‘Enthusiasm’ is curbless in Larry David’s show

Los Angeles is one of those places defined by its utter lack of character, so what better series to be set there than “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a show built on a complete lack of material? Retirement, as Larry David reminds us, can be rough like that, especially working retirement—ask “AARP: The Magazine,” or Brett Favre.

Though each season of “Curb” ostensibly has a plot, it’s always only a pretense for the show to explore its big theme, which is pretty much its only theme: Larry David blundering his way around Santa Monica. There are no jokes, laughs, or real consequences, and yet the show is totally hilarious. Why?

Because “Curb” takes “Seinfeld” a step further. Though “Seinfeld” was “a show about nothing,” it still tried hard—very hard—to be witty about these little things: bagels, Soup Nazis, and masturbation. “Curb,” on the other hand, is a show about a show about nothing. It does not try to transcend trifles.

Unlike “Seinfeld,” there is no continuous attempt to sweat something out of nothing. The comedy of one-liners is replaced with the comedy of character. The characters play golf, sit in their offices, and nurse petty grievances. The contrivances are not jokes, but baroque plots where one offense leads to another. Soon everyone is offended. Mainstream, middlebrow morality reasserts itself. The more convoluted the causality, the more it feels like real life.

“Curb,” insofar as it is “about” anything, is “about” this kind of morality, and the hilarity stems from how incredibly evil these enforcers of etiquette are. One thinks of Nurse Ratched or some sexless middle school administrator. If someone were to ask me what the word “opprobrium” meant, I would refer them instantly to my favorite “Curb” episodes (the Wagner one from season two and the HOV lane one, where David picks up a prostitute on the side of the road to gain entrance into the carpool lane).

David’s acquaintances are not so much people who do things, but people who object to others. Their ethos defines itself in opposition to everything. Maybe the episodes where David begins to conform to their expectations are the best. His exploitation of his mother’s death in one episode, for example, is one of the finer running jokes in sitcom history, and the turn at the finale of the Mel Brooks arc is ingenious.

“Curb” stumbles a bit when it tries to be topical—my greatest fear is that the new season will blow the racial theme out of proportion. This would contextualize the show’s triviality, and it would no longer be as funny. Instead, look for Larry plucking shrimp from take-out boxes or whining about telephone wires. It is in those small moments that “Curb” is best.