CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, DAMMIT!

Blog number 343 **** 18 November 2009

One of my favorite TV shows that I look forward to every week is, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." This is not a show for everyone. You have to acquire a taste for it and many people never do acquire that taste. Kinda like anchovies on pizza, I guess.

The reason I am entering this entry on my Blog will become clear later on, but first I have to report a puzzling aspect of last Sunday's episode.

Larry David - the star of the show and one of the creators of the Seinfeld show, along with Jerry Seinfeld, is producing a "return" episode of the Seinfeld show. During the rehearsal, a friend of Larry's comes to watch and tells a very long, not at all funny to me, obscene joke which the character Jerry finds extremely funny.

The puzzling aspect of this scene is that all writers agree that only something that furthers the plot or illuminates a character's character, or furthers some other explanation is written into a story. You don't put anything in that you, the writer, wish to perpetuate - such as a moral or political code. Or soft porn, which is very commonly put into stories for reasons known only by the producers.

You don't use the story to tell anything except the story. So what was this joke so long, so unfunny, so obscene, doing in here? The character telling the joke is a minor character, appearing every forth or fifth episode, and only for a short time. Why did Jerry's character find it so funny? Did Larry David find the joke funny and wanted it in the show for the humor?

Couldn't a shorter, funnier, not obscene joke be found - like the one about the Priest, the Rabbi and the whale going into a bar?

So that's the puzzling aspect. Now, to me, the interesting aspect of that show was that Kramer is worried because his doctor told him that he had Groats' disease, from which people usually die. I Googled Groats' disease and first it says that it is not a disease, it is a symptom, and not only that, it is not a real symptom, but rather one that is imaginary, created on the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" show.

The symptom is akin to drinking five cups of coffee.