What I’m Watching: Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season Premiere)

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 11, Episode 1 “The Five-Foot Fence” (B+)

I was so excited when I heard this show was coming back since Larry seems to me to be the perfect person to travel the pandemic in an awful way, obsessing over certain rules and then flouting those he doesn’t believe should appeal to him. Unfortunately, this episode picked up after the pandemic has apparently ended, but I hope that we’ll still see more of the behavior that Larry indulged in during quarantine and social distancing protocols since that’s sure to be very entertaining. Finding a dead body in his pool was an interesting start, and now it’s led to him being blackmailed because he didn’t have a fence around it. His pitch seemed rather specific and his insistence on not being given any notes could have created problems down the road, but casting the truly terrible actress Maria Sofia as his lead will definitely be its downfall. Accosting Dennis Zweibel for money when his dementia diagnosis was public was a typically bad look, but Susie wasn’t having any of it, demanding that he honor a guarantee he was trying to claim he never would have given. Albert Brooks throwing a funeral for himself was destined to go poorly, and of course mortal enemies Larry and Susie would ruin it together by finding his COVID hoarder closet. Jon Hamm’s very Jewish performance at the funeral was among this episode’s most entertaining moments. I didn’t realize that Brooks’ real-life brother was Bob Einstein, who played Marty Funkhouser on this show prior to his death from cancer in 2019.