Larry David is one of the greatest comedic minds we’ve been lucky enough to have on our television screens. Being the man behind Seinfeld (one of the most successful sitcoms of all time) you might have thought his career had already peaked 20 years ago, if you even knew who he was. But since then, he managed to create Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of the funniest, smartest and most innovative comedies I’ve been fortunate enough to watch.
The format of the show managed to give Larry a platform to create an alternate reality, very close to our own, featuring the character of ‘Larry David’ and his life. He managed to make statement after statement on the quotidian, staging each character and person in his world to comedic timing to show how bad someone can make their own life if they’re an outright arsehole, even for someone as successful as him.
Curb Your Enthusiasm has seen a resurgence as of late due to its long awaited ninth season and the arrival of ‘Curb’ memes – clips perfectly being timed with ‘Frolic’, it’s main theme which always closes the show on a comedic beat. But to me, ‘Curb’ memes only understate and dramatically miss the mark on communicating the sheer brilliance of the show. The amazing moments where all the disparate parts of an episode click together and connect are only accentuated by the fact that most of its components are improvised, starting purely from David’s prompts. With this commitment to improvisation, it’s a lot easier to see the pure talent from the show’s supporting cast – Jeff Garland, Cheryl Hines, Susie Essman, JB Smoove and Ted Danson (my favourite) all improvise as fictionalised versions of their real-life selves with comedic mastery. Although some of them are purely characters, their mannerisms and thoughts come straight from their actors.
The first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that I watched is coincidentally my favourite, along with the topic of this post. I first saw The Benadryl Brownie (episode 2 of Season 3) on More 4 here in the UK around 8 years ago. I was curious to see what it was about, since all I had seen was a miserable looking bald man with glasses during the More 4 promos and his unexplained appearance on ‘Hannah Montana’. I was quite young for its main audience but by then I had already been understanding and enjoying mature comedies such as The Thick of It and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.
The Benadryl Brownie sees Larry David and Richard Lewis try a scheme to treat Lewis’ girlfriend Debra with a Benadryl, after she suffered a face-swelling allergic reaction to peanuts at Larry’s dinner party. The reason why they’re in this predicament is because Debra is a Christian scientist, who refuses to use medication and Lewis promised to take Debra to The Emmy Awards.
And in the words of Larry: “She’s pretty hell bent on going too.”
Obviously, this provides a hilarious problem for these two to solve and Curb Your Enthusiasm’s specialty – a socially awkward situation where the appropriate thing is to do nothing at all or have a civilised conversation with each party about it. But Larry David isn’t reasonable in this world. In this world, Larry and Richard are petty, pedantic, superficial humans who can convince themselves that anything they think of will work.
I’m going to take apart my favourite scene in the whole episode, where Larry and Richard are asking Cheryl (David’s wife who is constantly having to put up with his antics) to bake some brownies with some Benadryl in them. Obviously, she thinks they’re crazy and that this is a stupid idea (it is) but they both try their best to convince her of its genius and justify it.
Watch the scene here, because we’re going to get into the tiny details that make it so special for me. We’ll be starting from (2:33) when Cheryl susses out Richard’s motive…
Larry: Tell her the truth! You’re embarrassed to be seen with her, and I don’t blame him and so what? So she takes a little Benadryl, you put it in the brownie, big deal!
Here Larry starts to fidget whilst opening the packet of Benadryl to help illustrate his point of how easy it is to spike brownies with Benadryl. His frustration at the fact Cheryl is arguing with his plan is just evidence of how deluded he is about it working, and almost as if he’s trying to remove an obstacle for her to make it see easier…
Cheryl: Why don’t you buy some brownies-
Larry and Richard: You can’t you can’t!
Cheryl: -put it in there and leave me out of this?
Richard: We went over this.
Both Richard and Larry are quick to shoot down Cheryl’s RIDICULOUS suggestion of buying brownies and adding Benadryl to them. She’s such an amateur! With their tired delivery of “You can’t!” and “We went over this.” it’s obvious they drove there, discussing in detail why their plan is so perfect, and why it WILL work instead of trying to figure out a more honest solution. They’re so far down their own rabbit hole of bullshit, every question of their plan seems stupid.
Larry: – No! Don’t you know anything about tampering? Huh? Do you know anything about tampering? Well you can’t do that because the brownie will fall apart. It’s gotta be in the mix-
Richard: Exactly
Larry: –when you make the brownie!
This line right here. This line absolutely kills me every god damn time. The deliberate choice of the word ‘tampering’ gives so much insight to what’s going on in these idiots’ heads. It’s the suggestion that this operation is so delicate and sophisticated that it should be treated like a secret mission. The very fact that Larry is saying this out loud is just another illustration of how dumb this whole situation is and how deep into it they are.
Tampering is such a selectively negative word that Larry has selected to clear any guilt in his action. It’s one you don’t hear often, but when you do it’s in a mundane, bureaucratic situation referring to fire extinguishers or a sealed package. Larry’s demeaning delivery towards Cheryl for being an absolute amateur at tampering just shows how much of a tampering expert he believes he is, but the truth is nobody is an expert on tampering, least of all Larry David. The following lines on how the Benadryl is a detriment to the brownies’ structure just make it better, with Larry making it sound like this is the 37th batch of brownies he’s tampered with and an attempt to make Cheryl as the fool in the room for not being aware that pre-baked brownies fall apart when you covertly add allergy medicine to them.
Cheryl: Maybe you guys should take care of this yourself and-
Richard: -How can we? We don’t know-
Larry: – I can’t bake.
Cheryl: – leave me out of this.
Larry: – I don’t know how to bake. What do you mean? They have to be baked. They have to be baked!
The sheer incompetence of Larry and Richard is on full display here. They have no idea how to bake brownies, so they must drag Cheryl into their scheme. When the idea of them baking is proposed they instantly and unashamedly admit upfront that they don’t know how (or don’t want) to bake. Repeated to the point where they act as if it should be obvious to Cheryl that baking won’t be the role they play in this plan. The fact they refuse to even get their hands dirty (literally) in their stupid ass scheme is just indicative of how lazy they are. They can convince themselves their scheme can succeed, only if someone else does their dirty work.
Cheryl: Don’t you think she’s gonna taste Benadryl in the brownies?
Richard: No! it’s, I had this it’s
Larry: It’s totally tasteless. There’s no taste to this stuff.
Richard: I would know about this stuff, you know, I would know
Larry: There’s no taste to it. I spoke to the pharmacist.
Cheryl: Oh, you asked him if you put this in brownies, will someone be able to taste it?
Larry: There’s no taste to it at all. They’re odourless and tasteless.
Cheryl continues to be the voice of reason, but Larry assures her that the Benadryl is odourless and tasteless, going as far as to open one and taste a tiny amount in a pathetic attempt at convincing her. Cheryl’s improv is gold here, quipping about having a conversation with the pharmacist on whether it’s easy to slip Benadryl in brownies. Our heads can very easily imagine Larry being socially obtuse enough to straight up ask that question to the pharmacist, the very thought of which makes me smile. Richard is particularly funny here, with him making a reference to his history of addiction – a card his character plays very often on the show for comedic effect.
Richard: My heart is breaking for her big head.
Larry: It’s grotesque. It’s like she should be in a carnival on Coney Island, I’m telling you.
These lines help contribute to the image the episode is builds of Debra’s face after her allergic reaction. The show never actually reveals it, so it’s hilarious to hear how many ways Larry and Richard can keep making her face sound even worse. This is also evidence of how laughably shallow Richard is, after he rambled several times in the episode how much he loves her personality and soul.
Cheryl: This is the dumbest idea I have heard in a long time.
Larry: You know what? It’s a good idea, ’cause if it works…
Cheryl: Mmhmm
Larry:- she thinks the prayer did it.
Richard: *slams table*
Larry: That’s what’s so smart about it.
Richard: Unbelie- Now the idea is a genius idea!
Larry: It’s not like, “How did I get better all of a sudden?”
Richard: It was the, it was the religion! Yeah, it was the religion! Prayer worked.
Larry: Yeah.
Cheryl’s remarks about it being the dumbest idea she’s heard in a long time suggests an (accurate) history of putting up with Larry’s stupid plans. But Larry reassures her that it’s a great idea, because in the very unlikely scenario it works, the seemingly miraculous result will have an explanation! I particularly love how he theatrically withholds the reason why it’s a good plan for dramatic effect; he wants to milk it because he sincerely thinks it’s so clever. Richard punctuates this with a table slam, half to help sell the idea to Cheryl, the other half to congratulate himself and his friend for coming up with such an ingenious explanation. He continues selling it with “Unbelie-” but his own, genuine conviction instantly breaks through, so he can praise it as “genius”. The fact that they refer to it as “the religion” shows a comedically ignorant and childish comprehension of Debra’s faith and illustrates it as tangible force which heals people, from the perspective of Larry and Richard. Absolutely hilarious.
So that wraps up my little deconstruction of one of my favourite Curb Your Enthusiasm moments from The Benadryl Brownie. I absolutely love this episode to bits and I absolutely implore you to at least watch this episode and hopefully you’ll open your world to one of the greatest comedies ever made. If there’s one thing I discovered when properly binge watching this show is that the clips on their own are hilarious, but the show goes well beyond that and each episode and season are much more holistic than it might seem at first. The show consistently brings together all its parts during the conclusion to create pure comedic magic – the technical aspects of the story work together masterfully as though it were a finely tuned watch. This is something that can’t be conveyed by simply watching disparate clips on YouTube or reading these posts.
Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm may be an absolute idiot, but in our world he’s a comedy genius.
minutiae+musings 