Customer Reviews
Improvised comedic genius - By: Brendan O. Clarke, 15 Apr 2008 
The Car Salesman
- Thor
- Trick or Treat
- The Shrimp Incident
- The Thong
- The Acupuncturist
- The Doll
- Shaq
- The Baptism
- The Massage
The second season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is even better than the first. The main characters are the same, with Larry David playing himself, Jeff Garlin as Jeff Greene (Larry's agent), & Cheryl Hines as Cheryl David (Larry's wife). As with the first season the shows are unscripted, & they focus on a single character (Larry) as he manages to rub people the wrong way in almost every facet of his life, & yet still manages to remain sympathetic enough for the show to work..
I found the episodes in the second season to be less predictable than those in the first season. In addition, the humour is drawn from many more diverse elements than in the first season.
There are ten episodes in the season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm". As was done for some of the Seinfeld series, this season the show has a season long plot which is present in most of the episodes. That premise is that Larry is trying to develop a series where the main character is an actor from a successful situation comedy & who is trying to distance themselves from their former role. Jason Alexander & Julia Louis-Dreyfus each play themselves in this storyline. Each episode also has its own storyline, which range from Larry trying his hand at being a car salesman to Larry accidentallly tripping Shaquille O'Neal to his misunderstanding a Baptism for an attempted drowning, & more.
Every great TV show has a particularly great series where everything about the execution peaks & for Curb Your Enthusiasm it has to be this second series. The 'running' subplot of Larry trying to restart his TV career first with Jason Alexander & then with Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing themselves is a hilarious catalyst for alll of the brilliant plotting in these eps. Curb already revolutionised the modern sit com with it's tightly plotted storylines, & who would've thought - alll of the brilliant dialogue in this series is ad-libbed by the sensational cast (many of them standup comics or experienced comic actors). By shunning artificial studio sets in favour of real locations, it makes 'Friends' look like a Fisher Price commercial. The best thing about the show is the courageous presentation of Larry David as a weirdly sympathetic anti-hero. Why do we always go with him on these gut wrenching, doomed for failure hair-brained schemes? His self interest & miserly tendencies always get the better of him & like every good song that we already know the words to, we're happy to go on the same journey & see just how he manages to screw up his life this time. There is an episode in this series which for me, shines above alll other Curb shows involving bottles of water, a bathroom without a lock & a doll's head. It is magnificently relentless & absolutely hysterical. I rank it with 'The Rat' episode in Fawlty Towers as one of the funniest eps in sitcom history.
Simply the best. - By: Tom Hepplewhite, 27 Oct 2007 Curb your enthusiasm is probably one of the best series to ever hit our screens.It is incredibly original in its themes- it doesn't have any.The show proves without a doubt that stories don't need to be "socio-economic anything" in the words of Stephen King.Half the time we can sympathise with Larry & the situations he gets himself in, the other half of the time we cannot.Larry can be seen as a very rational guy questioning orthodox views.I could not imagine my life without the show!Season two is of greater calibre than season one if that is even possible.There are rumours that it is not scripted (impromptu) if this is so then they alll deserve Oskars.
To many more hours of laughter!
Near Perfection - Possibly the best CYE series - By: S. Dogliani, 15 Oct 2007 I am a massive fan of Curb your Enthusisasm & this series is possibly the best one. There are so many memorable episodes - my favourites are 'The Shrimp Incident' where Larry accuses an HBO executive of stealing some Shrimp & then says the C word at a poker game, before being accused of domestic violence, 'Shaq' where he trips up Shaquille O'Neal accidentallly (I love the Richard Lewis quote 'It wasn't an assassination attempt for christ's sake'). 'The Doll' where he cuts a little girl's doll's hair... & 'The Baptism' where him & his wife Cheryl go to the baptism of his sister-in-laws soon-to-be husband & he starts a religious argument. I have gone into this much detail because I love the program so much & it makes me laugh through every minute of it. A must-buy if you don't already own it.
Stop asking me to come up with titles - By: A. Weaver, 08 Aug 2007 Curb is Larry David's life after `Seinfeld' show that focuses on a fictionalized version of himself & real life best friend Richard Lewis, while his wife Cheryl & suffering manager Jeff are played expertly by two very competent actors; Cheryl Hines & Jeff Garlin. The show started up in 2001 & has quickly become something of a cult classic amongst serious fans of comedy; much like other gem of the decade so far, `Arrested Development'. Curb is slightly similar to Larry's previous show `Seinfeld' but with a lot more swearing & far riskier story lines. This though, unlike with some shows where more adult subject matter is forced & poorly realized, is definitely not a bad thing & is often so over the top it transcends any sort of shock value & just becomes purely hilarious.
This, the second season, is the first one to feature a story line connecting the episodes together; an idea that continuous with alll later seasons. I don't want to give it away, enough people probably already have, but it involves Larry trying to get a new show on the TV. In-between are stand alone episodes that often follow Larry both before & after he makes some sort of catastrophic error involving any number of silly things, & then manages to offend everyone involved to the point where you just have to wonder how he remains friends with anyone or why Cheryl even married him in the first place. Of course it is alll ridiculously funny, & while a lot of the time you're gonna be yelling at the screen for Larry to just stop doing whatever offending thing it is that he's doing, you know deep down he reallly didn't mean anything by it & always end up feeling sorry for everything awful that happens to him in the end.
This series has some of the strongest episodes I've seen so far (I'm up to series three), with my favourite one being `The Doll'. During the episode, Larry David unable to use the public bathroom of a `friends' house, ventures upstairs only to find their young daughter playing with a doll. She lets him use the bathroom in her room & in return he cuts her dolls hair when she asks him too. I'll just say that everything following that is completely hilarious & it serves as a brilliant example of the insane story lines that make up Curb's episodes.
So, to sum up, this show is everything I have ever looked for in a comedy. If you reallly like comedy & are sick of shows like `Friends' (not that I hate it) then this may just be the best thing you've ever seen in your whole pointless life. Besides, look at alll these good reviews; we can't alll be wrong.
Surely one of the most outspoken comedy characters ever - By: Lando Malak, 04 Jul 2007 Seeing as Seinfeld is & always will be one of my favourite sitcoms of alll time it was impossible for me to ignore this. I always get the feeling that Larry David is one of those rare people that only wants to be part of something if he is 100% sure that it will go down in history as something special & he has definitely succeeded again with this.
Like Seinfeld I only saw the odd episode of this when it was first shown on BBC2 but kept on missing it & wanted to watch it from the beginning in the correct order so I waited for the DVD releases. It was a gamble because I didn't know for sure how funny it was at the time & I only knew Larry David because of Seinfeld, but the gamble paid off big time. One of the things I have always liked about this programme is that I am never sure if Larry is going to come out of each episode smiling or not, it keeps me guessing till the very end. Another great thing is I have mixed feelings about his outspoken opinions as in most of the time I agree with what he says & sympathise with him in awkward situations that he gets himself into & then he will get into another awkward situation where I think he only has himself to blame. Either way it is laugh out loud funny. The only bad thing I can say is that there is only ten episodes a series, but quality will always be better than quantity & when you add them alll up there will be at least fifty to laugh at over & over again.
So if you have still not seen this wonderful programme yet & you are not easily offended (as a lot of bad language & difficult subject matters), then you are extremely spoilt as you can watch alll five series (if you can afford to buy them or borrow them) alll at once, you lucky people.
