Curb Your Enthusiasm “Interior Decorator”

Larry keeps missing appointments with Diane Keaton in this episode.  Ms. Keaton isn’t actually in this episode unless that off-screen voice is really her, and I rather doubt it.  But man, I would not want Diane Keaton mad at me…

Part of the fun of Curb Your Enthusiasm is to ask whether or not Larry is justified in his reactions.  Sometimes he is.  Sometimes he isn’t.  It’s always reasonable in his own mind, but I would imagine that if it never is for the audience that he would have a hard time being seen as a sympathetic figure.

Take this episode:  Larry has a doctor’s appointment, but after he holds the elevator for a woman and she gets ahead of him to sign in first, Larry learns his appointment time doesn’t mean much if someone signs in ahead of him, and whatever is wrong with this woman, she is in the doctor’s exam room for a long time, delaying Larry’s appointment to see Diane Keaton.

By the by, the reason Larry needs to see his doctor?  He jammed his finger while fighting Richard Lewis to get that bracelet for Cheryl.

Now, it turns out that the doctor’s office has a policy of getting to people in the order they signed in, and Larry raises a stink.  Is this reasonable?  This time, sure, but up to a point.  An emergency might require Larry to step aside, but this didn’t look like that sort of doctor’s office.  Plus, it turns out the doctor’s wife is in the same office complex and is both Larry’s lawyer and the lead actress from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, so I thought she looked familiar.

Speaking of, Larry owes the lawyer money because she read the script Diane Keaton liked and has some notes.  However, Larry never asked her to read the script, so why should he pay her?  Is that reasonable?  This may be the most reasonable moment where Larry is irate in the entire episode.  Firing the lawyer also isn’t entirely out-of-bounds.

As for Diane Keaton, who does not appear in this episode, she does call Larry and leave a message just as Cheryl is bringing the new interior decorator around.  Said decorator also works for Keaton, but Keaton’s phone gets the last few digits garbled, and the decorator’s sense of professionalism will not allow her to share the phone number even if Larry has two-thirds of it from Diane Keaton’s own mouth.  Larry fires her.  Is that reasonable?  That one’s a little hard to pin down, but I can respect a person’s professional ethics.

That said, when Larry and Jeff go to Keaton’s house and the decorator finds them there, she accosts Larry for the money her owes her.  Larry has already mailed a check, he says, but she wants a check right then and there.  Larry doesn’t carry his checkbook, leading to her attacking him, and even kissing him a bit for some reason.  Larry can’t give her a check and says so before she wrestles him to the ground.  Is Larry being reasonable here?  Yes.  Why would he have his checkbook on him to go to Diane Keaton’s house?

Larry tends to bring these reactions out in people.

But hey, now he can go back to the doctor’s office because now his finger is broken, but now the office honors appointment times over sign-in times because he raised a stink.  Now he’s raising a new stink, but at least he admits he just wants to go first when asked.  Is that reasonable?  The first complaint was.  At least for the second he’s being honest.

Too bad the doctor won’t treat Larry until he pays both him and his lawyer wife up-front.  That sure is unreasonable.

Huh.  The only woman Larry ends up appeasing this whole episode is a parking attendant, and she ten times the amount of money he owes her due to a wide range of shenanigans.  Maybe he should just stay home some days.