Curb Your Enthusiasm
This is the best written, best acted, best executed American situation comedy since All in the Family.
Oh, I know, there was another well-written, well-acted, well-executed show somewhere in there, a little bauble called Seinfeld, but I honestly see Curb Your Enthusiasm as the more refined, better-formed show.
Legend has it that The Dick Van Dyke Show originally starred Carl Reiner, and that a pilot with him as the star exists somewhere. I think if that show had gone forward as planned, it might have turned out something like Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The show has its drawbacks. For instance, if I want sex from my wife, we cannot watch Curb Your Enthusiasm before bedtime.
Three different times, American television has tried to re-make Fawlty Towers, once with Harvey Korman, once with Bea Arthur, and most recently with John Larroquette. I don’t advise against a fourth attempt, but if they should want to try it again, Larry David could be their man. He doesn’t have anything like Cleese’s towering presence or exquisite physicality, but no one else currently in American TV can be as unapologetically unpleasant as he is and still have the audience on his side.
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Arrested Development, all the way.
BWP
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Having said that, Curb Your Enthusiasm is surely a close runner-up (and I agree that it edges out Seinfeld).
BWP
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Haven’t really seen it, but many friends say they like it. You may be right.
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If you haven’t seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so at your earliest convenience. Don’t let the hype dissaude you from seeing it. It really is worth it.
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Both Arrested Development and The Office make my list of post-Seinfeld sitcoms worth watching. CYE, for me, also makes the list but I can’t say that it is either more refined or better-formed than the aforementioned. What CYE has more than Arrested Dev or The Office or even Seinfeld is Edge with a capital ‘E’. No other show has made me howl with laughter and cringe to the point of turning off the TV within the same half hour episode. There is always a point in a Curb episode where I yell at Larry to let it go, be it a question about tipping, the weatherman’s magical golf shot, or Richard Lewis’ kidney. Where Seinfeld diffused the aggravation factor by distributing it among it’s four main characters, CYE focusses it on Larry. IMHO, Seinfeld is the more elegant and comedically refined show because it uses a larger palette: misunderstanding, materialism, promiscuity, pratfalls, secrets, Seinfeld’s own obsession with day-to-day minutiae etc. CYE is only interested in aggravation. How Larry gets aggravated and how Larry aggravates others.
Arrested Development (a brilliant show which luckily got way more time than its ratings deserved, seriously, Todd, go now and get the DVDs, then I’ll tell you some stories I heard about how unhappy Show Runner Hurwitz made the writers on his staff) uses it’s pantheon of quirky characters under the hilarious umbrella of “They Used To Be Rich”. It was a show that was too smart and too quirky for people to identify with, despite the overall excellence of the writing and acting.
The Office steals the “mockumentary” format from The Larry Sanders Show and the underseen Canadian sitcom The Newsroom. An ensemble comedy, it has an interesting mix of super quirky characters (Michael and Dwight), lovable characters (Pam and Jim) and an array of excellent background characters. Focusing on the inherent weirdness of spending 40 hours a week with people you don’t really know, understand or would ever deal with outside of the workplace, The Office is actually similar to Curb in its use of willful misunderstanding to find comedy. Just not as aggravating. I think its the characters’ awareness of the camera and the interviews that allow the audience to understand their misguided actions.
Apologies to all for the long-windedness. I’ve been watching a lot of sitcoms lately as I research a project (FYI: Sex in the City sux).
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I can never really enjoy the Anerican ‘Office’ after seeing the British one… the American one… its good, but its also more judgemental for us rather than making us decide for ourselves, and its not as soul crushingly sad as the British one… Steve Carrell strikes me more like a deadpan clown while Gervais’s character is a man who wants to be Steve Carrell. Also at 23 minutes on DVD and interrupted by commercials on television, it feels much less mundane than the uninterrupted 30 minute version…
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No apologies needed. It is I who must apologize to you for not getting to your script yet. A project in dire need of development has been usurping too much of my attention for, jeez, months now.
I watched the first season of The Office on DVD when it came out. I thought it was really well done and really very well acted, definitely cringe-inducing. Ricky Gervais’s character is an asshole drawn with such detail as to be breathtaking.
But it is, of course, British. I haven’t seen the American remake, but I’ve heard good things about it.
Sex and the City, I’ve found, is useful for getting chicks into bed, but doesn’t hold a candle to the other shows we’re discussing here.
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The British Office is so amazingly, well, British. Wry as opposed to wacky, and class-conscious in a way Americans could never be. Gervais’ David Brent is a genius creation. While Steve Carell does an excellent job with his version, there’s no question that Gervais is onto something totally original and detailed. Too bad the same can’t be said for “Extras” which is a poor rip-off of Curb Your Enthusiasm [he wrote, noting to himself how elegantly the cycle of life continues].
Get to my script when you can, Project Boy. We’re both active, attractive, succesful people and time, she is precious.
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(FYI: Sex in the City sux)
Except for my episode.
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I auditioned for “Arrested Development” and they didn’t hire me. Now they’re cancelled. Do the math.
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[GAAAASP!] That is so awesome! To the max plus one! [yay!]
What part did you audition for? [sneeze]
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Just imagining now the various characters that Mr Urbaniak could have played… the possibilities!
BWP
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AND The Office. Come on, don’t be shy.
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It’s true. I’ve been rejected by many fine shows.
Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm are interesting examples of Yiddish comedy updated…
Curb is the crack-cocaine version of Seinfeld. If you put Seinfeld in a pot, boiled it until it melted, poured out all the liquid and then left the pot on the stove until the leftover crust hardened, the crust would be Curb Your Enthusiasm. Obviously I mean that as a compliment.
Its interesting also to note that Seinfeld was the last high quality laugh track stage audience sitcom and was, when one really looks at it, a pretty convoluted nothing
Curb is Seinfeld without any of the dressings that make it easy to swallow.
Bitchcakes!
Wait a second. what about Newsradio?
There’s a lot of recent series I’ve somehow neglected to watch: Arrested Development and Arrested Development among them. Apparently I need a return to my couch potato ways.
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Is that the one with David Foley and Phil Hartman?
I miss Phil Hartman.
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It is. Plus Stephen Root vs. Patrick Warburton. And other talented folks. (And Joe Rogan — whether he’s talented or not, it was perfect casting.)
I was just saying the other day (yesterday?) how much I missed Phil Hartman.
Let me get some of my likes off my chest…
Best sketch comedy program: Mr. Show. Thirty minutes on rambline insanity. Only SNL in whichever period you think are its “glory days” (I grew up with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, and Kevin Nealon) comes even close.
Best comedy to air on MTV: Daria. Degrassi, Seinfeld, and The Simpsons collide, or Beavis & Butt-head with intelligent protagionists.
Best Nickelodeon program: Rocko’s Modern Life. The anarchy of Ren & Stimpy is to be appreciated, for sure, but RML is a brilliant satire of society.
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What is its competition? Beavis and Butt-head? How many comedies have they done?
Not trying to be snarky, just haven’t watched MTV in many, many years.
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Daria’s not that bad, but Wonder Showzen, although technically on MT2, is genius upon genius with a side of awesome. Essentially its what South Park once was, only not as dogmatic, with the shocking situations being intelligently shocking [a puppet goes through Harlem asking how people feel about the Jews, and what makes you mad. A little boy
dressing up as Hitler and asking people ‘What is wrong with the youth of America… there are a lot of good examples on you tube…] Anyway, its a new brand of comedy in itself…
[Also, although I haven’t watched much of Beavis and Butthead, it is probably the first time pure post-modernism has been sold to the mass market. I don’t believe that that sitation has ever happened again. In fact while Beavis and Butthead were a call for the anti-intellectualization of art, I’d say the fact that young teens everywhere are flocking for Hillary Duff’s movies and ‘High School Musical’ which is a call to embrace your inner dullness, is far worse. At least BaB was funny… come to think of it, Andy Milonakis is in a way post modernism too, although I’ve never quite watched a complete episode…]
As long as we’re on the subject of Nickelodeon I’ve always felt that Invader Zim, cancelled after one year for being two dark, was one of the most brilliant things on television [youtube sports one measly episode chopped up into four parts]…
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You would be right.
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About what?
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Todd Alcott was right about there not being too many MTV shows to compare. Must have been a formatting mix-up. Sorry.
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Still… MTV2 has some pretty nice ones… Wonder Showzen for example… as alreadymentioned…
Check out “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” on FX to tide you over until the next season of “Curb”.