\n<\/p>\n
Etiquette is a pact. In a functional society, it\u2019s also an offering of goodness, decency, forbearance and respect, a flavor of the social contract, in which we all pay a small personal freedom tax so that everyone feels accommodated. The offering risks rejection, risks offense: Some people just won\u2019t care about their civic duty. They won\u2019t care that you\u2019re performing yours. Some of them won\u2019t care with zeal. \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm\u201d takes up that risk. It\u2019s Emily Post with boxing gloves.<\/p>\n
Larry is hardly the show\u2019s only offender. It knows too well that we all have our moments, our … things. Clanging differences are what drive the show. And through it, I spy Post\u2019s ideal out on some faraway horizon, an ideal we call \u201cAmerica.\u201d It taps into a puritanical force so strong that etiquette becomes an almost religious expression of gentry; we\u2019re not even sure how we\u2019ve come to abide by it. Susie (Susie Essman) has been the show\u2019s true superego, there to zap Larry and curse his transgressions. Her denouncements are bangers. But they always come down to what she once tells him after he more or less asks whose rule he broke: \u201cI don\u2019t know the derivation<\/em>,\u201d she snips. \u201cIt\u2019s just not done.\u201d<\/p>\n On this show, no stable etiquette emerges. Susie\u2019s version is aspirational and oriented toward propriety. She\u2019s a proud Jewish woman whose etiquette tax seems to entail the public tamping of her full ethnic self. A stern Japanese man, Mr. Takahashi (Dana Lee), owns the country club Larry belongs to and insists upon a strict etiquette of his own that, come Season 12, the membership has revolted against. For the last seven seasons, Larry has had a housemate named Leon (J.B. Smoove), a do-ragged sex machine who has surmounted an entertainment stereotype to provide a haven for Larry\u2019s insecurities and a resource on etiquette (no, Larry, you can\u2019t break up with a woman in a wheelchair \u2014 or anybody! \u2014 over the phone) and its Black alternative, which often entails slipping into and out of respectability. In other words, within that pact resides variety. The ideal that etiquette might aim to provide is harmony. But America has always made its attainment laughable. We are a nation of etiquettes<\/em> \u2014 well, for the show\u2019s purposes, we\u2019re a Los Angeles of etiquettes, a New York of them.<\/p>\n It identifies etiquette as an M.R.I. of our character, as glue for our communities. To build a data set, its makers have sicced Larry on us. He\u2019s simultaneously our great crusader against shoddy parking, wobbly cafe tables and getting together for no reason and<\/em> a white man run amok, telling you he knows better than you how your gender is best expressed, what your true sexual or personality orientation is, how to rear your child. Here is a white man who has managed to upset and insult us all \u2014 and at this point, I do mean all of us: every service professional, every race, every executive, every religion, every body<\/em>. And yet, crucially, nearly every single time, he is told off, cast out, ignored, tsked, dumped, pitchforked, closed in on.<\/p>\n But the one thing Larry has never been (until April 7 at least) is canceled. I\u2019ve thought about that over these three decades, what it has required to tolerate this man. I\u2019ve worried whether my attraction to this show, my fascination with him, is akin to devotion to the brashness of a certain former president of the United States. But I remember that Larry has never cried \u201cwitch hunt\u201d or \u201cfake news.\u201d He has no lackeys, no suck-ups, no enablers. What Larry has<\/em> is friends, and a friend lets you know when enough is enough. Larry isn\u2019t irredeemable. He can admit defeat, can confess that \u201cwhen you\u2019re wrong, you\u2019re wrong,\u201d that \u201cI\u2019m hoisted on my own petard.\u201d When his mouth doesn\u2019t say \u201cmea culpa,\u201d his body does. That, I think, is what we\u2019ve been watching this show to experience: Larry\u2019s duality. A whole other side of his character and David\u2019s performance radiates warmth, generosity, concern, devotion \u2014 joy in people, belief in them, patience for even those of us in error. Empathy stirs within him. He can attach strings but can snip them too. The man whose defense he came to at that brunch place? Larry served him potatoes!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n