19/08/2024
It’s been twenty-five years since Larry David first strutted and fretted his way in front of the camera, appearing on Curb Your Enthusiasm, an HBO show whose title seemed to announce a particular kind of lowering of expectations, which bordered on, well, self-hatred. When Curb first aired in 1999, David was familiar to comedy connoisseurs as co-creator and co–head writer of Seinfeld—and the guy who failed to stick the landing of the iconic series. (David had returned to Seinfeld after a several-year hiatus to write a hugely controversial outro that threw the show’s famous quartet of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer in jail for what amounted to serial misanthropy)
A generation has now been born and grown to young adulthood who know and even love Larry David for his solo work, the stuff he did after the band broke up. Curb and David are household names (the latter’s woolly fringe of hair, framing a magnificent bald head and round glasses, became so recognizable that HBO took to advertising the show with his cranial silhouette alone).
Last year, when Curb’s twelfth season launched, David announced that the show had finally reached its natural end (after all, he might have noted, it had reached 120 episodes). And so it seems like a good time to pose the question: Was it good for the Jews? Or given how good the show often was, what sort of good was it for the Jews (and Jewish comedy)?
Is Larry David good for the Jews?
