Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12 premiere from my perspective. You’re welcome.
I usually do not watch shows that I want to see until a decent amount of them have piled up so I can binge them. That was my plan with the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show that has been on so long I started watching it when I was 21 or 22. That is some old person stuff. I watched it first on a VHS tape my friend gave me that he recorded off HBO. That is how old I, and this show, are.
Anyway, I am lying in bed, waiting for midnight to strike so I can play Wordle, and scrolling Reddit. This is my nightly tradition. I used to stay up until 2 AM playing videogames. I wish I still did. But I am tired. I used to do a lot of things. If things I used to do were still being done I would not be an old person. I’d be one of those people who talk about age only being a number. I am not that guy. Age is a number. And my number is high.
Back to Reddit scrolling. I end up seeing a post from the Curb Your Enthusiasm subreddit. It had a spoiler picture about episode 1 of the new season that premiered that evening. This is not Star Wars. What could possibly be spoiled by me clicking on the spoiler warning to reveal the image of the actual spoiler? It is a show made by a guy even older than me. I don’t see what there is to spoil!
I clicked it.
Spoiler alert about this spoiler: It spoiled the end of the episode for me.
I am not one to worry about spoilers. It wasn’t that big a deal…it was only the episode ending joke. However, it got me thinking that not watching these shows as they hit, and taking them in bunches, deprives me of the chance to go on the internet and complain and/or make clever-only-to-me comments about the show. I missed the boat on this simple life pleasure with Succession. It shall not happen here.
I put Wordle off for 30 minutes to watch Curb so I could intelligently participate in the Curb subreddit. I am going to call it Curb from here on out. The guy who lent me the VHS tape told me that I can just call it Curb, because he was sick of me saying the whole long title. I do not remember this guy’s name. I wonder if he knows I think about him whenever I turn on the show? He and I went and saw Attack of the Clones together on opening night. Apparently we were mildy close. I hope he isn’t dead.
There were good things in this episode. If you’re a spoiler person, you may want to jet now. But nobody reads this stuff anyway, so I think we’re good.
- There was a cute dog. I kept waiting for it to die accidentally. The dog also got fat shamed a lot, which I can identify with. It is a Corgi, which is a breed I used to not like, but now I find endearing and fun. They always seem happy. I wish I was happy like a Corgi.
- Tracy Ullman was back as Irma Kostroski. She is amusing to me. And she sang a jingle I know. She is also responsible for showing the world The Simpsons, which is older than even Curb. She was crazy funny then, too. But I was too emotionally stunted and dumb to see it in my young age.
- A lot of the people in the show are older, which is to be expected, as the show is ancient. I like watching old people do things. Larry has more energy at 76 than I have now. I should reflect on this more often.
- Auntie Rae came back. She was in the season Larry gets separated from Cheryl and ends up dating Loretta Black. Her last scene from that season was in a taxi driving away with her yelling “Fuck you, Larry”. I like people saying the F word to each other. Auntie Rae appears to be doing well, and she plays a big part in the aforementioned spoiler image.
Please enjoy this montage of Larry and Auntie Rae.
There were obviously other good things going on, but those are the three that stuck out to me. No Ted Danson. No Cheryl. Very limited Suzie. I am going to give this episode 3 out of 5 stars. It seems to set the stage for the rest of the season, which is the purpose of the episode. I don’t ask for much.
Curb is in the rare group of shows I will repeatedly watch over and over. That group includes the following: The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Succession, The Office and Frasier. I bet you didn’t see Frasier coming, did you?
I read that people watch the same shows repeatedly because it allows them to feel comforted and connects us with our past. I assume this is partly why I do it. Why watch a new show, which is a risk, when I could watch Mad Men again? I already know Don Draper is a womanizing bad person. I don’t need to know many more womanizing bad people. I am solid with just Don, thanks. I also know the show ends with Don coming up with that Coke commercial, so I am comforted in the thought that everything will work out.
I also have read that watching television closely correlates with depression. I have been laid off twice in my life, and both times I binge watched Family Guy. I laid there like a zombie and watched it. It required no social interaction. Being someone who has been diagnosed as “severely depressed”? I feel that tv lets me wallow in my self-pity. I also do not think I am severely depressed. There are people who are way more depressed, yet I got a 9 out of 10 on the scale. I would like a retest. I am, at worst, 7 out of 10. I shower every day. I can get out of bed. I don’t think I am a 9. Maybe an 8.
Anyway, all that said? You should probs watch the new Curb. It isn’t like there is a ton of good stuff to be watching now anyway. Which there is not. I looked.
