Critical Condition: Curb Your Enthusiasm

Curb Your Enthusiasm | SoHo, 8.30 Thursday

➢ “The show didn’t waste much time on what Larry has been doing in the intervening years, the whole Paris thing or stuff from seasons past, but instead presented the main story idea that after five years, Larry has finished writing a musical comedy — Fatwa! The Musical — about Salman Rushdie and the Ayatollah. He then goes on Kimmel and makes a bunch of jokes about the Ayatollah, does an impression of him and gets in a world of trouble. That’s pretty much going to be season nine, and it should be, as expected, pretty, pretty good.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

➢ “The primary takeaway from Curb Your Enthusiasm’s long-awaited ninth-season premiere, Foisted!, is that the show — its style, its characters, its tone — is almost exactly what it was when it aired its Season 8 finale in 2011. It’s welcome, but a little strange, too. Could six years really pass by quite so seamlessly? Could so little, really, have changed? … All told, there is plenty to be enthusiastic about.” — Variety.

➢ “Despite a six-year gap between Season 8 and Season 9, Larry David’s attack on uncomfortable social customs felt right at home in 2017. Some things never change, and David is certainly one of those things. Thank God.” — IndieWire.

➢ “At least there was no Girl Scout having her first period in Larry David’s TV home. The 9th season premiere of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm was a mixed bag of provocative jokes and celebrity cameos, as the eternally jaundiced David, in his first Curb outing in six years, pushed his ornery envelope without veering into the outright tastelessness we saw in last season’s premiere … This season of Curb may not set the world on fire, but there will always be that one unbelievable thing Larry says that will make you shake your head as you laugh, really hard.” — New York Post.

➢ “It picks up with no alterations other than those time arranges; otherwise, it is completely of a piece with the seasons that preceded it. There has been no attempt to fix what was not broken, to innovate, to go deeper; given that one point of the show is the impossibility of meaningful change, change would be inappropriate.” — Los Angeles Times.