Curb Your Enthusiasm “The Group”

You know, I got to a point where I realized I couldn’t write up episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on my work computer, but this may be the first Curb Your Enthusiasm episode that made me think that.

That has less to do with some of the episode’s storylines, like how Cheryl and Larry debate who can initiate sex or how it looks like Jeff is cheating on his wife, because the main plot has to do with Larry’s attendance at an incest survivors’ support group.  Everyone there, including guest star Loraine Newman, was molested by a family member (and yes, step-brothers count) except Larry, and the only reason Larry is there is he went as moral support for an ex-girlfriend who had her own problems.

Larry, naturally, shouldn’t be there, but he’s there, and while the idea there is nothing said there will leave the room, Larry is put on the spot and claims he was molested by his uncle, a guy whose description completely matches his generally harmless Uncle Nathan, a guy whose worst trait is he doesn’t seem to know when to leave at the end of a party.

So, as Cheryl is picked to be in The Vagina Monologues by an unseen but talented theater director who turns out to be Loraine Newman, the most tragic of the victims in the support group.  Am I supposed to find her endless litany of being molested by older male relatives funny?  I don’t quite know.  I do know that movie about the first episode of Saturday Night Live was pretty good, and the actress playing Newman was pretty charming.

So, an episode about molestation survivors, Cheryl and Larry’s sex life, and The Vagina Monologues, clearly a lot of stuff that I can’t exactly write up on my work computer.

Oh, and then then episode ends with Newman’s character flipping out backstage when she meets Larry’s harmless Uncle Nathan, an incident that only makes sense to Larry and Cheryl because Larry had to explain things to Cheryl since she spent a good chunk of the episode feeling jealous of all these women hanging around with Larry, an odd thing because, well, have you looked at Larry David?

However, Uncle Nathan got yelled at, something that seems a lot more small-scale considering the sorts of things that could happen to Larry.  This was a season finale?  Seems a little low-stakes, but the structure of the episode is a lot better than a lot of the rest of the season.