No Seinfeld cast yet, but so far CYE is at the top of its game this season.
Nice way to break up with Loretta. Give Larry a piece of chocolate and look what happens.
I totally felt him on the clam shell packaging.
Next week is when the Seinfeld reunion arc begins.
I really did not see the final punchline coming, and it killed! This show is GOLD, Jerry!
Second great episode of the season!
I counted four instances of real or imagined vehicular fellatio and they all dovetailed perfectly into the overall plot of the episode. Reminded me of the best Seinfeld episodes where multiple plot threads are cleverly connected at the end. Just brilliant! Now that they’ve gotten rid of Loretta they’ve cleared the slate for the old Seinfeld gang to enter this season’s story arc. I can’t wait.
Glad Leon is sticking around, though. How great would it be to see Michael Richards trying to explain himself to Leon?
Yeah. It’s been so long since the show aired, I forgot about Loretta and the Black family (that’s their name, right). I figured they would kill her off in some way (comedically or in the show).
With the previews for next week - wow, Julia must eat embryos for breakfast. She looks the same. Jerry and Jason have aged reasonably well, while Michael Richards looks like the chain-smoker he played in Seinfeld. And there has to be some Leon-Richards conflict coming up… there has to!
Loved the hard hugger and Susie servicing Jeff sans pants in the wreckage. “I smell gas!”
This show just gets better and better - I was wondering how he would finally get rid of Loretta, and that was priceless.
And Larry’s lame attempt to set Leon “free” from his house as well - hinting maybe he too should get in that taxi - obviously landed on deaf ears, but Larry just shrugged it off.
Looking forward to Cheryl returning at some point, and the Seinfeld show sub-plot start to develop. Wonder if they are actually going to end this season with a “real” Seinfeld reunion show, of sorts…remember, there was the actual performance of The Producers at the end of the last season!
I’ve never seen this show, but keep hearing how good it is. Can someone give a short summary of what it’s about? And if I was inclined to start watching it now, maybe a few things that I’d need to know in order to not be completely lost?
Larry David plays “himself” somewhat in the same way that Seinfeld did. Until this season he was married, but his wife was played by an actress. Another main character on the show is his fictional manager, “Jeff,” who is played by Jeff Garlin. LD also interacts with a lot of real celebrities during the course of the show, who play themseves. Richard Lewis, Ted Danson and Wanda Sykes are frequently featured. A lot of the plots are based around social discomfort, and Larry either offending or being offended by other people. A lot of the dialogue is improvised, so the show has a semi-realsitic, semi-documentary feel to it, although the actual story outlines are pretty tight and usually two or three unrelated threads can resolve pretty neatly. Some of the seasons have overlying arcs, but those tend to be in the background more than the focus of individual episode plots.
I guess a shorthand way to describe it is that it’s like an edgier version of Seinfeld.
I’m sure the return of Dean, the neighbor from “The Wire”, has to do with the Seinfeld reunion. Now that he has cancer, he’s probably going to browbeat Larry into setting up a meeting with the whole cast.
I only watched a bit of this episode since I was thinking that the Seinfeld crew would be involved. Rats.
Here is exactly how every episode of CYE goes:
Larry says something not intending harm but kinda weird.
People take offense and start razzing him.
He tries to explain but makes thing worse.
Repeat a half dozen times per episode without letup or variation.
Also, David is George Costanza. He doesn’t write a script, so the players have to think up lines as they go along. Notice how they stumble along. Watch their eyes roll back as they try to think of what to say. Notice what a crappy show this is.
This is not a show to watch if you expect originality, good writing or good acting. It’s a classic case of the emperor has no clothes.
Maybe… But I recall in the season premiere that Cheryl told him their marriage was at its best when he was working on Seinfeld.
My guess is that the reunion will part of his attempt to win her back.
And ftg, nice threadshit there. Many people find CYE very very funny, but it’s not everyone’s cup o’ tea. If it isn’t yours, feel free to move on.
This does not describe the show that I watch, and which is critically very well received.
it’s also not true that there isn’t a script. The dialogue is not written, but the story is, and each scene is outlined. They aren’t making up the story as they go along, they just aren’t using written dialogue, so it sounds more natural. David also uses actors who are naturally funny, so this works very well. I’ve never seen any “stumbling,” or actors coming up blank on dialogue, and I’ve seen every episode multiple times. It doesn’t have the phony, setup-punchline, setup-punchline formula of most sitcoms, but it works, and it’s funny (come on, you don’t think Suzy screaming and swearing at Jeff and Larry is funny? I never get tired of that).
It’s not a threadshit simply to express a contrary opinion. I personally enjoy the show a lot, but I can see why some wouldn’t. It is fairly formulaic, especially considering the scenes themselves are largely improvised, and some of the bit players/cameo appearances are much better than others at convincing improvisation.
I find the show quite funny, and like the fact that David’s character constantly skirts the edge of being completely unlikeable without quite falling in.
I have to agree that I don’t think ftg’s post was threadshitting, it was just opinion-posting. Has the SD gotten to the point where any “xxx-appreciation” thread doesn’t allow any “I don’t like xxx” posts? I also find it rather odd that no one who likes the show has bothered to answer my post.
So, I tried watching the “fellatio” episode last night. I have to say, it was so painful I just couldn’t get through it. That has to be the least funny, least original, most poorly written TV show I have ever seen in my over forty years of TV watching. Some here obviously believe that the lack of a script for the dialog makes it more natural, but to me it just seemed totally stiff and wooden. It didn’t come across as people speaking naturally, but rather like some extremely bad actors trying desperately to make it SOUND natural while simultaneously trying desperately to not forget their lines.
It was the Seinfeld reunion that drew my attention to the show, but I don’t think even for that could I force myself to sit through more of that. Give me “setup-punchline” any day; call it phony, but at least it’s funny.
For those who say the show is not funny, watch “The Doll,” “The Nanny From Hell,” “Mary, Joseph & Larry” or “The Grand Opening” and just *try *not to laugh. I tell you, it’s impossible to remain straight-faced through those episodes.
Huh? Dio responded to your post.
Wow. If that’s your honest assessment, I suspect you haven’t watched much TV. While I don’t think it was the best CYE ever, I quite enjoyed it. Some real gems in there, like the clamshell packaging, Larry getting the shit beat out of him by the shrink, and of course the hard hugger. I didn’t know the show was unscripted before I read that nugget online somewhere; actors like Susie Essman and Bob Einstein make it look quite natural to me. Hell, I find Richard Lewis painfully unfunny in “real life,” but I love the guy in Curb.
Seriously, are you using hyperbole to make your point? I think you could turn on the TV to pretty much any station this instant and find shows exponentially worse than Curb.
Okay, upon further review, I hereby retract my use of the word “threadshit.” It may not have been an appropriate application of the term as generally used here on SDMB.
Thoughtful criticism is fine, though I still don’t get it when somebody pops into a thread in which people are discussing something they enjoy, for the sole purpose of ranting about how much it sucks. Why bother?
I do agree that there were a few aspects of this episode that felt pretty forced – Larry’s reactions to Richard’s girlfriend and the whole sunglasses exchange, for instance. This was probably not the best starter episode for a first-time watcher.
But I’ll also say that I wasn’t hooked on the show from the first time I watched it, either. For better or worse, it’s not like anything else on TV right now and therefore takes a little getting used to. It took me a few episodes to get into its particular rhythms and tone, but now I love it.
It sounds like you feel pretty strongly about not liking it. That’s cool – as I said in a previous post, CYE is not everyone’s cup of tea. But if you think you saw anything redeeming in there at all, it might be worth another half hour of your time to check it out again. It could grow on you. (Plus, there was no Cheryl Hines in the last episode. The scenes with her and Larry are among the show’s best, IMO. Hopefully she’ll be back for good soon.)