It’s never good when a television show takes a hiatus for a significant period of time. Times change and people change, which is why the comeback of Curb Your Enthusiasm for a ninth season never felt right.
Larry (Larry David) is back and this season is spent on him trying to produce a Broadway play based on the Fatwa on Salmon Rushdie’s head for his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Along the way he gets into his usual level of shenanigans, of course, and the show follows Larry through his curmudgeonly look into the life of the elite in the entertainment industry.
The show’s problem is that it tries to do a couple of things that feel like an antithesis to what the show was before the hiatus. It tries to be cinematic too often, with elaborate camera sequences that feel forced instead of the basic framework the show had for the prior eight seasons. It feels like the show is being forced to adapt to the rest of prestige television, which is more cinematic than ever before, when the interesting thing about Curb for so long was its defiance of that.
The other problem is that Curb was on the downslope of its run and the hiatus marked what was supposed to be a return to form. Unfortunately it feels like the eighth seasons should’ve been the last because this season grinds through its episode run, like Entourage did towards the end.
Nothing of note.
HBO presents Curb Your Enthusiasm. Created by Larry David. Starring Larry David, J.B Smoove, Jeff Garlin. Run Time: 390 minutes. Not Rated. Released on:3.6.18
