Curb Your Enthusiasm

[Ms Blue Jay]

It's not a good look for Curb to keep Jeff Garlin on while The Goldbergs fired him for sexual harassment.  I get that he's an executive producer on Curb and maybe there's some contract stuff at play, but still.  It does not look good on Larry's part.

[King of TV]

On 3/16/2023 at 11:15 PM, Ms Blue Jay said:

It's not a good look for Curb to keep Jeff Garlin on while The Goldbergs fired him for sexual harassment.  I get that he's an executive producer on Curb and maybe there's some contract stuff at play, but still.  It does not look good on Larry's part.

 

Yeah that wouldn't be a good look on Larry's part. I wonder what kind of in-show reason they would have to kill Jeff off. We need Sussie in the new season too, Jeff was kind of there so it wouldn't be the end of the world if there were no Jeff, but the show would feel very empty without Sussie telling Larry to "get the fuck out of my house!!!!". 

Goldbergs was already on it's last legs when they kicked Jeff off last year and now it will officially end after this season (filming probably wrapped up by now). 

Larry's up there in age, so I can't imagine the show lasting much longer. This is the forth season that we've had since the show got revived. 

[Simon Boccanegra]

I missed all the talk about "Interior Decorator," but I do have something relevant to add about it. Oscar Nuñez, who played the male parking attendant to whom Larry gives the money to pay back Joanna ("So this is you? You are the bald man with the glasses?") is in the starring cast of Bob Odenkirk's new series, Lucky Hank. He's the dean of the college.  

Not bad talent-spotting that episode, as Nia Vardalos, Marissa Jaret Winokur, and Karen Maruyama all became better known in later years. And I see Rose Abdoo, who was so funny as Carmen, the titular interior director, once in a while. She was Valerie's wig wrangler on the second season of The Comeback.  

On the Garlin situation: Curb could go on without Marty or even Richard, but I really wouldn't want a Curb season without Jeff. Maybe it could turn into a story if they had him die, but the character is so close to the core of the show, and has been since the first scene of the 1999 special. I like Garlin's rapport with the other major players.  

[King of TV]

I like how (assuming the show end with a 10 episode twelfth season). The show will have 60 SD episodes and 60 HD episodes, which perfectly splits the show in half. 

[Ms Blue Jay]

On 3/30/2023 at 3:45 AM, Simon Boccanegra said:

On the Garlin situation: Curb could go on without Marty or even Richard, but I really wouldn't want a Curb season without Jeff. Maybe it could turn into a story if they had him die, but the character is so close to the core of the show, and has been since the first scene of the 1999 special. I like Garlin's rapport with the other major players.  

Disagree personally.  11 seasons with Jeff is more than enough.  Larry divorced Cheryl in Season 7 and the show's been fine with her having a much more reduced role.  Leon wasn't even in the show in the first 5 seasons and now he's a main character.  There's ebbs and flows, and it does not matter.

[Simon Boccanegra]

In any case, articles about the upcoming season (Variety, Hollywood Reporter) have this-time-we-mean-it quotations about season 12 being the end of the road. Every season of Curb since at least the middle years of seasons 5-6 has been structured in a way that the season finale could also be a satisfying series finale, in case Larry David felt he was done with these characters and this format. An unused ending of season 11, one learns, had Larry drowning definitively in that pool...which would be the second time we've seen him "die" in a finale.

But LD's long-term deal with HBO expires this year, so if he creates anything else for them, he'll have to negotiate a new one. I think this factor (along with his own advancing age) will be the impetus for him to bring down the curtain on the Davids and the Greenes and their friends after nearly 25 years. New comedic ideas that occur to him afterward—which in the past may have gone into another Curb season—will go into other things he writes.

I hope it's a great last lap. They have wrapped production, but Curb wasn't in the teaser trailer of returning series that HBO ran before Succession Sunday night.