Simon Boccanegra

I am watching the series on Netflix about the case of the Menendez family, and Erik's best friend, who assisted him with a screenplay suspiciously close to real events, is played by Charlie Hall, Julia and Brad's son. It made me think of the season 1 Curb episode "The Wire," in which Larry shows up at Julia and Brad's house to look for his missing notebook. There's already been friction between this couple and Larry about the cutoff time for calling people with small children, and now he's showing up at night in person, and things really reach a boil when their toddler son is awakened by all the commotion and comes downstairs to see what's up. Now the real-life equivalent is 27 and acting in a true-crime show.

I watched an interview with Larry and Susie Essman from a talk show (one of the interviewers was Willie Geist, and they talked about his guest appearances in season 12), and when the word "retirement" came up, both Larry and Susie pushed back on it. Susie said—in one of the few times during the interview when she sounded like her Curb character, but without the cursing—that Larry was only retiring from Curb Your Enthusiasm, not retiring period.

Callbacks are never my favorite thing in comedy, and the Seinfeld finale is a good example of why. Besides what @Galileo908 pointed out, that many of the classic Seinfeld clips in the finale had already aired in the preceding clip show (besides the multiple times many of us had seen them in syndication), it was if the show was saying, "Hey, remember this funny thing?" rather than, you know, being funny again in the present. That's virtually an illustration of resting on one's laurels. Here in the Curb finale, I don't think the callbacks had to do as much of the heavy lifting. They were more of a garnish. And one subtle callback I liked: both this episode and episode 1, "The Pants Tent," have Larry meeting Richard's new girlfriend without knowing who she is, and the two of them taking an instant dislike to one another. The season 1 version, the woman who blocks the aisle of the movie theater, was played by Sofia Milos, who was having a good year on HBO's series. She was also the Italian mob boss Annalisa Zucca, with whom Tony bargained for Furio's services in season 2 of The Sopranos.

When Jerry came to the jail cell and got Larry sprung, shortly after we heard about Cynthia (Allison Janney) buying a gun and still having anger toward Larry, I was totally expecting a layering of the Seinfeld finale and the Sopranos finale, with an ambiguous death in the final scene. I'm relieved to have been wrong. I thought the finale was fan service done right—an improved remix of Seinfeld's finale, which I didn't like in 1998 and haven't liked on rewatches. About the series as a whole, I'll just say that while the 2017-2024 seasons (especially season 11) were a bit patchier than those of the glory days, I'm grateful for all the laughs and memories Curb has given me. It's not unusual for shows like 60 Minutes to keep going for decades, but I don't think I've ever watched an entertainment series that ran for 25 years (counting from the 1999 special/pilot), even with long hiatuses between seasons. "Thank you, Larry" (tm Greg the pre-gay kid from S8). Thank you, Jeff, Cheryl, Susie, Ted, JB, Richard and Bob (RIP x2), all the other recurring players and guest stars, directors and producers. Even the worst episode had some line or image that made me smile. I'm glad all 120 of them will be available for streaming in the years left to me.

It was somewhat surprising to me that Springsteen never tried acting when he was at his '80s commercial peak. He seemed to have an aptitude for it when he was playing characters in his videos, but those were brief bits. But he was a delightful surprise here. He really held his own with Larry, Jeff, and Susie.

I think that at its core, this is a Susie-and-Jeff problem that requires a Susie-and-Jeff solution. And, who better to do that than...Jeff and Susie! Susie and Jeff!

When you're really stumped, you can always fall back on physics.

I'm watching the episode a second time. I have to give it up to Nicholas Braun for his ability, even this far into the series, to make Greg's halting, fragmented speech sound so natural, not like actor shtick. He does this a lot when Greg is asking for something and is still trying to edit himself while speaking, to reword and "soften" whatever the request is.

Oh, absolutely. If the show were more directly about Ewan, and he didn't just drop in occasionally to throw truth bombs with regard to Logan, Greg, and the other main players, we'd probably hate him too. He's cold, priggish, withholding, smug, and he always looks as though he's just eaten fish with the bones still in it. He too was marked by his and Logan's shared miserable childhood. He just looks better by comparison. Cromwell is always great, though.

I don't think it's ever been discussed on the show, but Sophie apparently is adopted. Her portrayer, Swayam Bhatia, has talked about it in interviews. ("I think that storyline works a lot for an [Indian character]. I remember when I was auditioning for Succession, it was about a completely Irish family. If you look at me and then you look at the rest of the family, you’re like ‘where does she fit in?’ Showing that my character was adopted is how I think the industry is learning to cope with making casts more diverse.") https://www.khabar.com/magazine/features/rising-star-sways-success In universe, maybe Rava and Kendall were having trouble conceiving and they adopted, and then Iverson came as a surprise. Or maybe both children are adopted.

That was a notably murky scene. I was happy to see Natalie Gold as Rava again, and she and Jeremy Strong always act well against each other, but it played like a bad take, even taking into account that Rava herself was not entirely clear on all the ins and outs. Or maybe the fragmented dialogue was the problem? What I pieced together was that Sophie, who is of mixed race, was walking on the street with some friends. A man wearing a T-shirt identifying him as a fan of Ravenhead (the ATN personality from season 2 who had read Mein Kampf more than once and named his dog after Hitler's dog) pushed past her and made a racist comment. Sophie's friends at school are supportive of her and very anti-ATN, and they sympathize with her because of her family situation. But now she feels like the center of attention in a way she doesn't want to be, and their solicitousness is embarrassing to her, so she doesn't want to go to school. Which I totally get.

Over Zoom, I hope. Just telling Tom he wanted to have an "open business relationship" (translation: work under the supervision of someone else) got Greg pelted with water bottles!

It was only a grace note, but nothing is more quintessentially Succession than the conversation between Kendall and Roman about the Mencken people's request that Roman talk Connor into withdrawing. Kendall says, "I mean, fuck that guy, right?" Roman has to get clarification that he means Mencken, not their brother.

I wasn't bored, but this is probably my least favorite of season 4 (which has been the best season of Succession, in my opinion). It had highlights, such as the balcony argument for Tom and Shiv, but the material around those highlights was cluttered and strangely unclear. Not unclear in a tantalizing ambiguous way, but in a clumsy way. The scene on the sidewalk for Rava and Kendall was better in concept than in execution. The woman who plays Ebba, Eili Harboe, is really nailing a particular kind of exhaustion and justifiable bitterness, though. And Skarsgård is doing his job well: incrementally, he's managing to make Mattson more detestable than the combined Roys. Including the dead one. One thing the episode did very well was free-floating dread. I was not expecting Tom to go off the balcony per se, but I thought someone might. The pieces and the hostile atmosphere were in place. I thought Ebba might take Mattson out. Yeah, Shiv's "Any change?" (re: Connor's visits to Logan) was hilarious.

@Inquisitionist The first season's ending had some elements of the novel's ending (the remission of Hank's psychosomatic urological problem, the ousting of Dickie Pope), but it's very different. The novel ends with some other shake-ups in the university's administrative structure, a resolution for Julie and Russell, a different career outcome for Lily, a big revelation involving Hank's troublesome student (Leo/Bartow), Hank Sr. passing away, etc. Farrelly and company left themselves room for another season if this does get renewed. But the whole series has been a different animal: milder, less caustic and provocative in its satire. There are some plot elements I'm not surprised didn't make the transfer: the goose-killing (wrongly attributed to Hank for a time); Lily's ex-cop father who shoots a black teen who came to the door to collect newspaper money on his brother's behalf. There are other things they might have been holding back in case there are more seasons, such as the personal life and writing talent of Hank's secretary, Rachel. She's otherwise very much as she is in the book, upspeak and all. I thought the novel was fairly good (not my favorite by Richard Russo), but the series did not work for me. It has its moments, but it reminds me of something I'd have watched in the '90s out of inertia if there were nothing better on that night, or if it were on before or after something I liked better. Spin City would be a good comparison. I watched every episode of that until Michael J. Fox had to bow out, but I'll be damned if I can remember a single episode's plot or a line of dialogue. I just remember the actors and the premise.