Curb Your Enthusiasm “Affirmative Action”

I spend a good deal of time in these write-ups asking if Larry deserves whatever happened to him in any given episode, if he is responsible for his misfortunes, and many times, these things just happen to him regardless of whether he did something wrong or someone else maybe pushed him that way.  Cheryl’s desire for a specific bracelet or an offensive typo in a newspaper are not Larry’s fault because he didn’t really do anything wrong.

But this episode?  No, everything here is basically Larry’s fault.

Curb, like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is basically unafraid to go to places most comedies won’t go, so what happens when Larry is seen as racist?  All he has to do is get a prescription for Cheryl filled for a rash before they go out to dinner.  He doesn’t do this in part because he and Richard Lewis need to clear a few things up since Larry hasn’t been calling his friend.  When Richard’s African American dermatologist and friend jogs by, Larry, after an introduction, makes a bad affirmative action joke and offends the doctor.

Things get worse from there.  He never gets the prescription filled.  He tries to bribe a matre’d at the restaurant he and Cheryl are eating at and Larry uses the prescription instead of actual money.  He goes to a different restaurant to use the bathroom to avoid talking to one man, runs into an African American woman he didn’t hire once who accuses him of racism, and then ends up talking to the man he tried to avoid when he gets back.  Cheryl’s prescription was tossed out, but maybe her doctor can call in something new, but no, you can’t call a doctor on weekends unless it’s an emergency.  And so forth.

Pretty much everything here is Larry fault.  True, as is always the case here and on Seinfeld, people overreact and Larry’s life gets worse, but he didn’t need to make the joke and he probably shouldn’t have tried to bribe the matre’d.  And he really shouldn’t have tried to bribe the pharmacist at the end of the episode.  Cheryl will probably have Larry sleeping on the sofa for a while there.  I will say this may be the episode I have found the funniest so far.  Larry has to go to Richard’s doctor for a new prescription, and he does apologize profusely, an apology that largely works as the doctor has a lot of African American friends over, and they seem amused by everything once they learn Larry is a comedian until the woman from the restaurant walks in and explains why Larry is racist.  There have been times when I would suggest Larry was innocent, but this isn’t one of them.  Maybe if Cheryl had picked up her own medication, but it’s not out of the question for a husband to pick up medication for a wife if he’s going out anyway.

At any rate, I don’t believe Larry is a racist.  He’s a misanthrope.  Big difference.

Yeah, I don’t have much to say aside from maybe Larry had it coming this time.