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Curb Your Enthusiasm: the last politically incorrect sitcom

Is Larry David fighting a losing battle against sincerity in comedy? Credit: Getty

April 7, 2024 - 7:00pm

Sigmund Freud wrote that it’s common for suppressed thoughts “to emerge in a slip of the tongue”. Freudian slips not only undermine the persona we project, but authority too: who could forget when George Bush denounced the “brutal invasion of Iraq” when he meant Ukraine? These momentary errors could be viewed as the revenge of a playful unconscious on a self-righteous ego.

With the airing of the final episode of US sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm this evening, it’s worth thinking about the show’s star and creator, Larry David, who, as with these slips, undercuts a preening, smug society. In fact, he’s one big walking verbal slip — the forbidden thought incarnate. Throughout the programme’s run, it has been increasingly rare for any of David’s thoughts to remain unexpressed as he flouts social convention, peppering his interlocutors with queries on dicey terrain.

David is a reminder, then, that occasionally we should let comedy put its foot in its mouth. That Curb, which first aired more than 20 years ago, exists in what is essentially a cultural desert for irreverent comedy makes its final series especially poignant. Could it be the last great sitcom not to be concerned about stepping on eggshells?

The show is brilliant largely because it avoids being mean-spirited. David’s fictionalised self is tactless, but he always addresses the other characters with a guileless curiosity reserved for an equal. He says of a battered woman that she “looks like she can take care of herself”; in a scene with Michael J. Fox, he is unsure if Fox is shaking his head dismissively or if the actor’s Parkinson’s disease is responsible.

Here, the humour is in locating the line, not necessarily to cross it, but to explore the extent of other people’s pieties and vanities. Curb reveals the narcissism and self-regard behind public-facing acts of kindness and voguish groupthink, to which the fictionalised Larry himself is not immune. In this series, he became a Leftist darling when he offered water to a character waiting in line to vote in Atlanta, Georgia — inadvertently breaking a real-life law which doesn’t allow anyone who isn’t an election worker to provide refreshments for voters.

Though poking fun at sacred cows is now too often misconstrued as being unprogressive, David’s stated politics are notably left-of-centre. Still, that hasn’t stopped Curb playing host to actors with opposing views, including series regular and Republican supporter Vince Vaughan. That’s before we get to Cheryl Hines, who plays David’s on-screen wife and in real life is married to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Curb is also a rebuke to the modern trend of obsessively monitoring celebrities’s wrongdoings and keeping exhaustive rap sheets. Guest stars trailing scandals are given the opportunity to skewer themselves and kickstart a redemptive arc through the guzzling of humble pie. Lori Loughlin, who was imprisoned in 2020 for her part in a college bribery scandal, was recently featured on the show, where she cheats at golf. Similarly, Michael Richards has used Curb to mock his own brush with scandal, after he used racial epithets against a heckling audience in 2006.

Nonetheless, Curb doesn’t seek out the political: like Larry, it stumbles upon it. One episode might be about race, the next about David giving a doll a haircut; and his character’s outlook suggests he still lives in a world yet to go berserk about identity.

Comedy should be a safe zone, where bad thoughts can win out. Literalists don’t want this; they want to retroactively punish writers for past transgressions incommensurate with today’s mores, and struggle to tell the difference between a fictional sketch played for absurdity and a comedian’s real-life views. A case in point is an online row from a week ago, when David was accused of racism for a Curb scene in which his character, as a Jewish man, expresses concern about going to eat in a Palestinian restaurant, suspicious that other diners are “planning the next intifada”. That these prejudices are the butt of the joke never seems to occur to these identity-minded critics.

“Political correctness” can be an imprecise catchall term, excessively maligned by dead-eyed comedians who shape their material around being “anti-woke”. Yet Larry, in his floundering attempts to be respectful, provides a far more effective critique of PC attitudes than any partisan diatribe might.

Risk aversion is comedy’s enemy. What is comedy but adult playtime, where the truth, like a slip, can suddenly emerge? There’s a reason children are such incisive truth-tellers: playtime can reveal their unconscious feelings, as the 20th-century psychoanalyst Melanie Klein observed. When asked why he complimented a friend on his young son’s abnormally large penis at a pool party, David simply responds, “I took a risk.” Comedians willing to do the same are a quickly vanishing breed.


Rory Kiberd is a freelance writer. He has written book reviews for the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Sunday Business Post, as well as film reviews for Totally Dublin.

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Tony Price
Tony Price
6 months ago

Strangely enough I have been unwell today (damn heavy cold!) so stuck in bed and just watched 5 Curb episodes on the trot (including the ‘Palestinian’ one, which is apposite) from season 8. After my son showed it to me I watched seasons 10 & 11 then went back to the beginning, slowly catching up over the past year. The first couple of seasons are a bit painful (not enough laughs) but from there absolute genius as he gets into the weirdest scrapes by being so awkward and ‘wrong’. Anyone who is upset really doesn’t get it.

If you can handle rude words just use your favourite search engine and look up ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm: Chef Tourette’. If you can’t handle rude words then the show in general is not for you!

David Ryan
David Ryan
6 months ago

“That these prejudices are the butt of the joke never seems to occur to these identity-minded critics.” That about sums up the problem. Those morons have no sense of humour. Curb your Enthusiasm is excellent, for anyone who hasn’t watched it, I recommend the season where Larry gets a role as Max Bialystock in The Producers. Season 7 I think

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
6 months ago
Reply to  David Ryan

That was a great episode. Mel Brooks is the one who suggests Larry for the part because then the show is bound to flop! (So arguably Mel plays Max.)

Will K
Will K
6 months ago

Thanks, I’ll look up this program and watch a few episodes.

B Emery
B Emery
6 months ago

The politically incorrect can’t even get a comment in these days. I spend my life in moderation hoping for a return to better, more politically incorrect times. These days if I am in not in moderation I consider it a failure on my part.

J Bryant
J Bryant
6 months ago

I’m an introvert whose idea of a good time before bed is to watch old TV series and movies on DVDs borrowed from my local library. I honestly wonder what new shows I’ll watch in the future? Every newish show I’ve seen in recent years is PC to the gills. They are utterly dull and dogmatic.
I’ve started exploring foreign TV and movies. I don’t see anything real and gritty coming out of the US for years to come, if ever. Very sad.

A D Kent
A D Kent
6 months ago

I gave up on Curb halfway through the second season, having watched it in stoney silence. That was in the early 2000s, when the memories of the likes of Larry Sanders and the peerless Brass Eye were fresh. Never been a fan of the kind of awkward bumbler humour, which seems to be all the rage these days with that Fleabag guff. Sounds like I ought to give it another go though – where should I start?

Tony Price
Tony Price
6 months ago
Reply to  A D Kent

I don’t blame you but …. because I started by watching seasons 11, then 9 and10 I knew that it would come good so forced my way through 1 and 2. It was 3 that it started to come alive and be funny, as opposed to just painfully embarrassing (i’ve no idea how it got recommissioned after 2 but LD has power). Series 3 ends with the restaurant opening foul-mouthed tourettes scene which is just genius, but otherwise try starting with 7 or 8 and then come back to 3.

Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
6 months ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Like you, I remember watching the show back in the noughties, but I think it had a few laughs. It was a slightly cringey mockumentary in the style of The Office, which I supposed came out a couple of years before. I think a lot of it was ad-libbed hence the hit and miss gags.
I’m not surprised it’s still going – the Americans like to keep a show going unlike us. But clearly the BBC weren’t impressed, as I think they only aired the first couple of series.

David Morley
David Morley
6 months ago
Reply to  A D Kent

Fleabag guff

Not sure how you can compare Curb with Fleabag. Fleabag, like 90% of female comedy, gets its laughs from washing women’s dirty laundry in public. It’s “guess what, we all pick our noses” type humour and never gets far beyond that.

Curb is genuinely funny and sophisticated. It’s premise is quite simple – Larry doesn’t quite get society’s rules (in a way that autistic people are supposed not to) but the amount of great comedy generated out of that is astonishing.

Arkadian Arkadian
Arkadian Arkadian
6 months ago

It is only on sky 🙁 🙁 🙁

David Morley
David Morley
6 months ago

Pearls before swine

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
6 months ago

The fact that Curb fills a void at all is itself remarkable. The default assumption among American audiences is that even sitcoms are meant to be didactic. No art for art’s sake, not even there. (Without Norman Lear, would we ever have needed Larry David?)

anna m
anna m
5 months ago

I just binge-watched Little Britain, Summer Heights High, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Absolutely Fabulous and Father Ted with my 13 year old daughter. She loved them all. I will introduce her to Curb soon. Old school comedy is the best!