Curb Your Enthusiasm

The affairs-in-on-the-market-housing plot feels trite; it doesn't go anywhere. The rude-behavior-at-a-funeral bit also feels a bit tired; Larry David covered this terrain, and covered it more memorably, when he had "Seinfeld" characters making out during "Schindler's List." But for every misfire there are so many successes. Who but Larry David would think to dramatize that moment when you make an assumption about a lesbian couple, w/r/t which is the "bride," which is the "groom"--? A certain high-minded publication found this subplot dated, but good grief. That's absurd.

Who but LD would notice the special indignation you feel when your ex-wife calls her new boyfriend "T," instead of "Ted"? (This leads to the very funny section in which Elizabeth Banks begins calling Larry "Elvid," an--intentionally--unfortunate play on "J-Law," or "J-Lo.") Who among us hasn't wondered, in pain, whether we're far enough ahead of that person over there to stop holding the door? Or hasn't pawned off an assistant on a colleague, pretending the assistant is fabulous as a means of getting rid of him/her quickly? Or wondered how to get the penis up and out of a tiny pouch, created by a needlessly short fly? (The discussion of the penis that follows is priceless. There's a means by which you animate the penis; you poke it with one finger, and that causes it to grow just enough to push itself past the fly. Just the act of naming the various nouns and verbs in that process is a delight. No one before Larry David dramatized the process on-screen, I'm certain. I believe he calls the process the "tiddlywink.")

Then there's the idea of "owning the danger." Salman Rushdie does a guest appearance to explain, in somber, Booker-laureate tones, that being the object of a fatwa can mean an invitation to great sex. Remove your fake glasses and your wig; "own the danger," and the women will flock to you. And, indeed, Elizabeth Banks surfaces, from nowhere, and begs: "I want to know everything about you, Larry David." (Fortunes shift quickly. Elvid can't enjoy his new prominence when he's sitting in the shrink's office. There, he can focus only on the poor quality of the chair, the shrink's tacky reliance on a wristwatch, the shrink's weird insistence on certain bits of name-calling protocol, the shrink's obsession with truffles--all things we've encountered, in one form or another, if we're neurotic and living in New York.)

It's true that David's character is insufferable, and the words of these hyper-privileged whiny L.A. trolls can become oppressive. But, in small doses, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" can be wondrous. It can make us see the world anew. It can remind us to pay attention--to the mysteries of door-holding etiquette, to the status of police officers and the subtly-graded rules of horn-honking, to the absurdity of gunning for reserved seats, among other things. All of that's a gift. That's what I think about when I watch "Curb."

P.S. The title! Such a fun, ironic twist on "command" titles, such as "Choose Your Own Adventure." And the sequel to the dick discussion! In earnest, self-congratulatory tones (without a hint of silliness): "I'm so well-endowed, it actually dips into the water every time I sit on the toilet." A-plus from this critic!

P.P.S. I didn't get to talk about "the disturbance in the kitchen"--! Another day.

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Now back to Taylor Swift. "Better Man" is her main shot at some Grammy Awards this year, and it deserves the recognition it will likely get. In my head, I've been comparing it to Kesha's "Praying." Obviously, "Praying" is a force to be reckoned with; it addresses sexual assault; it conveys real pain; it has that monster high note. (TS herself quietly helped to fund Kesha's legal campaign. People have speculated that, if TS had chosen to write about her own encounter with groping, and the ensuing legal trial, that particular hypothetical song would have dominated late 2017. But she didn't; she released "Look What You Made Me Do." It seems to me that parts of "Reputation" address gender inequality, sort of. "They're burning all the witches even if you aren't one." "If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing." But we don't presently have a big TS anthem about feminism. Maybe she's working up to it. I think of Lorrie Moore, trying to write about her baby's life-threatening illness in "People Like That Are the Only People Here." Her husband makes the suggestion. Moore says, "I don't do that material. I do madcap outings with the family dog.")

On a line-by-line level, "Better Man" is just more interesting than "Praying." "Praying" has a good guy and a bad guy, and it starts that way, and it ends that way. Notice how "Better Man" uses more shades of grey. Its main idea is that TS is torn by ambivalence; she wants to call Calvin Harris, and yet wills herself not to. (And we think of her earlier Jake Gyllenhaal phase: "It takes everything in me not to call you. And I wish I could run to you. And every time I don't, I almost do.") "I see the permanent damage you did to me. Never again. I just wish I could forget when it was magic."

And then there's a short play folded in, the story of the decaying relationship. Things were magic, and then they were not. Calvin Harris "could change his mind at any given minute; it's always on your terms; I'm hanging on every careless word, hoping it might turn sweet again like it was in the beginning." (That effortless sense of economy! Who could fail to relate to this picture TS paints? These details are the thing that make her special.) Matters get worse: "Your jealousy, I can hear it now; You're talking down to me like I'll always be around; you push me away like it's some kind of loaded gun." (Two similes, two lines! And the first establishes a pattern, so we have parallel syntax.)

And so: climax and denouement. TS escapes. "You never thought I'd run." The painful separation inspires many new bits of economy and figurative language. "I hold onto this pride because these days it's all I have." "I know why we had to say goodbye like the back of my hand." "I gave you my best and we both know you can't say that; I wonder what we would've become." So we have an elegant bit of scaffolding: start in the present, fold in a flashback that tells a complete story, then end in the present again. Not reinventing the wheel--but she does it so well, and with such apparent ease. Surprise: I'm rooting for this song in the coming weeks.