Crawling at the Curb (Curb Your Enthusiasm - The Complete Season 3 (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Curb Your Enthusiasm - The Complete Season 3 (DVD)
Date:	19.12.06 (164 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absolutely everything about it

Disadvantages: Not enough episodes in a series

BBC have a thing about buying some of the best American comedies around and then burying them late at night on BBC2. Five or six years ago they did this to Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show and now they are doing it to Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development.
What do these shows have in common? I think it is that none of them are easy, lightweight, run of the mill shows. This is probably why they do this, they buy the quality shows for a discerning audience and then decide that they would rather aim for the lowest common denominator and put the shows that are clever, witty, well written and don’t possess the easy laugh situations other sitcoms do.
What all these shows do is reward long term viewing, though an individual episode is just as funny, and allow you to get to know the characters and understand them as they get into outrageous situations that even so still remind you of things that have or could happen to you! Curb is up there with Seinfeld as one of the best ever situation comedies and has me in stitches every time I see Larry trying to extricate himself from whatever situation he has got himself into.

For those that don’t know CYE is about Larry David, creator and writer of Seinfeld. He stars as himself in a kind of fly on the wall comedy series. It pretends to be real life, including many a real star as themselves, and follows Larry through his everyday life, a life where he finds it impossible to avoid getting himself in such a mess that you find yourself cringing while awaiting his next comment.
Though this is obviously not really what his life is like anyone having heard some of the Seinfeld commentaries will know that a lot of the ideas Larry gets come from things that happen to him in his life. Maybe, just maybe some of these crazy predicaments have actually happened to him.

Series 3 gives us another 10 slices of Larry’s life and this time, a first for CYE, has a thread running through every episode. Larry, Jeff, Ted Danson and friends are investing in a restaurant and throughout the series we see as their investment proceeds through all its ups and downs.

Episode 1: Chet’s Shirt – with Ted Danson
Larry buys matching shirts for him and Ted, one gets ripped, feelings are upset and the opening of a new restaurant is planned

Episode 2: The Benadryl Brownie – with Richard Lewis
Some homemade brownies, used to placate Richard’s girlfriend after a mix up, causes even more trouble than the original problem.

Episode 3: Club Soda and Salt
Searching for a chef for the restaurant is important but Cheryl’s new friend, who happens to be male and spending a lot of time with her, keeps distracting Larry.

Episode 4: The Nanny From Hell – Richard Lewis
Would you recommend a crazy nanny to a friend? No of course not, only Larry would do that!

Episode 5: The Terrorist Attack – Alannis Morrisette, Paul Reiser and Martin Short
Larry proves he is unable to keep a secret while trying to appease Reiser’s wife and unleashes havoc at an intimate Morrisette concert for Cheryl’s favourite charity

Episode 6: The Special Section – Martin Scorcese
Larry’s mum dies while he is filming a Scorcese movie in New York. He is shocked his dad didn’t tell him but manages to find an upside as he uses his loss as an excuse to get out of annoying conversations and meetings.

Episode 7: The Corpse Sniffing Dog
The restaurant is near opening when Larry’s dog, an ex police corpse searcher, finds something buried beneath the kitchen.

Episode 8: Krazee-Eyez Killa
At a party to celebrate a friends engagement Larry engages into a discussion about rap lyrics with her fiancé, a rap star.

Episode 9: Mary, Joseph & Larry
It’s Christmas and Larry’s attempts at pleasing everyone offends them instead, from the housekeeper to Cheryl’s family

Episode 10: The Grand Opening
The investors finally have a chef and the opening is here, but how will Larry’s dodgeball antics against a top restaurant critic affect the opening?

Extras:

A chat with cast and crewmembers at the US comedy arts festival that has one very relevant comment from Larry: -
“I couldn’t go up on stage and go through the niceties with the audience”.
A statement that seems to be a perfect description of CYE, Larry doesn’t care for the niceties in life and this annoys everyone who follows the ‘rules’ of society! His disregard of the little things we all do just to be nice aggravates everyone around him. Larry, Jeff, ??? & Richard Lewis along with three producers/directors have a long chat about the show.

The cast and crew select their favourite scenes from the series and talk about them.

The cast:
Larry – Is he just playing himself, you would hope not but his bald, geeky, hard nosed attitude is what gets him in trouble and his look is just perfect for the kind of character he is/pretends to be.
Cheryl Hines plays Cheryl David – Cheryl is very good as Larry’s wife. You see her as his wife, think of her as his real wife she is that good. So much so that when she appeared in Herbie: Fully Loaded recently I had a brief moment of wondering what Larry’s wife was doing in the film!
Jeff Garlin as himself – Jeff plays Larry’s long-suffering manager, the butt of a lot of his jokes and mishaps. He is almost the straight man to Larry and his large frame and jovial attitude means he is perfectly cast
As Jeff’s wife – A hard part to play as pretty much every time she is on screen she ends up shouting and swearing at Larry or Jeff. Solid, dependable and another important part of the ensemble that is CYE.
Finally you have the guest stars, always playing themselves and having to deal with the bag of neuroses that is Larry David. Ted Danson and Richard Lewis appear regularly and the sight of Lewis on screen means you know laughter is about to come roaring from your mouth. He is a great comedy actor and I really would like to hear some of his stand up.

CYE is a class above all other comedies around at the moment, there is nothing that touché sit comedy wise and I urge you all to go out and buy this DVD, or at least try and catch it on one of the BBC channels.
One warning though, even though this series only has a 15 certificate it is full of swearing so if you don’t like bad language you really shouldn’t watch this!

Summary: The best comedy on TV at this moment