Since he has misanthropic tendencies, yells at random people on the street, and makes a scene at every social function he attends, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s skewed, fictionalized incarnation of its creator and star, Larry David, might not seem like the most relatable character on television.
But there’s been a handful of times where Larry actually had a point. He stands defiantly against pointless social convention, and isn’t that a cause worth fighting for? Whether he was holding a mirror up to society or simply complaining about the irritating minutiae of daily life, here are 10 Times Larry David Was All Of Us.
10 “So, this is me...apologizing.”
In almost every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry finds himself apologizing to somebody. In this case, he was apologizing to the head of NBC for telling him to go f**k himself. The network boss was planning to pull the plug on the Seinfeld reunion show that Larry was going to use to win back his wife.
Jerry Seinfeld and the other cast members implored Larry to go over to the offices of NBC and apologize, so Larry sits down with the network head and gives him the fakest, most drawn-out apology in the history of apologies. We all feel like doing this when we have to apologize for something that we don’t feel deserves an apology.
9 Telling the guy next to him on a plane not to wear shorts
Larry David often runs into annoying situations on airplanes, because there’s so much hassle involved with air travel. Here, he finds himself sitting next to a man in shorts. Larry chastises the man for wearing shorts and presents a hilarious analogy: “I like to sing; I like to whistle; I like to play the bongos on my leg; I like to imitate horses. But I don’t do it, because there’s someone sitting next to me.”
If you haven’t been in a situation like this in real life, you can at least relate to Larry’s reaction to it. It’s unsavory, being in close proximity to a man who is proudly displaying his hairy legs.
8 Being stuck holding a skewer at a party
After making a whole to-do out of the fact that Ben Stiller was having a birthday party two weeks after his actual birthday, Larry somehow managed to retain his invitation. So, he went to the party and sampled the food available. But when he picked up a little kebab, he was stuck holding the skewer for the rest of the night.
He couldn’t see any trash cans around, he didn’t want to just leave it lying around on a table or something – he couldn’t get rid of it. We’ve all been in this situation. Party hosts just shouldn’t serve skewer-based foods.
7 “Smile!” “Hey, mind your own business, how about that?”
In a quintessentially Larry David moment, a woman passing a frowning Larry on the street tells him, with an annoying level of glee, to “Smile!” Larry is peeved by this, and turns to the woman to say, “Hey, mind your own business, how about that?”
The ironic thing is that the woman just wanted to brighten Larry’s day, and his misery was so powerful that he managed to ruin hers instead. Sure, this person just wants to spread some positive energy and bring happiness into the world, but she doesn’t know why Larry’s grumpy. If he’s not smiling, it’s because he doesn’t want to.
6 Trying to elevate small talk to medium talk
No one enjoys small talk. You make banal conversation about absolutely nothing with a person you barely know, for the sole purpose of making the time pass by at a social function. In the Curb episode “The Hero,” Jeff and Susie host a dinner party and decide to split up the couples and stick their guests next to people they’ve never met.
The idea is to get people to mingle, but for obvious reasons, Larry hates this idea. He ends up sitting next to Hank – played by Rick and Morty’s Chris Parnell – and tries to elevate small talk to medium talk by asking a man he’s just met about his sex life.
5 “I’m yelling for society!”
After a dog makes on Larry’s lawn a few times, he finally catches the dog and its owner in the act. But the woman isn’t as apologetic and remorseful as Larry would hope, which only makes him madder. When she tells him it’s not worth yelling about, Larry disagrees: “I’m yelling for society! For everybody!”
The way Larry sees it, he’s not just yelling at one particular dog owner for letting one particular dog go to the bathroom on his lawn. He’s yelling for all the homeowners who have had to deal with this from any number of dog owners.
4 Being repulsed by a couple kissing outside his office window
The long-awaited ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm didn’t disappoint, as Larry was just as grumpy and curmudgeonly as he’d always been. In one particularly hilarious moment from the season, he spots a couple kissing outside his office window and he’s disgusted. So, he tells them to go away.
The couple protests Larry’s decision to shoo them away, reasoning that they’re just expressing their happiness, but Larry simply tells them to go and be happy somewhere else (somewhere that’s not in front of him). And he’s right. Who in their right mind wants to see other people expressing happiness? It’s repulsive.
3 Getting frustrated by the “sample abuser”
We can all relate to Larry here. He’s waiting on line in an ice cream store behind a woman who insists on sampling every flavor before making a decision. He later terms her a “sample abuser.” There is no strict policy that prohibits customers from taking this many free samples, but it’s just common courtesy, to both the business and the people waiting behind you.
Larry contests the old adage that “The customer is always right,” saying instead that “The customer is usually a moron and an a*****e.” Unfortunately for Larry, this woman turned out to be in charge of admissions to a school that Loretta’s kids were hoping to get into.
2 Ordering a “vanilla bulls**t latte cappa-thing” at a coffee shop
The coffee industry has gotten awfully pretentious in the last couple of years. You can’t just order a coffee anymore; everything on the menu has a fancy Italian name and each drink is brewed slightly differently.
In the season 2 episode “Shaq,” Larry accidentally tripped over Shaquille O’Neal at a basketball game, putting him out of commission for the rest of the season. This turned Larry into a social pariah, which he loved because it meant that he didn’t have to conform to society’s rules anymore. When he went into a coffee shop, he ordered a “vanilla bulls**t latte cappa-thing.”
1 “I always think of nice things, but I never act on them.”
From the Biblical “Golden Rule” to Haley Joel Osment’s titular social experiment from the movie Pay It Forward, we’ve always been taught to do nice things for other people. But like Larry, we rarely act on those impulses. It’s easy to have an idea of something nice to do, but it’s a different thing altogether to actually go through with it.
A couple of random acts of kindness here and there is all anyone needs to do to create a warm, loving, inclusive society. Unfortunately, random acts of kindness require a level of effort that most people – like Larry David – find too taxing.
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