Summary
“The Colostomy Bag” is a classic episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, elevated as ever by a guest appearance from the late, great Richard Lewis.
You judge Curb Your Enthusiasm on a weird curve that doesn’t apply to any other show, a sliding scale of how Curb an episode is. This is probably a consequence of time. Curb has been around forever, cycling through directors and guest stars and tones. Its heyday was the loose, improvisational style with the clever, nested construction, so that’s the hypothetical ideal – the Curbiest Curb can get. Episode 8 of Season 12, “The Colostomy Bag”, is very Curb-y.
Larry Is Guilty – Of Everything
In a nice bit of what we can all assume is foreshadowing, Larry begins by being found guilty in a mock trial arranged by his suffering lawyer, Mantle, whose marriage he almost ruined in Episode 5, “Fish Stuck”. Larry’s problem on a legal level is that he can’t stop being Larry. Even after the verdict, instead of assuming his attitude might have been at fault, he instead theorizes that one of the jurors saw him tossing his keys to a valet, judged him as a “big shot”, and poisoned the entire jury against him.
This begins a trend of the episode – of every episode, really – wherein Larry repeatedly tries to blame someone else for his failings and keeps reiterating how numerous and obvious his failings are. The juror is one component of this, as is some artisanal cheese Larry stores for safekeeping in Jeff and Susie’s fridge, and so is a car that a cameoing Steve Buscemi is trying to sell to Richard Lewis, who has had his sense of smell destroyed by long COVID and needs Larry to be his nose.
Oh, and Conan O’Brien, who is the second celebrity guest star in Episode 8, plays a surly version of himself who roams the neighborhood with his Dalmatian and won’t talk to anyone unless they have pre-approved access to his time.
The Colostomy Bag
The episode’s title comes from the interactions between Larry, Richard, and Buscemi’s DiCarlo. The latter is trying to sell a used Mercedes that reeks of cigarettes, and Larry talks Richard out of buying it. When trying to confront Buscemi, he needlessly makes a joke about how things could be worse if he had a colostomy bag, and he can tell from his face that he took it oddly personally. Later, Larry learns through Jeff that DiCarlo recently had surgery, so he assumes he does have a colostomy bag and immediately tries to make amends for the awful gag.
So, Larry buys the Mercedes at the original asking price, despite the smell, and replaces the cheese that Jeff and Susie ate, leaving it in the back seat. Richard is fuming to see Larry with the car and wants to buy it from him, with the proposed smell discount from earlier, which leaves Larry at a net loss.
The Conan Inversion
Just to briefly touch on the Conan cameo, the reason this works is the opposite of the reason why Lori Loughlin’s worked in Episode 6, “The Gettysburg Address”. She was playing an exaggerated version of herself, whereas Conan is playing a completely ridiculous inversion of his famously friendly persona.
When Larry approaches Conan in the street believing that Richard has acquired him “clearance”, Conan is awful about it. So, it’s even more awkward when Larry’s hybrid car runs out of battery right outside Conan’s house and Larry needs to ask if he can borrow his car. The reason for the dead battery is the juror who judged Larry for tossing his keys to the valet. As it happens, he’s also a valet in the building and took the gesture personally (there are, apparently, two types of people in the valet world – “tossers” and “handers”. You can guess which Larry is.)
Either way, Conan agrees to let Larry borrow the car and tosses him the keys – which hit him right in the eye. Maybe the valets had a point. Jeff also ends up with a similar injury after Susie discovers that he was planning to sign power of attorney over to Larry in the event of his death. When Larry and Jeff sign the papers, they’re both wearing an eye patch.
Oh, and DiCarlo had surgery for an ulcer. He doesn’t have a colostomy bag.
RIP Richard Lewis
I’ve mentioned a few times that seeing Richard Lewis on-screen now is a bittersweet affair. He remains hilarious, and his petty dynamic with Larry is the best in the show. But to be reminded that this is the last we’ll see of him (outside of the upcoming finale) is a real downer. Luckily, there’s a nice payoff for him at the end of “The Colostomy Bag”.
With the new car, Richard goes to pick up a woman for a date. Larry naturally mocks him for still believing that he has found “the one” when he’s getting on in years, but the woman he’s dating turns out to be his real-life wife, Joyce Lapinsky. It’s a great moment, but she’s put off by Larry’s cheese, which is still sitting in the back of the car.
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