It can be a contradiction to praise a series whose original title invites readers to temper their enthusiasm. In Spain, Curb Your Enthusiasm is called Larry David, the name of its creator, protagonist and character. Where are the boundaries between the three? We shouldn't care much. “Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm” was the title of the hour-long mockumentary he wrote and starred in in 1999. At the time, David's fame came from co-creating Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld. The series about nothing – that was his famous selling point – had ended a year earlier, but David had parted ways with it in 1996. He wanted to return to his roots as a stand-up comedian, but the idea crossed his path. to make a mockumentary and used the same professional vicissitudes as the basis for this special. His wife Cheryl (played by Cheryl Hines) and manager Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) were already there, as were a handful of celebrity cameos. The foundation for the first season of her series was laid.
Curb Your Enthusiasm began airing in October 2000. It was the beginning of the golden years of cable TV series that HBO ushered in: “The Sopranos” aired for one season, “Sex and the City” for two seasons; It took a year for Six Feet Under to air and two years for The Wire to air. Not only did “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” not exist, the network that hosted them, AMC, didn’t even produce series. Television began to acquire a cultural prestige that had been denied it since snobbery – there were already major series on general television – and which was based above all on the freedom that cable showed around characters, conflicts and situations to be able to address sex, violence and moral ambiguity, which was not permitted on free television.
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Although the greatest violence in Curb Your Enthusiasm is the decibels at which the characters sometimes shout at each other, Larry David was a pioneer in enjoying that freedom and living it through comedy, something unusual – in terms of cultural prestige, that he was denied Comedies were and remain banned from television. An uncomfortable, sometimes mean-spirited television comedy and, in that respect, a precursor, it was another year before The Office premiered in the UK. And he did that from the start: the plot of his first episode, in which a wrinkle in his pants made him worry that someone might mistake it for an erection, as happened later, would not have gone down well on free-to-air television. In the final episode of this first season, Larry accompanied an ex-girlfriend to group therapy for victims of family sexual abuse and ended up pretending to have been abused by one of his uncles in order to stay at the meeting. David said he came up with this plot for “Seinfeld,” but Jerry Seinfeld forced him to scrap it because it couldn't air on NBC.
The late Richard Lewis (right) and Larry David in a picture from the series' twelfth season. John P. Johnson (AP)
Twenty-four years after its premiere, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is about to enter its twelfth and final season. Few believe Larry David when he declares that the series will not continue after this run of episodes. Firstly, because it is by no means the first time that he has been threatened with the end. Second, because the series suffered three major breaks (three years between the sixth and seventh seasons, six between the eighth and ninth, and another three between the ninth and tenth). And especially because his supporters don't want it to end. When a reporter asked him during the latter's premiere why we should believe him now, he replied: “Yes, I've said it before, but I wasn't 76 years old when I said it.” The same ones the late Richard Lewis, Larry David's inseparable friend, had on and off screen – he was born three days before him and in the same hospital.
The television era of difficult men, as journalist Brett Martin dubbed it in the most canonical book of those years, is history. The emergence and hegemony of platforms, the rise of the already established Peak TV, the loss of prestige of cable, the result of the business maneuvers of the communications giants… These and many other factors have caused HBO like this I would say today it doesn't even recognize them mother who gave birth to her. But Larry David, the most difficult man of all, the only one who exists outside the screen, survived it all. Even that episode where a Survivor contestant confronted a Holocaust survivor during dinner and tried to show him that his TV performance was more difficult than the experience of going through a concentration camp. Or his favorite, “Palestinian Chicken,” which ends with Larry, in the middle of a protest between Jews and Palestinians, debating whether to join his own side or the Palestinian side, where his latest lover is. A miraculous series that even managed to save a man from prison: Juan Catalán was able to prove that he did not commit the murder he was accused of by proving that he was part of the audience that appeared in a scene from an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, recorded during a Dodgers game, a story told in the documentary Long Shot.
Perhaps the secret of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” aside from the enormous talent and ingenuity of its creator, is that in a time when political incorrectness is most suspected and viewed as a value in itself, it was never a purpose for him, but rather was more of a means of laughter. A 24-year-old pact with the adult viewer who recognizes everyday pettiness despite exaggeration and confusion, and enjoys it because he understands that its sole purpose is to make people laugh. How small! Sorry, sometimes you can't contain your enthusiasm.
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