Family Guy courtesy Fox, Seth MacFarlane by Michael Yarish/Fox
If Fox goes ahead and airs a new Family Guy this Sunday without creator Seth MacFarlane's seal of approval, although the net is within its rights to do so, Seth says it will be "a colossal d--k move" and "damaging to our relationship".... In a curious show of support for strikers, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin handed out adult-film DVDs at a rally in L.A., the New York Post reports. Thankfully, he wasn't actually in the videos.... NBC is bailing on the Television Critics Association's winter press tour, reports Variety. The other networks are still debating the pros and cons of unveiling shows like "The Bachelor 12: Dumber Than the Last 11, But Check Out Those Abs" and "Wife Swap: The Rudy Giuliani Edition." — Ben KatnerMore WGA strike coverage:• Producers Blast WGA's Use of "Fear and Intimidation"• CBS News Writers May Join Walkout Come Monday• Indie Film Producers: Hey, We're Not the Bad Guys!
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Mazel tov! I've been to my share of crappy b'nei mitzvot (there was a time, just over a decade ago, when I could have filled my entire closet with shirts that said, "I Had a Blast at [X]'s Bar Mitzvah!"), but even I am not sure where on the awkward scale that party fell. Between Larry's vigorous defense — which started out with "There's a guest here spreading a vicious, nasty, scurrilous rumor about me and a gerbil," and unfortunately ended with "I do have a tickle in my anus…" — his admission to wearing "No Fly Zone" underwear, and apparently ending up with Loretta (if it wasn't just a St. Elsewhere dream), well, it might just belong on a scale all its own.Oh, Larry. Where do we even start? It seems pretty clear that he wasn't crushed by the loss of Cheryl, per se, it was more just that he was worried he'd never find someone else willing to put up with him. His flirting technique indicated that he was right to worry ("Let me ask you a question: Did you ever go out wi...
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Let’s get this recap going before I forget what happened. Now, there’s misanthropy and there’s being a flat-out bad person, and tonight, LD seriously towed that line. Between faking Alzheimer's and getting his therapist thrown in jail, I’m not sure where this so-called new Larry David is. If there’s anything different about him, it’s the fact that he’s now ruining people’s lives on purpose as opposed to just incidentally.OK, Doctor Bright (Steve Coogan) was probably the world’s worst therapist, considering he told Larry to give Cheryl an ultimatum on moving back in with him ("You have until Monday"). And sure, he might be ridiculously stupid, because he went along with Larry’s fake mugging plan, that even Loretta and Auntie Rae wanted to put a stop to. But did he really deserve to go to jail? He obviously hadn’t spent enough time counseling Larry, or he would have known that his client wouldn’t be helping him get out of his...
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I never knew being bald was such a burden. Look at our good friend Jeff: With a full head of hair, he's getting extra food and high-profile clients. As a baldie, well, he's just a fatter version of Larry, though, it must be said, without years of bitterness about his condition. Fortunately for him, his hair will, as he pointed out after cursing Larry, grow back. Larry's bald forever.Larry's not just bald, though. Larry's bald and single. And the single part is what prompted one-half of tonight's debacle (though the baldness didn't help). Why did Auntie Rae have to hug for longer than five minutes? He never would have mentioned his groin problems to Doctor Flomm (played by braless wonder Sue Ellen Mischke's alter ego, Brenda Strong), he wouldn't have been "massaging" himself in the car. With but one strike to go against the Blacks, he just had to be caught saying the N word. One can only thank god that Jeff's doctor shaved his head instead of fixing his snoring problem ("that motherf...
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Knowing what any good Curb viewer already knows about Larry David's real life — namely that he and Laurie, his actual wife, recently divorced due to "irreconcilable differences" — this episode was uncomfortable to watch. Yes, if I called my husband from a rolling airplane and he asked me where the warrantee was for the TiVo, I'd be pissed, and I'd probably leave him, too. Actually that's a lie; my DVR means more to me than any man ever could. I'd probably be the one to be left. Like Larry, there's no other side to Leah. This is pretty much it.Can we blame Larry's friends (and restaurateurs) for siding with Cheryl? This is, after all, a man who wants to talk about the difference between real and fake crab during sex, and then claims he's complex. In the settlement, Cheryl gets Ted Danson, the Funkhousers (so much for Marty being Larry's best friend, eh?), Primo's, the cleaning woman, Simon, and by extension, the $10,000 Larry lent to Simon, since he's not getting it back. W...
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I think Larry David spies on me. Until this week I could have chalked everything up to coincidence (the smoke alarm, "shmo-hawk" and disturbing car rides), but when he devoted every other scene in this episode to a toaster that doesn't actually toast anything, well, I had to wonder where he keeps the surveillance camera. The idea that it could take 15 minutes to toast some bread (and still have it be bread and not toast) hits incredibly close to home, and as funny as it is, I'm starting to get creeped out. On the other hand, maybe these are just the universal truths of the human condition that Shakespeare never got around to examining.So what kind of mayhem did this so-called toaster cause? Well, in the rush to get out of the house, Larry and Leon accidentally switched up their identical cell phones, and Loretta missed her job interview. But the misfortune didn't end there (does it ever?); Larry rejected Leon's job offer, thinking it was a telemarketer, and Leon insulted the already...
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When I heard that this episode would feature a meeting of John McEnroe and Larry David, I was almost giddy with excitement. This was the highlight of the show, but unfortunately, the rest of the story just fell flat. Maybe I'm just scarred because that ride from the cemetery to the Staples Center gave me Vietnam-style flashbacks to a horrible Friedman family car ride, because of the screaming and the threats, but after a stellar four shows, many of the scenes this week just hit awkward notes.Larry's usually good for a decent party disruption, but bringing a "freak book" as a present and insisting on reading it with Jeff as Ted Danson continues opening gifts didn't strike me as the kind of hyperreal situation that Curb usually goes for. Instead, it felt like a setup, and this show has always been better than that. Even the should-have-been hilarious Susie scene didn't really go right. I can understand not wanting to be buried next to Larry David (who would?), but her excuse, "Even yo...
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Folks, I attempt to make this a family-friendly blog, so I'm not going to quote any of Leon's advice to Larry about how to best deal with the skinhead (advice that included spray-painting and eating Snickers bars inside of said skinhead's southern orifice), but I will say that the whole thing had me laughing so hard, I was afraid I might hurt myself. Luckily I'm OK, because I certainly didn't want to end up in the doctor's office where I'd be quizzed on my bathroom habits. I do have to agree with Larry, Loretta, Leon and Aunt Rae, though, that anything less than two-ply is wholly unsuited for human use and is at the same level as the Port Authority.Compared to last week's episode, in which everything tied together so tidily at the end, tonight's episode wasn't quite as neat. It was more like just variations on a theme: Larry goes to the bathroom more than "normal," Cha Cha monitors these habits because she works across from the bathroom, Cheryl forces everyone to use recycled toilet...
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What would Larry David do? That's going to be my moral barometer from now on. Think about what he would do and do the opposite (hey…). On the other hand, while I wouldn't toss 50 bucks to the floor just to get out of a funeral, I'd probably be one of the vultures diving for it, so should I really be one to judge?Let's try to follow the chain of events. Larry reams out a woman for abusing the ice cream sample policy — a woman who later turns out to be dean of admissions for the private school that the Davids, the Blacks and the Greenes are all hoping their children will attend. Because Larry can't purchase flowers for the dean with the money that came from Marty's jogging shoe, he has to steal a bouquet from Marty's mother's roadside memorial. To patch things up with his wife and Loretta, he steals two more bouquets. Since Marty keeps track of the memorial (and has a freakish sense of smell), he discovers what Larry has done, and after more sample abusing and grave robbing,...
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Not even Joe Klein had so much trouble being anonymous. Then again, no one ever accused Mr. Klein of using a teddy bear as an aphrodisiac. Episodes like this make you wonder whether Larry David really ever thinks about anything but being master of his domain.Not that we should complain, because even if it is his main concern, we get to hear Susie say stuff like this: "You what? You jerked off in their house? That is sick! You have wrought your semen outside of our home, Jeff? That’s adultery!" Then there was her husband’s explanation that he had had too much Manischewitz at Passover and as such it was excusable, considering, "It’s not Yom Kippur, I would never do it on the high holidays." The Greenes make me swoon, but I pity their poor daughter, Sammy. That little girl is in for a lifetime of serious therapy.We also got the triumphant return of Gina Gershon’s Anna, the Orthodox Jewish dry cleaner. Thank god someone explained the "Law of the Dry Cleaner’s" t...
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