After more than two decades of redefining the genre, Larry David’s comedyCurb your passion He leaned in with a firmness that was quintessentially Larry. Television comedian, columnist and author Joel Stein makes the case prevention It may be a comedy of manners, but it is also the first sitcom about a donkey.
By Joel Stein
The work of André Carrillo
A theory that I support Curb your passion That’s incorrect. I pointed this out to executive producer Jeff Shaffer and he said it never occurred to him or Larry David. But this is also true.
There are two reasons prevention was the founder. The first godfather agrees with that, so I’ll start there.
prevention began just two years after its completion Seinfeld, in which David reinvented comedy, returning it to its comic essence through his “no hugs, no learning” rule.Seinfeld, Comedy became active with shows like Little Friends, Spin Cityand suddenly susan but it was necessary to invent it again. prevention He did this by dropping the script. Exactly. The actors were given a detailed plan and improvised all their lines. David completely rejected the practice of staying in the writers’ room until 2 a.m. to make jokes. This innovation forced the situational comedy situations to be funny, not just jokes. It also made the show seem alive.
“Even the audition was fun,” says my friend John Ross Bowie, who appeared in 2009 with his wife Jamie Denbo. “You don’t have to go off the book. You just show up, take your little piece of paper that tells you what’s going to happen on stage, and then you’re off to the races. Anybody who goes off the book in the audition room was in good shape because they only played 10 minutes with Larry David.” Jamie said the show legitimized his life’s work in improv.prevention made improvisation cool. It’s not just about songs that rhyme. Whose line is it anyway? It became clear to the public and the industry that the update was actually smart.”
Great, we can all agree on that. Now for the real theory.
prevention One year after the launch The Sopranos started two years ago wire, seven years ago Mad Men, A year before 9/11. This was before everyone agreed we lived in a dystopia. Antiheroes were awesome. If they were great at their jobs, loved their families, and displayed some of the virtues of Roman loyalty, we were willing to grit our teeth and root for them. But a comedy hero? Someone we enjoyed because of his immorality, not in spite of it? It was nuts.
prevention The first comedy was about a donkey.
I only met David once, but he was very kind and generous, as anyone who worked with him would say. But she prevention character trait as Sam Harris defines the term in his podcast episode “The Golden Age of Donkeys”:
The donkey gospel is that there is nothing in your ego that you need to overcome. No one is better than you and those who pretend to be better are actually worse. Everyone is selfish. It’s just that some are brave enough to be honest about it.
prevention Larry brazenly commits horrible acts that have all their benefits. When his wife, played by Sheryl Hines, calls from a seemingly doomed flight to tell him she loves him, he responds by keeping her on hold so the cable guy can fix his TV. After stepping in dog poop, he stole a pair of shoes from an exhibit at the Holocaust Museum. Instead of consoling his friend Marty Fankhauer over the death of his mother, he steals flowers from her grave to give to a woman to lay in her grave.
It was new and fun to create. Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Cry, You’re the Worst and Flea bag. It was different Seinfeld, where the main characters are selfish and mature, but the characters are not. When we saw Jerry break up with a woman because she had man hands, we wished Jerry were a bigger person, but we also saw close-ups of those man hands and felt his dilemma. When Elaine pretended to touch Teri Hatcher’s breasts to see if they were real, we also wanted to know if she had implants.
the last part Seinfeld It wasn’t really an episode. Seinfeld. In one hour, it changed our perspective on 179 episodes. It drew viewers in by introducing characters we like. “How could you not realize these people are scary?” asked a horrific jury to convict them not only of violating the Samaritan law by helping a guy steal a car, but of all the time they didn’t deserve. When the judge sentences them to prison, he says, “Their indifference and utter disregard for all that is good and decent has shaken the foundations of our society.”
the last part prevention It was quite an episode prevention Larry is finally put on trial for doing the right thing — handing a bottle of water to a person waiting to vote, in violation of Georgia’s 2021 Election Integrity Act — and remains unrepentant in front of witnesses about the character he wronged. “I have bad energy,” he says at the start of the final season. “I’ve been expecting more from myself my whole life and it’s not there.” Before the trial, he’s asked to teach a little girl a lesson about being good, and she cheerfully tells him she’s “never had one.”
The jury convicts him, but it’s on a technicality. Because for 24 years after his show, Larry won. The students won. They make stupid laws. They allow techniques.
Shaffer convinced me that writers don’t judge at all. prevention Larry. They love prevention Larry. Larry loves the real thing prevention Larry: “The show is a dream come true for him,” Shaffer says. Besides, he continues, the show’s only goal is to be funny. “This model of morality, which is placed above everything, is a strange artifact. We don’t think about it philosophically. We do something. We don’t moralize about it.”
He insists that it is a comedy of manners. As Mark Ralkowski, associate professor of philosophy at George Washington University, said about inhibition, He argues: “It awakened us to the underlying experiences of our culture and revealed to us that they are unnecessary, offering us a kind of freedom that we might not have recognized.” What he means is the freedom of the horse.
Because what is a comedy of manners if not a commentary on society? prevention The show may be about modern etiquette, but etiquette is not morality. Our little rules reflect our big morals. prevention Larry explains the temperature changes in the water we all swim in. But things have changed since then. Seinfeld. The water is contaminated. Because water is often contaminated by: donkeys.
