Would You Pass the Larry David Litmus Test?
In the powder room of my home you will find a litmus test of sorts. Mounted above the toilet, directly in the sightline of anyone entering, there are two felt collages by the artist Sam Sidney, one of Larry David and one of Leon Black, David’s unlikely housemate on his HBO show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, played by the actor J.B. Smoove. Now, if a guest says nothing, one can assume nothing—perhaps she despises Larry David’s brand of humor, or is unfamiliar with it, or even likes it but thinks it’s a little much that he lords it over our bathroom (fair).
But if a guest emerges and proclaims that she too loves Larry and Leon, a few things can be banked upon. Among them, that this guest finds the following setups funny: picking up a prostitute so you have enough people in the car to use the HOV lane; using the death of your own mother to get out of annoying social interactions; lightly betraying your fellow Jews to stay in the good graces of a Palestinian restaurant with delicious chicken; attempting to slip Benadryl into brownies for a friend’s Christian Scientist girlfriend with an embarrassingly swollen face who refuses to take allergy medicine. Related: maybe you can have an extra glass of wine at dinner.
Yes, a houseguest who appreciates Larry David has, according to our highly scientific data, a high bar when it comes to being offended. The same, of course, cannot be said of Larry himself, who revels in both offending and taking offense. This is the beauty of the curmudgeonly character (not to be confused with the real life David, who joked about the impending conclusion of his show, “I will now have the opportunity to finally shed this ‘Larry David’ persona and become the person God intended me to be—the thoughtful, kind, caring, considerate human being I was until I got derailed by portraying this malignant character… And for those of you who would like to get in touch with me, you can reach me at Doctors Without Borders”).
On TV, Larry is Zen only in the sense that he is comfortable with being irritated, at peace with cringe-inducing faux pas. His superpower is his tolerance for confrontation. He offers an alternative sensitivity to the strain we usually see. His favorite activity (in Curb and on Seinfeld before it) is making mountains out of molehills—but without losing sleep over any of it. What a revelation in this day of perma-outrage and ending relationships with those who do not express themselves precisely as we’d wish them to: that you can be sincere and lighthearted about the same thing. That you get ruffled and then unruffled. That you can publicly, even aggressively, disagree with someone while retaining a sense of humor.
You see it in the glimmer in Larry’s eye when he says something he knows is about to rankle, something that is seconds away from eliciting an iconic “Fuck you, Larry, you sick fuck!” from Susie Greene (played with exquisite vulgarity by Susie Essman). It is his belief that interpersonal harmony is nice and all, but ultimately pretty boring content. David, whose farewell season of Curb debuted in February, knows that, among us humans, within the friction lies the fun.
This story appears in the March 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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