What I’m Watching: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 10, Episode 8 “Elizabeth, Margaret and Larry” (B+)

It’s so funny to look at the trajectory of Jon Hamm’s career after his token part on “Mad Men,” and it’s totally plausible that the very affable actor would so intensely shadow the inspiration for an upcoming role. The way in which he acted, unsuccessfully, like a fly on the wall and then became Larry, first at the lunch with Richard and then when he went to Mocha Joe’s with Cheryl, was fantastic. For someone without many scruples, Larry wasn’t comfortable with the idea of someone thinking that he had a bleeding rectum, which played out very humorously when Richard’s girlfriend Michelle, played by Sasha Alexander from “Rizzoli and Isles” and “Shameless,” and from the pilot episode of “Amazing Stories,” didn’t want him to sit on a real chair for fear of him ruining, which of course he ultimately did. I wasn’t sure who would play Cheryl’s sister Becky, and I was thrilled to see Kaitlin Olson from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” as the superb choice. She and Larry were actually pretty good for each other, though even she wasn’t okay with the fact that Larry only showed up a day after she called desperate for him to be there because a seat in first class wasn’t available – bleeding rectum or no bleeding rectum. Leon’s bathroom business was as ill-conceived as most of his ideas, not fully thought-through for the many possible new problems created like the employee not coming back and the coverer needing to go the bathroom or somewhere else.