Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 9 Premiere: Was It Worth the Wait?
Larry is pretty, pretty, pretty much a dead man walking by the conclusion of Sunday’s long-anticipated Season 9 premiere of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
PHOTOSCurb Your Enthusiasm: The 12 Worst Things Larry Has Ever Done, Ranked
As we learn at the top of the super-sized opener, Larry David’s lead curmudgeon has spent the past five years working on a new musical titled simply and provocatively Fatwa! The Musical. Word of the top-scret, Ayatollah Khomeini-skewering project gets out via Larry himself during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and, needless to say, the Iran’s Ayatollah is not amused. In fact, he’s so not amused that he issues a fatwa against Larry.
“I got a fatwa!” a panicked Larry screams to his agent/BFF Jeff (Jeff Garlin).
As a result of the whole international incident, which could’ve been avoided had Larry’s new assistant, Lampin’ Leon (returning series regular J.B. Smoove) fulfilled his primary duty of delivering messages to his boss, Fatwa! The Musical is blacklisted in Hollywood. And Larry is reduced to running around town in a disguise.
Of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the Curb premiere who didn’t want Larry dead. His other notable premiere adversaries include…
Betty and Numa | Larry’s relationship with Jeff’s lesbian barber Betty (played by Julie Goldman) got off to a rocky start when he assumed, based on her masculine appearance, that he did not have to hold a door open for her. “I didn’t think you were the type who would want a guy to hold the door open for her,” he awkwardly posited. Adding insult to injury, he later offered her unsolicited advice about her upcoming wedding to Numa (New Girl‘s Nasim Pedrad), suggesting that her more conventionally feminine significant other should wear the wedding dress (versus Betty herself). “I’m not getting bride vibes from you,” he tells her, dismissively. “You’re a lovely girl Betty, but you’re not a bride, unfortunately.” Betty runs the idea by Numa, she flips out, and the pair end up breaking up. And now Numa is out for Larry’s blood. “You have no business weighing in on this wedding,” she fumed. “What kind of psychopath interferes with the nuances of a lesbian wedding?!”
Richard Lewis | When Richard’s beloved parakeet dies, Larry attempts to console him by sending him “the most despicable” text. As Larry argues, “It’s a dead parakeet. It’s a funny thing.” Richard disagrees. Strongly.
Susie | Susie Essman’s acid-tongued delight learns that Larry “foisted” his “limpy ass” lemon of an assistant (Carrie Brownstein) on her after Jimmy Kimmel did the same to him, and, in the episode’s final moments, she attacks him in his shower.
So, getting back to the question posed in the title, was it worth the wait? Grade the episode below and then elaborate in the comments!
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