Summary
“The Ugly Section” pushes good taste as far as it’ll go as Larry frets over the seating arrangements of a swanky restaurant and the magical body parts of a late friend’s widow.
This recap of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10, Episode 7, “The Ugly Section”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Meet Carl (Bobby Slayton) — avid golfer, Jets fan, and the husband of a woman who has, according to him, a magical vagina. This comes up at dinner in Tiato, where Larry David determines the seating is divided up into the good-looking section and “The Ugly Section”. Larry, Carl, Jeff (Jeff Garlin), and Richard Lewis are seated in the ugly section following a game of golf which Carl and Richard won in unusually comfortable fashion. These opening scenes contain some gems. Larry, upon seeing Richard’s new Bentley, warns him that people will follow him home and kill him for it. Richard, in response to Larry’s insistence that he should be in the good-looking section, declares he looks like Einstein’s gardener.
It’s less fun for Harold (Adrien Martinez), a bathroom attendant whom Larry talks into leaving for a few moments to give him some privacy — he’s subsequently fired by the smiley restaurant manager (Nick Kroll) who insists Larry’s idea about the seating is nonsense. He turns up at Latte Larry’s hoping Larry can rectify the situation, if he isn’t too busy interviewing potential staff, including Sam Winokur (Skyler Gisondo), son of Dr. Winokur (Ed Begley Jr.), who gets the job even if Larry responds to his dermatological advice with a dismissive, “I’ll go see your dad.”
Larry and Leon (JB Smoove) are thoroughly concerned with Carl’s wife’s apparently magical vagina in Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10, Episode 7, and their interest remains piqued even after Jeff calls to inform Larry that Carl has killed himself. How can he do that when he’s playing golf so well? Larry suspects the Jets. His being a fan has simply proved too much pressure. Larry wants to send a condolence text to Carl’s widow, Veronica (Jane Krakowski). When Leon suggests bringing up the magical vagina Larry doesn’t even bother to pretend he isn’t laughing.
At the golf club, Larry does some sleuthing. He learns that regulation golf clubs can’t be straight and that Richard never leaves his bag at the club. Could he be hiding a non-regulation putter? At Tiato with Jeff and Susie (Susie Essman), Larry has booked a table near the window, in the good-looking section, but is promptly moved to the ugly section. This, Larry believes, proves his long-held belief that he really is ugly, and he has a minor breakdown about the matter. Between this and his inability to accept he might have fairly lost a game of golf, the pettiness is at an all-time high.
Even at Carl’s funeral Larry can’t help but ask Richard why he doesn’t leave his bags at the club, and if his putter is within regulations. He wants to measure it, but he’s distracted by more talk of Veronica’s magical vagina. She’s a pretty blonde and when she arrives, Larry goes to “pay his respects”, blaming the Jets — a sentiment she agrees with — and taking a particular interest in the handles of Carl’s coffin, which he’d like for the cabinets at Latte Larry’s. Once Veronica has finished burying her husband, maybe she could find out about those? He even takes a picture of them during the service.
Somewhat implausibly, Veronica texts Larry after the funeral, and when he instantly asks her out, she accepts. They go to — where else? — Tiato, and Veronica, despite being booked in the good-looking section, is asked to move once Larry arrives. Among the patrons lucky enough to be seated outside the ugly section are Susie and Ted Danson — you can imagine how Larry takes that. In the bathroom, the manager, on the brink of a toilet-related accident, asks Larry to leave so he can have some privacy. Seizing the opportunity, Larry negotiates a seat in the good-looking section and a new job for Harold, this time in the restaurant itself.
Paying off the joke about Richard’s Bentley from the opening scene, a robber and face-painted Jets fan (Jay Larson) tries to jack the vehicle while Larry and Richard are inside it, but he’s thwarted by Larry snatching the golf clubs so he can check them out. Regulation? It doesn’t look like it. Richard has some explaining to do.
What this means is that Carl technically owes Larry $500, which is presumably a matter for his estate. And his estate is Veronica, who happily makes a move on Larry at her home, even though he’s a bit put off by photos of her and her recently-deceased husband. (She turns them over: “May he rest in peace.”) This is Larry’s chance to find out how a vagina can be magical, but he just can’t let the matter of $500 go. When he starts complaining about the Jets, it’s finally a bridge too far, and Veronica throws him out.
The final scene of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10, Episode 7 doesn’t put the matter of Veronica’s physical assets to bed. At lunch in the good-looking section of Tiato — finally! — Sam arrives, having conducted a full-body exam of Veronica’s flawless skin. “The only word that comes to mind,” he says, “is magical.” At least Larry gets confirmation that he was right about the ugly section. The mystery of the magical vagina remains unsolved.
