Kicked to the curb

How do you solve a problem like Larry David?

A Filipina I know told me that she stumbled upon a bunch of male friends watching Curb Your Enthusiasm together; they were laughing their heads off, and she couldn’t understand why.

The “why” is that, whether women realize it or not, or whether guys will admit it or not, David’s HBO comedy understands the way men’s minds work better than most other TV shows out there. Period.

True, the acerbic, crotchety writer/creator/star of Curb Your Enthusiasm strikes many as harsh, too mean. “He’s so negative,” carped another Filipina, explaining why she didn’t “get” the show — yet these same female viewers have no trouble lapping up Louis CK standup routines. Both comedians share a decidedly critical view of modern life, but Louis, for all his vitriol directed at kids, parents, hipsters and selfish consumers, strikes most as warm and cuddly compared to the bald, raspy-voiced David. Could be because CK, for all his well-moderated anger and hate, is basically self-deprecating: he is, more often than not, the butt of his own jokes.

David, who finished eight seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm and is now mulling a ninth, never backs down from looking like an a-hole. This approach takes some getting used to. Consider Curb as Seinfeld (David’s other multi-awarded comedy creation) minus the network censorship brakes: while Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer often suffered for their selfish actions and un-P.C. views, the gang couldn’t even go near the territory that Curb Your Enthusiasm does on a regular basis.

Season 8 hits the ground running with a Girl Scout having her first menstruation inside Larry’s house while trying to sell him cookies. He has to pass her a Kotex from his ex-wife’s stash, reading instructions through the closed bathroom door to the young girl. Iffy material for any network, even HBO.

Then there’s the episode where Larry checks out friend Richard Lewis’s girlfriend dancing at a burlesque club, and mentions that he noticed a mole on her right breast, which he thinks she should have checked out. “How did you happen to see that from 40 feet away?” asks the perpetually pissed Lewis. “I have breast vision,” shrugs David.

“Breast vision.” They might have gotten away with such a line on Seinfeld, but somehow it seems more right coming out of Larry David’s mouth.

On the show David plays himself while executive producer Jeff Garlin plays Larry’s agent, Jeff. The two are apt to do and say the things that guys sitting around together do and say, when women are not around. They discuss female anatomy. They discuss disgusting personal habits. In Season 1 they order up the video Girls Gone Wild on the phone and try to figure out where to have it delivered so they can watch it together without their wives finding out. “We can have an Auto Focus party,” jokes Larry, referring to the creepy Paul Schrader flick about porn addict Bob Crane and his pal Willem Dafoe. Of course, the plan backfires.

And that, perhaps, is the saving grace of Larry David’s humor. While the show does feature men behaving badly about 90 percent of the time, each episode is carefully crafted to ensure that Larry, or some other errant male, will be kicked to the curb for his a-holic actions. In Jewish terms, it’s the plight of the schlemiel, the guy who always schemes to get his way, and is almost always brought down by his selfishness.

Not just sex, porn and men’s basic need to golf are addressed on Curb Your Enthusiasm. There’s interracial relations (Season 6’s story arc focuses on the Black family, a group of African-Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina back in 2007 who are invited to stay in Larry’s home by liberal wife Cheryl, played memorably by Cheryl Hines). The dynamic between black and Jew reaches comic highlights — and lowlights — during that season. Season 8 meanwhile has Larry having to choose between a Palestinian restaurant that serves great chicken and a next-door Jewish deli beloved by his friends. Hey, if they can’t make peace in the Middle East, why should Larry David be expected to please everybody?

Perhaps David’s humor is simply an acquired taste, like Bob Dylan’s music. A lot of women (my wife included) claim they don’t “get” Dylan either. Granted, while Dylan has written his fair share of straight-up love songs, his best work is laced with a wryness, a knowingness about the world and love; he’s no knight in shining armor. Neither is Larry David. Not by a long shot.

Cataloguing life’s irritations is David’s great gift. The man must carry around a notebook, constantly jotting down the little things that tick him off, like people saying “LOL” out loud (instead of simply laughing out loud), or gadgets that are encased in impenetrable layers of plastic when you buy them (in one episode, he buys a utility blade at a hardware store to open some daunting plastic packaging — only to find the blade itself is encased in the same packaging).

There are too many great Curb moments to mention. True, there are a lot of so-so moments as well. But how many HBO sitcoms can claim they managed to get a wrongful murder conviction overturned? That’s what happened when LA resident Juan Catalan was exonerated in a premeditated murder case because footage of Curb Your Enthusiasm taken on the day of the murder proved he was actually nowhere near the crime scene, but heading to an LA Dodgers game on the freeway at the time. “I like to tell people that I’ve now done one good thing in life, albeit inadvertently,” David joked after the acquittal.

If there’s a legitimate gripe to be made about Curb Your Enthusiasm, other than the obvious point that David’s character is not very likeable, it’s that his school of humor labors in the same vineyards of male cliché season after season. Men like looking at boobs. Check. Women complain too much, and too shrilly. Check. White males fear offending black Americans. Check. Handicapped people can also be annoying at times. Check. But if HBO’s Girls can show the shlubbier side of being a 20-something Manhattan female, certainly Larry David can offer the shlubby middle-aged Californian male’s perspective.

This is not HBO’s Political Correctness Half Hour after all; it’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. You won’t find David looking for a higher purpose for his male characters. (Wasn’t that Seinfeld’s mantra? “No hugging, no learning”?) The show’s not about becoming a better person; it’s about laughing at what shlubs males really are at times. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.