June 22 season premiere. With “Sex” slated to end this winter, HBO is counting on “Curb” to build on its success from last year and bolster the network’s comedy lineup. Based on David's track record, history says he will be more than up to the challenge.
July 10, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Ed
Robertson is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area who covers
television.
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