Summary
As good a premiere as Curb Your Enthusiasm has had in years, “Atlanta” brings back an old favourite but stays true to Larry’s usual curmudgeonly style.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is back, folks, and Season 12 will be the last run of Larry David’s curmudgeonly day-to-day. Episode 1 of the final season, “Atlanta”, feels like one of Curb’s best premieres in a while, burning the same kind of nitpicky energy for fuel, touching on bigger underlying themes and ideas, and bringing some old mainstays – Auntie Rae, Larry’s troublesome relationship with dogs – back to the fore.
The opening scenes of “Atlanta” essentially serve to get us up to speed on where things stand after the couple of years since Season 11 concluded. Young Larry has become a huge hit and the insufferable Maria Sofia has inexplicably become a breakout star on the back of it, much to the annoyance of Larry himself. Speaking of Larry, he’s still living with Irma, though counting down the days until he can dump her (her sponsor having told him that she would be totally unable to handle the relationship ending for at least six months.)
These two matters will likely be season-long subplots. Maria is in this episode, but it’s her pudgy dog Pechuca that is the primary focus; as will all previous episodes, or at least most of them, “Atlanta” is a warren of short-term subplots that all seem completely distinct but end up interweaving throughout the episode in smart and satisfying ways.
Larry’s Glasses
The hook is that Larry is going to Atlanta to attend the birthday party of an affluent African businessman. Maria is going with him because of her Young Larry success, and so is Leon since his family, including Auntie Rae, all live there. Leon’s presence is welcome since he has the best one-liner of the episode when he says Huckleberry Finn “looks wet all the time,” but it’s nice to see Auntie Rae again too.
Rae trying on Larry’s glasses deforms the stems and causes him to borrow a pair that work but make him look ridiculous. Because of the latter point, Larry tries to make do with his old ones, which fall off into the hotel toilet. Larry being Larry, he tries to finesse the maid he has already annoyed by leaving his stuff strewn everywhere into fishing them out for him, which backfires when she throws all his clothes off the balcony (it’s her last day, so she’s “going out with a bang.”)
The Brooke/Brookie Conundrum
Larry is contractually obligated to be cordial at the birthday party, but naturally he’s unable to because he can’t get past certain things that most people would just overlook. One is that the host, Michael Fouchay, is a white South African, which Larry doesn’t think qualifies as “African”. The other is that he’s introduced to a woman named Brooke who is cheerfully referred to as Brookie by her friends – though Larry is warned to simply call her Brooke, since he doesn’t know her well. Larry’s already confused by the whole matter before someone who has only met Brooke once calls her Brookie without being admonished for it, whereas Larry was immediately corrected. It’s exactly the kind of petty nonsense that Curb has reliably built entire episodes around.
After his shenanigans at the party, Fouchay refuses to pay Larry. When Larry goes to confront him, they try to repair their rift in the same manner that apartheid was apparently healed, and it goes quite well. However, Larry has a new habit of accidentally butt-dialling people, which was established at the top of the episode, and when Pechuca butt-dials Fouchay, he overhears Larry complaining about him and decides to withhold payment again.
The season premiere ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, with Larry returning Auntie Rae’s glasses while she’s in line to vote in a local election. Since she has been there a while, Larry offers her a bottle of water, which puts him in direct violation of the Election Integrity Act. He’s arrested, and his mugshot – deliberately recreating a rather famous one that I don’t think anyone will miss the reference to – stays on-screen throughout the closing credits.
What did you think of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12, Episode 1? Let us know in the comments.
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