Curb Your Enthusiasm “The Shrimp Incident”

Larry gets himself in more trouble here by using a word in public that I would never type or say if I could help it.

I plan to not type or say that word here right now.

Since Larry and Jason Alexander couldn’t agree on a meeting place to discuss the new show, Larry just retooled it for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and that gets Larry and Cheryl an invite to a couple’s poker game at Julia’s house, meaning there’s another appearance by Julia’s real-life husband Brad Hall as himself.  That’s kinda nice, if you ask me.  No one did, but I still say it’s kinda nice.

But for the most part, I’ve noticed a slight uptick in season two of Larry’s winning in some small way.  Maybe he gets Jeff in trouble while disillusioning a pro-wrestler’s kids.  Maybe he gets to play Wagner outside of the house of a man who accused Larry of being a bad Jewish person for playing Wagner.  Things don’t work out entirely Larry’s way, but he had these small victories along the way, and they are bound to keep Larry miserable, but he’s had some small victories.

This episode?  Maybe not.  All I know is he isn’t undergoing the usual social embarrassment over his bad behavior in this one as the closing credits roll.  That might be up to Cheryl because Larry’s use of a certain word during the couple’s poker game and a little game he and Cheryl play where he makes like he’s beating her (he doesn’t even touch her, she just reacts like he is), and some bruises she has on her arm thanks to a rough masseuse’s treatment of her tennis elbow, have a dentist thinking Larry is abusive, so the episode ends when a family services employee shows up at the Davids’ door to ask if she’d like to file charges.  Larry is standing just a few feet away, acting like a bit of a doofus, and the look on her face suggests she might just be thinking about it.

I mean, he wasn’t interested in going to one restaurant for a drink before going to a different restaurant for dinner, even after Julia and her manager pointed out that Cheryl might just be saying that sort of thing because she wants to do a certain activity that would probably make Larry a very happy man.  Yes, I am being vague on purpose, but I don’t think that is something that should be a big mystery to people.

And what does that have to do with shrimp?  The episode is called “The Shrimp Incident,” after all.  In a nutshell, the shrimp are about Larry’s overwhelming need to nitpick when he doesn’t have enough shrimp in his kung po shrimp order, noteworthy because the restaurant accidentally gave his order to someone else, namely the president of HBO.  Larry’s own past involving an imaginary step-father, the shrimp, and his general orneriness will not be seeing HBO’s producing his new show with Julia, an ironic thing considering what network Curb Your Enthusiasm aired on and what network Louis-Dreyfus’s Veep would air on.

Plus, Jimmy might have a sitcom in the works there.  Stay tuned.