Summary
“The Gettysburg Address” is a great episode of Curb, paying off several on-going gags and subplots, and featuring not one but two extremely game guest stars parodying themselves.
Larry David’s crusade against restaurants continues in Episode 6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s final season, titled “The Gettysburg Address” for reasons that will become clear. A lot of Season 12 has been quintessential Curb in many ways, and that is very true of this outing, which is dense with interlacing plot threads, callbacks to previous episodes, and subtle recurring gags (this is the second time someone has brought up Larry writing the much-derided Seinfeld finale, despite not working on the last two seasons. Are we building to something?)
So, about that restaurant thing. After the debacle with the eggs in Episode 4 and the stuck fish in Episode 5, Larry is clearly on a crusade against restauranteurs. The latest to feel his wrath is Shimon, the proprietor of an all-you-can-eat buffet place named, predictably, Shimon’s, played by Ike Barinholtz doing a ludicrous caricature. Although to be fair, Larry’s sticking up for Leon in this case.
Leon’s problem is that he has taken “all you can eat” as a challenge and is running through plates like nobody’s business, so Shimon bans him, which Larry thinks is unfair. Yes, this will come to matter later.
Why “The Gettysburg Address”?
Larry’s latest theory is that people waste too much of their lives peeing. He thinks that we could take that time as an opportunity to improve ourselves, so he takes to memorizing the Gettysburg Address – out loud! – every time he uses the bathroom.
Larry gets the idea for this from Ted Danson, who pops up and tells Larry that he’s playing Abraham Lincoln in a play opposite Lori Loughlin. Because of the whole college admissions scandal, Loughlin can’t get into any golf clubs, despite the fact she likes playing, so Ted suggests that Larry could once again champion the underdog – there’s that theme again – and get her a club membership. Larry does this by essentially reworking the Gettysburg Address to apply, but the caveat is that Lori has to play a few rounds of golf with Larry.
Lori Loughlin plays a parody of herself
Lori is one of two guest stars who really rises to the challenge of enthusiastically parodying themselves in this episode. During the golf games, it quickly emerges that Lori is an awful con artist, trying to get away with things and rip people off and lie and cheat at every turn, which for someone who was convicted of ripping people off shows a surprisingly on-point sense of humor.
Lori gets Larry, Jeff, and Susie tickets to Ted’s play, but we’ll get to that in a minute since a few other subplots also converge there.
Sienna Miller and the fruit
All throughout Season 12 has been a recurring subplot of Sienna Miller implausibly having a thing for Larry, and that comes to fruition in “The Gettysburg Address”. Having now broken up with Irma, Larry is free to date Sienna, and they go to see a friends and family screening of her latest movie. Larry notices – and points out, because he’s Larry David – that Sienna always seems to be eating fruit during emotional scenes in her movies. She immediately becomes defensive and Larry, being Larry, keeps pressing the issue. He also bickers with someone behind him about the etiquette of draping one’s jacket over the back of their chair, which will, as ever, matter shortly.
Because of Larry pointing this out, Sienna deliberately avoids fruit during her latest production, which causes her problems on set. Seemingly unable to act without the aid of something to munch on, Larry delivers her a pear and saves her career, leading to a ridiculous but very funny sequence in which she emotionally eats the pear between lines and spits bits of it in her co-star’s face.
Is Larry’s relationship with Sienna saved? No, not at all, since he questions her made-up Jewish words and parables, and then her wigs, at which point she reveals she has alopecia and storms off.
Susie’s Billboards
The final subplot involves Susie’s new caftan business. She’s advertising it on a giant billboard, but someone has graffitied it with a giant penis heading directly into her mouth. Larry and Jeff find this absolutely hysterical, but Susie is fuming. However, the vandalism provides a bump in sales. Larry and Jeff suggest that more penises would increase sales further, and like clockwork, more penises crop up on the billboard.
This – all together now – will matter in a bit.
How does Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12 Episode 6 end?
At the premiere of A House Divided, Ted’s play, Larry is seated right next to Cheryl, but directly behind the waiter from the Chinese restaurant where, in “Fish Stuck”, Larry became obsessed with the idea that a fish was stuck to the tank filter and subsequently died. They once again argue about the fish, and then about the etiquette of the waiter’s jacket being draped over the back of the chair.
When Larry hears Ted recite the Gettysburg Address, he needs to pee, having formed some kind of Pavlovian response to it. He trips over the coat and lands face down between the seats, urinating himself on the floor (and ruining Ted’s performance, not that he’ll be particularly concerned about that.)
Episode 12 ends with Larry being arrested again, and this time not for a noble social cause like in Episode 1 of this season. Instead, he’s busted for making an illegal U-turn to snap a picture of the billboard for Sienna Miller’s new movie, which someone has drawn a penis on. While the cop is talking to him, she spots spray paint in the car, and to prove he’s not the billboard saboteur, Larry confesses to having painted the word “Not” in front of “All You Can Eat” at Shimon’s place. Duh.
Leon Corner
Leon has had the best line in almost every episode of this season, so I figured I might as well start highlighting his best jokes in their own dedicated section. He only shows up briefly in “The Gettysburg Address”, but he nonetheless makes an impact with his idea for a car powered entirely by pee. He thinks it’d be called a Peeus.
Dude’s a genius.
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