Curb Your Enthusiasm “Running With The Bulls”

I’m starting to get the impression that the Marty Funkhouser character exists solely to hold memorial services for Larry to screw up somehow.

Also, whoa, there’s a guest star.

Yeah, Bryan Cranston pops up here, post-Breaking Bad, as Larry’s therapist, and for anyone used to Walter White, it’s a nice reminder that Cranston first made a name for himself with television comedy.  He keeps his voice level and therapist-like.  He never shouts.  He expresses disappointment with Larry for telling Cheryl that he and his wife like truffles–Cheryl uses the same therapist–through something Dr. Templeton calls “Patient-Doctor Confidentiality,” which Larry thinks is a lot of crap, but he respects it anyway.  The idea here is anything the doctor tells the patient, the patient can’t tell other people.  The other way around is certainly a thing, and at no point does Larry even try to ask Dr. Templeton about Cheryl.

It does mean that when Templeton tells Larry about a warehouse sale, and Larry tells Jeff, he won’t say who told him.  And when Susie loudly demands outside the latest Funkhouser memorial that Larry just tell them who told Larry about the warehouse sale, Larry loudly says he won’t while Dr. Templeton is standing nearby.

Templeton is also something of an odd duck.  Cheryl met the man’s wife while Larry isn’t allowed to.  Cheryl can call him by his first name.  Larry can’t.  What’s the rule here?  Then again, this man sits there and listens while Larry rants about whatever is bothering him at the moment, so let the man make his own decisions on that front, I say.

Larry does convince Templeton to buy a new chair for his patients.  He just doesn’t convince Templeton to pay for it when the two men go chair shopping.

Anyway, that’s Larry for ya.  Funkhouser’s nephew–the same one Larry introduced to a prostitute–a plot line from two episodes ago that I failed to mention.  Oh well.  The kid was killed running with the bulls in Pamplona, and Larry sees a Muslim man walk in with his arm hidden and assumes it’s the fatwa again and causes a stampede out of there.  The guy had an arm in a cast.

As for Jeff, he had to buy a house when Susie got suspicious about why he was going everywhere with an attractive young realtor, and it occurs to me, Jeff and Susie are somehow still married when Jeff is a much worse husband than Larry every was, so draw your own conclusions.