COMIC PROVOCATION
Diana Wichtel on comedy blurring the lines of real life
Iwas about 7 when Mum’s little brother blew in from New Zealand to visit us in Vancouver. He was a sailor, handsome and hilarious. He brought my sister and me doggy pyjama bags. Mine was an adorable brown spaniel. Uncle amused himself by snatching it and pretending to poke its eyes out. I was shocked and thrilled by his naughtiness. Were all New Zealanders like this?
I thought of that early exposure to comic provocation when Larry David decided to promote his 12th, and final, season of Curb Your Enthusiasm by beating up Elmo. Sesame Street’s red, ticklish little monster has pushed the boundaries of what is endurable when it comes to remorseless cuteness, but still.
David unerringly chose the most inopportune moment to disrupt Elmo’s interview — yes, a puppet was being interviewed on NBC’s Today Show —by throttling the little guy live on air. Elmo had just become an improbable mental health guru. His post on X, “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”, unleashed a viral exhalation of anguish: “Elmo, I just got laid off”; “Elmo I’m suffering from existential dread over here”; “I wish you were my dad”.
One poster marvelled, “I did not have us all trauma-dumping on Elmo on my bingo card.” The result: strangers online were nice to each other, sharing empathy and company. Crisis lines offered help. What’s not to like?
It drove David, by now indistinguishable from his appalling alter ego, TV Larry, to attention-grabbing distraction. “Mr Larry,
Elmo liked you before!” piped Elmo.
When David came on for his own interview, the hosts asked him to say sorry to the little guy, from the heart. “From where? What organ are you talking about?” mused David. An apology of sorts was extracted. “Elmo accepts your apology, Larry,” squeaked the puppet.
Elmo had become the type of unlikely hero tough times throw up. That, coincidentally, is one of the themes of season 12. Larry is to be paid an appearance fee to attend a fancy party in Atlanta with housemate Leon. All he has to do is be cordial to the guests. Imagine how well that goes.
As with Larry’s previous Maga hat-wearing antics, this season has a political undertow. Amid the social carnage Larry unleashes in Atlanta, in which many things, literally, end up in the toilet, he accidentally breaks the law when he brings water to Leon’s Auntie Rae, waiting in line in the heat to vote. In the world of Curb, no good deed goes unpunished. So, Larry’s unwitting transgressing of a dreadful, discriminatory law has unexpected consequences. “You’ve become a liberal darling!” Bruce Springsteen extolls his virtues on the news.
The series so far sometimes struggles to find a clear target at which to take a shot, but David is still doing his job, blurring the lines between the wildest plots television can invent and the galloping absurdity of real life. Spoiler alert: the first episode ends with a mugshot of arrested Larry that spookily invokes the glowering police portrait of a certain former president. Both TV Larry and Donald Trump sow their narcissistic mayhem wherever they go. Both end up embroiled in legal issues. Both thrive on chaos.
The series trolls viewers, too, for the way we make celebrities of the flawed humanity, fictional and real, that we see projected on to our screens. People who think it’s a good idea to invite TV Larry or Trump to ruin their party get what they get.
No hugging, no learning is the mantra of David’s other masterpiece, Seinfeld. Season 12 of Curb is, so far, a fitting homage to nearly 25 years of a character who refuses to learn a thing. A person, as Larry notes, “who hates people, yet has to be amongst them”. A morality tale for the rest of us, who struggle to learn from the past, even at election time. Really, what can you say but … Elmo for President?
NEXT WEEK: Steve Braunias