What I’m Watching: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 10, Episode 9 “Beep Panic” (B+)

Much of what befalls Larry is his own fault, and it’s hard to feel particularly bad for him when he would have been even less humane and understanding to someone else than they are to him in the same situation. I agree that it probably wouldn’t be too appealing to hear from my waitress that the food was late because she had diarrhea, and a drop of sweat falling into my soup wouldn’t be too pleasant either. Yet, it’s always Larry who actually says something when most of us would choose to be polite, which made his theoretically charitable actions later all the more surprising. His desire to eat as much of the free Bavarian licorice as he could led to him having to buy a new car and for some reason thinking that giving the car he drove to the dealership to his fired waitress was a good idea. Her hitting and damaging his brand new car just moments later because she experienced beep panic was somewhat expected, but the hilarity of her offering to drive him home in her car was well worth it, as was her subsequent decision to sell the car and not come in for her new job because she was now planning to travel. I imagined that the actress portraying Diane was someone I should know, and it turns out it was Abbi Jacobson, one of the stars of “Broad City,” a show people love that I unfortunately haven’t seen. The denouement of the licorice storyline was considerably more cringe-worthy, with Richard about to have uncontrollable diarrhea while performing onstage, and I much preferred Mocha Joe’s clever idea to distribute Larry’s screeners so that he could be immediately caught by the FBI.