Larry David & the evolution of cringe comedy.
THE DESIGNATION CRINGE COMEDY HAS BECOME SO PERVASIVE THAT IT RISKS LOSING ITS USEFULNESS
Trying on pants is one of the most humiliating things a man can suffer that doesn’t involve a woman. — Larry David
Has a more significant television sub- genre been born this century than cringe comedy?
The question i tself might make some people cringe, since audiences have been laughing at jokes rooted in uncomfortable moments since comedy began. Sitcoms as diverse as All in the Family and Seinfeld trafficked in social transgression and personal embarrassment.
But as the 20th century has given way to the 21st, comedy has become increasingly dark, anxious and realistic, assisted by the looser rules of cable television and the rise of reality TV. Peppy punch lines have been replaced by comically tense situations. And no series has been as closely associated with this change as Curb Your Enthusiasm, which returns after a sixyear hiatus for its ninth season on Sunday, one day after the season première of Saturday Night Live.
So how did we get here? The designation cringe comedy has now become so pervasive that it risks losing its usefulness. But until it does, these nine shows, all worth watching or re- watching, approximate a working definition of the genre and a portrait of its evolution.
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM ( 2000-)
No character on Seinfeld makes you cringe quite l i ke George, both because he’s often put in embarrassing situations (“Shrinkage”) and because he tends to respond with shocking inappropriateness ( he seems almost relieved over his fiancée’s death). Larry David, who cocreated that show and inspired the character, upped the ante with this followup, in which he plays a ( perhaps) fictionalized version of himself. What makes David’s persnickety character so bracing is that he rarely cringes himself after making a social faux pas. Instead, he commits to it, doubling down on his transgressions. Some people find this unbearable, while others can’t get enough of it. But there’s no denying the craft. Even though he has famously built the show on improvisation, make no mistake: David orchestrates comic awkwardness with the pacing, precision and panache of Hitchcock meticulously setting audiences up for a scare.
DA ALI G SHOW ( 2000- 2004)
Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego was a spectacular cartoon of a dim suburban white buffoon appropriating black culture, but the show’s tone was really set by the tense, trolling interviews his character conducted with unsuspecting celebrities, journalists and even the current president. Baron Cohen, who also introduced his characters Borat and Bruno on this show, somehow convinced subjects to sit down with him, then posed inane and inappropriate questions, making himself look ridiculous but also putting his guests in a tough spot. Should they take him seriously, be polite, or get up and leave? Waiting for the answer made you squirm and laugh and then squirm some more.
THE OFFICE ( 2001- 2003)
The Office, like all of modern comedy, has a prehistory. Ricky Gervais has cited The Larry Sanders Show as an influence. And Steve Coogan’s portrait of talk- show host Alan Partridge in Knowing Me, Knowing You seems to have helped inspire Gervais’ character. Yet the groundbreaking BBC series about a soul- deadening paper company, which went on to spawn an equally brilliant American version, found its own comic language. The unctuous boss played by Gervais is the focus of the darkly cynical show, but it’s actually the reactions to his idiotic comments that make you laugh. First, a lingering pause; then the camera cuts to one of his flummoxed employees — it’s a one- two punch that has become the meat and potatoes of the genre. While The Office wasn’t the first to use the documentary form (Real Life and This is Spinal Tap were film pioneers), it exploited it better than any other television show, adding another level of embarrassment to a humiliating situation.
THE COMEBACK ( 2005, 2015)
If the characters played to the camera in The Office, they seem tortured by it in this cult favourite, a short- lived show that returned for an even more bracing second season a decade later. Lisa Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, an impossibly vain sitcom actress whose willingness to endure humiliations in pursuit of fame can seem almost stoic. She turns her batty charm into a self-lacerating weapon, revealing achingly painful subtexts in her stammers and clenched facial expression. Originally set in a time when Hollywood fashion was moving from fictional narratives to reality television, the show made the blurring of the categories into a running gag.
LOUIE ( 2010-)
No one f i nds humour in charged territory as often as Louis C. K., and yet his formally daring show frequently takes viewers to places that aren’t even supposed to be funny. ( His debate about joke stealing with Dane Cook was tense and compelling but not purely comic.) Unpredictability is at the core of any joke, but Louie surprises us just as often with the dark, surreal or deeply wrong.
( 2012- 2017)
Building on the indie- provocateur style of Louie, Lena Dunham produced a cutting and witty satire of millennial New York with a sexual frankness that ranged from ridiculous to disturbing and back again. As so often in the genre, the humour usually emerges out of situations — like the time Dunham’s character makes a date- rape joke in a job interview. The opposite of hilarity ensues.
Not since Ali G has a comedian produced so much anxiety by incorporating real people into his scenes. But Nathan Fielder doesn’t just manipulate people into talking with him. Posing as a consultant, he helps ambitious small businesses try out preposterous schemes. As his narratives unfold, the character he is playing becomes fleshed out into a lonely sad sack, the anti-hero of a sitcom that somehow escapes the confines of his prank show.
NATHAN FOR YOU ( 2013-) REVIEW ( 2014- 2017)
This high- concept cult show, in which Andy Daly plays a critic who reviews extreme aspects of ordinary life ( making a sex tape, road rage) for television, has many of the hallmarks of the genre: an unlikable protagonist, a documentary conceit and unbearably pregnant pauses. The series is as dark as any of its peers, but Daly maintains his merry equanimity as he sabotages his marriage, job and even health for the cause of criticism, a juxtaposition that is as deliriously funny as it is off-putting.
DIFFICULT PEOPLE ( 2015-)
Julie Klausner’s ruthlessly funny series, about two pop- culture- obsessed New Yorkers with a nasty word to say about everyone, is the truest heir to Curb Your Enthusiasm. No show captures cheerful misanthropy and giddy indifference to likability with as much panache, and Difficult People pulls this off without sacrificing punch lines. It shows us how much TV humour has changed. As likely to feature real people as actors, and lean harder on jokes than situations, cringe comedy has expanded so much that every laugh these days seems married to a wince.