Summary
Curb’s final season continues to exhibit all the qualities that made it such a hit over the years, with brilliantly intertwining stories and memorable gags.
Larry David is disgruntled, but crucially, he’s not Disgruntled, an important distinction in Episode 4 of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12. As much of a habit as Larry is making of becoming the face of various causes, he didn’t write an itemized list of grievances and pin it to the noticeboard of the Ocean View Golf Club, much to the distress of Mr. Takahashi. But everyone assumes he did anyway.
Larry immediately validates everyone’s suspicions by making such a fuss about an 11 am breakfast cutoff that he causes a minor dining revolt. As ever with Larry, weirdly he’s right, but this is the kind of thing you’d just let slide. Not Larry David, though, who isn’t content with bringing his own organic eggs to a restaurant – he wants to be able to eat them at 11:10 am, too.
Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Curb knows that this will become a recurring thing throughout the episode and that it’ll factor into the exposure of the real Disgruntled, who is quickly revealed to be Jeff. The next piece of this puzzle is therapy.
Couples Therapy
Irma – correctly, though not realizing that Larry intends to dump her soon anyway – thinks she and Larry need couples therapy. Through Susie, they attend the office of Melanie Stainback, who’s married to Seinfeld writer Hobie Turner. Larry knows both and thus is appalled by the idea of revealing personal information to Melanie, but he’s still conscious about Irma relapsing so reluctantly agrees to go along.
Melanie insists that in her office she’s simply a therapist, not a friend, but she blurs the lines constantly. Jeff and Susie also experience the same thing. Susie takes the opportunity to rattle off a laundry list of grievances, including Jeff being Disgruntled, which would be bad enough even if they couldn’t hear a patient in the urologist’s office next door sneezing, implying that whoever’s in there can also hear everything going on in Melanie’s office too.
With Jeff worried that his identity as Disgruntled will be exposed, he and Larry instruct Leon to book an appointment with the urologist, which he’s happy to do until he realizes that the examination is a little more invasive than simply peeing in a cup. His screams are easily audible through the wall.
Willie Geist Gets A Scoop
This all quickly begins to loop back around to the breakfast thing. Larry rushes to order, which causes Irma to be unsatisfied with her choices, so Hobie offers to swap with her, which annoys Larry. And to make matters worse, Larry suspects his organic eggs aren’t being used.
As it happens, NBC’s Willie Geist is in L.A. to profile Larry about his inadvertent liberal heroism in Episode 1, but he somewhat implausibly begins to focus primarily on uncovering the identity of Disgruntled. He only suspects Larry further when he drags him into the kitchen to catch the apparently “breaking news” of Larry’s eggs being left on the counter and his bread being thrown out. Even the sit-down interview in Larry’s home quickly turns to the golf club matter, with Geist asking Larry outright if he’s Disgruntled.
Since Larry hasn’t been especially complimentary of Melanie, Hobie confronts him on the golf course, which leads to Jeff’s identity as Disgruntled being revealed. However, in a stupidly funny Spartacus moment, everyone claims to be Disgruntled, getting Jeff and Larry off the hook.
Before leaving town Geist visits the urologist, and while in the office he overhears Melanie violating doctor-patient confidentiality once again by telling Hobie that Jeff is Disgruntled, exonerating Larry. He remains, for now, an MSNBC darling, and the figurehead of multiple burgeoning social movements, quite against his will.
I can’t wait to see how he messes all this up.
What did you think of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12 Episode 4? Let us know in the comments.
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