What I’m Watching: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 7, Episode 8 “Officer Krupke” (B)

This episode is considerably more far-fetched than usual, which is really saying something for the societal-convention-defying Larry. It’s a mostly effective and generally quite funny installment, but at times it reaches. Larry’s gleeful encounter with Officer Krupke was a nice start, and it was obvious that his specific noting of “Officer Krupke, krup you!” to the police officer wouldn’t turn out well for him in the end. The sheer silliness of the tragically-named cop wouldn’t have ever heard of his “West Wide Story” doppelganger clashes wondrously with Larry’s perceived perception that the world revolves around him and that anyone who doesn’t get his references must be deranged. His refusal to take off his pants after the store doesn’t open up is a typically Larry thing to do, and it’s entertaining as far as he’s able to take it. The culmination and intersection of Larry’s pants and Jeff’s panties problem was actually truly lever, and it’s nice to see Larry do something to help someone else out, for once. The ending shot of Jeff telling Larry to say that they were in a car accident is a bit of a stretch, especially considering its similarity to Jeff and Susie’s car accident after trying the sex act that was mentioned over and over again in the episode “Vehicular Fallatio” earlier this season. Larry’s befuddlement at Cheryl’s casual consideration of Dennis and Virginia’s threesome proposal took up a big chunk of the episode, and didn’t allow either portrayer of the spouses much opportunity to contribute to the show. My family man image of John Schneider after watching him for years on “Smallville” has really been corrupted with his marriage-opening policies on this show and “Dirty Sexy Money.” It’s about time the Seinfeld reunion got started – let’s cast this thing already and get it rolling.