After nearly a quarter century on HBO, Curb Your Enthusiasm and its curmudgeonly star haven’t changed much. Aside from the blotchy video look of early seasons, the only clear differentiation between years is Larry David’s salt-and-pepper horseshoe haircut giving way to white. Despite Curb’s consistent look throughout, there was a season when the show’s narrative evolved to new, absurd heights: season four, known colloquially as “the Producers season.”
For its initial three seasons, Curb Your Enthusiasm functioned as advertised. You know those whacky, overblown grievances that sent George Costanza spiraling? Watch Larry David discover them in real-time and force the universe to bend to his pessimistic and afflicted worldview. Larry is an unstoppable force against an immovable object. In a world where everyone is at their worst, he chooses to harangue them over minor and major infractions. These issues become even less sympathetic when seen through the bespectacled eyes of a cranky millionaire far removed from the lives of most Seinfeld viewers, let alone the upper-middle-class characters of the show. By 2004, following seasons where he set up TV projects and invested in a restaurant, David was ready to let his imagination run.
As he would do throughout the show, Larry builds on experiments from previous episodes. Season three saw Larry booking a small role in a Martin Scorsese movie, producing some of the series’ best moments in which Larry says “fuck” so often and so sublimely you’d think you were in heaven. Nevertheless, he was taken by himself as an actor. It was a challenge he responded to, something he clearly wanted to prove he could do. A year later, he took it further, breaking free of Rodeo Drive and heading to Broadway. After catching Larry’s karaoke rendition of “Swanee,” Mel Brooks casts him as Max Bialystock in The Producers, then at the height of its popularity.
Putting Larry in The Producers was a gamble. Even if he were never going to appear live onstage (something the actual Larry David would eventually do), Larry needed to be credible enough on camera for these 10 episodes to work. Over the season, between arguments about the number of cashews in a bag of trail mix and what is and is not “good Hodgkin’s,” we see Larry slowly improve his dance steps as he dutifully attends play practice. Under the umbrella of this high-pressure situation, he stabs Ben Stiller in the eye with a skewer, is briefly diagnosed with a heart condition because he was ogling a nurse, is drooled on by a doctor played by Philip Baker Hall, buys and smokes weed before hiring a sex worker to access an HOV lane to Dodgers Stadium, and tries to set up his shallow, blind rehearsal pianist on a date. Opening night is coming whether Larry cooperates or not, making these minor issues all the more insignificant but also consequential. Larry needs to focus on learning his lines and moves, but he’s arguing about cashews, putting him on a collision course with failure.
Broadway provides a strong arc for the show, and within it, Larry loads on complications via his personal life. Larry’s tenth anniversary with his wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) happens in conjunction with opening night, and the gift is already decided. Cheryl stipulated that, in exchange for Larry’s hand, she would grant him the freedom to have sex with another woman for their tin anniversary. The one-time fling gives Larry a reason to explore his very real sexual magnetism that attracts a cranky Hasidic dry cleaner (Gina Gershon), his obsessive-compulsive co-star Cady Huffman (herself), and a penis-biting dog named Oscar.
Larry’s charisma is on trial throughout the season as his role in each conflict vacillates between victim, aggressor, and, occasionally, the voice of reason. The mid-season villain, Marty Funkhauser (Bob Einstein), squares off with all sides of Larry, from the horrible (desecrating the dead body of Marty’s father) to the correct (Marty never should’ve brought up Larry’s plaque at dinner). Still, Marty, arguably Larry’s best friend, always welcomes him back so that Larry can claim small victories. Foreshadowing Einstein’s role in Arrested Development, Marty’s three-episode arc turns the character into an audience surrogate, giving us a chance to side with, go against, and ultimately forgive Larry.
The payoff of Larry’s Producers casting comes with the series’ best episode, the season-four finale, “Opening Night.” The converging plot lines and guest stars, particularly a scene-stealing Stephen Colbert, burst with energy. Minor issues become major fights as Larry feigns obsessive-compulsive disorder so he can sleep with his co-star, only to reject her after catching a glimpse of a George W. Bush photograph in her dressing room. Even at his best, Larry is at his worst.
This sets the stage for the second half of the episode when we see 20 minutes of The Producers starring Larry David. As was the case on Seinfeld and would continue to be Curb’s stock and trade, the masterstroke is an ending that ties it all together. After nailing the opening number, Larry forgets his lines in the next scene. Overjoyed by his failure, Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft head to the bar to toast the death of The Producers, which had been an “albatross” around their necks for years. Larry was supposed to turn this hit show into a failure and free them. When Larry recovers through a couple of jokes about the size of his cousin Andy’s (Richard Kind) mouth and some racist turban material, Bancroft echoes Leopold Bloom, repeating, “No way out,” as her head hangs over the bar. It’s a clever re-staging of The Producers’ finale and a welcome twist for the season that makes sense of its shaky premise. I mean, Larry David in The Producers?
After Larry hit the Great White Way, Curb staged even more high-concept seasonal arcs. Some were built on a high-stakes dare, like the cultural mea culpa of a new Seinfeld finale; others would be hilariously small-stakes challenges, like opening a coffee shop out of spite. It’s all thanks to season four when Larry weaponized someone else’s confidence in him and became a Broadway star. Brooks’ assessment, before succumbing to his wife’s hopelessness, was on the money. “He’s like a storm,” he says. “Everything he touches, he dooms.” Larry will always find a way to squeeze his selfish desires into the proceedings, reminding his wife from the stage that he has an hour before the anniversary gift expires. The god of irritation, Larry will live to complain again. And from season four on, the world, not just Hollywood, would feel his wrath.