There are many counter-arguments to the recurring knock against Curb Your Enthusiasmthat it’s just Larry David recycling his formulas from Seinfeld, and one of them is Richard Lewis, a comic quantity with no equivalent in Jerry’s world. David’s longtime real-life friend spent more than 20 years playing a soft caricature of himself as comedian and self-styled grand thespian, given to dilettante art projects and hasty declarations of love to an unending carousel of girlfriends. But he stands out from the stable of familiar supporting players — Jeff as latter-day George, Leon as eventual Kramer, Mocha Joe as stealth Newman — for the pure earnestness of his relationship to Larry. Their every conversation sits on a thread between jocular riffing and high-decibel bickering strewn with four-letter words, though both ultimately channel the same deep and abiding affection these neurotic men hold for each other.
In the wake of Lewis’s death earlier this week, David released a statement that Lewis “had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest.” It’s a disarmingly open show of emotion from a globally ranked roller of eyes, except then he adds, “But today he made me sob, and for that I’ll never forgive him.” So in honor of perhaps the only man who could reduce Larry David to tears, here’s a guide to Richard Lewis’s finest moments on Curb.
“The Pants Tent”
Season 1, Episode 1
An essential resident of Curb’s L.A. from the start, Richard is introduced — all in black, as in every one of his appearances — beefing with Larry over his boorish conduct at a movie theater. Richard’s apoplectic that his latest relationship may be in jeopardy, but he still can’t help but laugh after he threatens Larry for a phone call of apology by sundown and Larry shoots back, “Sundown? Who are you, Gary Cooper?” They only spend so much time bellowing at each other because they both understand neither of them will stay mad for long. Richard’s dates come and go (and go, and go, and go), but he could never find another kindred bastard as miserable as Larry.
“The Bracelet”
Season 1, Episode 4
Cynical to the bone, Curb loves nothing more than conflicts in which both parties attempt to claim a moral high ground over the other from a place of bad faith. Larry’s usually the butt of the joke in these situations, but Richard lands in hot water when he refers to a blind man as “a blind man” right in front of his face, a non-offense that the guy nonetheless seizes as an opening to guilt a perfect stranger into helping him move. In a sweaty effort to exculpate himself, Richard goes right to playing the recovered-alcoholic card, his go-to move when cornered. Nobody looks good here, but after all’s done, a disheveled Richard sighs that “To me, this was a great day. Every day’s a great day for me.”
“The Car Salesman”
Season 2, Episode 1
There’s such rich comedy inherent to Lewis’s deadpan face, gaunt and etched with experience like a skeleton who’s had it with your shit, that his skills as a physical performer can go underappreciated. He gets a chance to flex that muscle as he goes to the car dealership to confront Larry, who has taken a salesman job as a bit. In one of his wandering-mind non sequiturs, Larry insists on checking the tag of Richard’s sweater to confirm that it’s really 100 percent cashmere, and the resulting altercation casts them as the 10-year-old brothers they really are.
“The Thong”
Season 2, Episode 5
Larry thinks he’s doing Richard a favor by informing him that he saw their shared therapist on the beach in ass-cheek-baring swimwear — a disqualifying peccadillo, obviously — but Richard can’t handle the thought of finding a 29th shrink. Summarizing his life so far just takes too long, he explains, and Larry runs with it: “Your recap is two, three months, isn’t it?” Richard laughs along: “That’s just the crib!” Their closeness shines through in how they can both joke about the darker bullet points in a difficult life; no subject is off-limits between friends on this level. Addiction, alienation, wearing an ostentatious jacket — it’s all fair game.
“The Baptism”
Season 2, Episode 9
The scene in which Richard goes to read Larry the riot act for stealing his answering-machine message is bracketed by two of his greatest, most perfectly representative quotes. He leads with, “You always take it the wrong way. You’ve taken everything the wrong way, ever since I’ve known you.” As Larry holds his ground on the voicemail spat, Richard makes a last-ditch bid to leverage his own misfortunes, pointing out that he never had a wife and his parents are dead. The appeal to Larry’s humanity falls on expectedly deaf ears, and once Larry starts mocking him by repeating his life’s great plights in a snively voice, Richard concedes, “I’m laughing, you know what, cause you’re funny.” It’s the golden rule governing the ruthless packs in which comedians travel: As long as it’s good, any joke will fly.
“The Nanny From Hell”
Season 3, Episode 4
As a writer, David is delighted by the pettiness of people who jockey for pointless honors, like when Larry tries to swap his unappetizing namesake sandwich at a local deli for Ted Danson’s. Richard isn’t immune to this impulse, either, squeezing Larry to get credit for coining the phrase “the ___ from hell” in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. It ultimately means nothing, but he takes inexplicable pride in this token accomplishment. Speaking of pettiness, this episode lavishes us with some of the pair’s dumbest quarreling, as Richard accuses Larry of being “the English-language police,” a charge Larry promptly validates by calling out Richard for slightly mispronouncing “collapse.” With friends like these …
“The Special Section”
Season 3, Episode 6
Any time two creative types become friends, there’s always the hazard that one might accrue enough success to make the other jealous. When Larry stumbles into a role on a gangster picture from Martin Scorsese, self-serious artiste Richard seems genuinely bothered, and while they’ve never been shy about spewing bile at each other, Richard’s reticence signals an unusual depth of resentment. But they both get over it pretty quickly after they learn that the Sanskrit mantra Larry has lent and tried to take back actually means “Fuck me.” That’s long been the energy these curmudgeons put out into the universe, but hearing themselves invite negativity into their souls with such plain language drives them both bananas.
“The Surrogate”
Season 4, Episode 7
It doesn’t matter if the truth is nice — Curb will speak it regardless. Yes, being stuck behind a slow-moving handicapped person can be maddening. Yes, some people facing hardship can nonetheless be intolerably smug. And yes, white men are nervous to the point of racism about the imagined might of Black penises. Despite his prolific career in seduction, Richard confides in Larry that he’s never made it with a woman of color, and he frets that his new gal pal’s phallic standard may be more than he can meet. The resulting investigation mortifies everyone involved, the final punch line being the insecurity and stupidity of our doofus protagonists. Subject to many of the same anxieties as his bestie, Richard fits snugly into the careful comic balancing act that’s allowed this show to push so many taboo buttons without fear or self-righteousness.
“Lewis Needs a Kidney”
Season 5, Episode 5
Many of Curb’s seasonlong arcs concern Larry’s ridiculously elaborate efforts to get out of doing something for someone else, in this case donating a kidney to the ailing Richard. This is the MVP season for Lewis, in top form as he slowly presses the thumbscrews of imposition onto the most chronically put-upon man to walk the earth. It’s like they’re playing a game of politeness chicken: Richard won’t come right out and ask for the biggest favor one person can do for another, and Larry doesn’t have it in him to deny his friend a potentially life-saving solid. Instead, he’ll spend the season trying to ensure that Richard’s comatose organ-donor cousin dies in the hospital, freeing up his kidney. For two men prone to top-volume hollering, they’re pathological about not violating their precious social codes.
“The Ski Lift”
Season 5, Episode 8
Even while confined to his sickbed, Lewis gives a respectable performance, mustering a glint of the old pep for Larry’s impression of Mickey Mantle rounding the bases. But let’s not beat around the, er, bush: This episode will always be known as the one where Richard’s nurse has a large vagina. Returning to the deep well of penis-panic comedy, Larry and Richard suss out whether she or her one-time dalliance, Jeff, have the abnormal anatomy, a bluer premise than most that they pull off with sophomoric MAD magazineyuks. So many episodes hinge on the final pre-credits freeze frame, a button that needs to be perfect to tie up a scene, and Lewis delivers one of the all-timers as he makes an unspeakable realization.
“The Bat Mitzvah”
Season 6, Episode 10
Classic mix-up: Larry “recommends” an incompetent director to Richard, who doesn’t pick up on the scare quotes around the recommendation, then blows his stack once he realizes he’s hired a dud. They have it out at a lunch date Larry shows up too late to keep, but take a gentlemanly pause to riff back and forth about how if the noted terrorist’s name was “Osama Ben Laden,” he would sound like a Jewish shirtmaker in Manhattan. “Let’s go to Ben Laden’s! They got great colors,” kids Richard, coaxing the rare sincere smile from a terminal malcontent. The friendly vibe cools moments later, as Larry contests the rumor that he stuck a gerbil up his asshole by confessing that he does have a tickle in his anus. “Oh, really? I gotta split,” deadpans Richard. As the topper on one of Lewis’s finest half-hours, he argues with Larry over who’s “more normal,” and accepts a “mental patient face-off” any day.
“Vehicular Fellatio”
Season 7, Episode 2
Larry gets word that Richard’s flavor of the week has a penchant for road head, so when she tries to greet him at a group dinner, he recoils in horror from any contact with her. She’s offended, an excuse is needed, Larry lies, further miscommunications foment further confusions — you know the drill. It all amounts to a philosophical exchange between Larry and Richard on whether kissing a woman who’s recently serviced another man makes you homosexual by proxy, or if that’s the addled thinking of a total buffoon. Richard takes the saner stance on the matter. (As a bonus, we get a bit of dialogue wherein Larry makes fun of the brow-heightened Richard for saying his favorite film is Last Tango in Paris. “Ohh, put butter on my ass. That’s a movie?”)
“The Safe House”
Season 8, Episode 2
Richard likes to consider himself something of a lothario, a self-image undercut by the reality that he’ll fall for any woman who casts a friendly glance his way. Case in point: He’s all but hearing wedding bells with a burlesque dancer he’s just met, though he denies up and down that he’s attracted to her for the novelty factor. Larry puts that integrity to the test as he attends her act, alerts her to a worrisome mole on the underside of her breast, and inspires her to get reduction surgery. “You looked at her mole with a goddamn telescope like Galileo jerking off from 40 feet away,” Richard hisses at him. “What am I supposed to do now, go from double D to — what’s half of double D?” (Larry’s best guess: “B … plus? No, B-minus. That’s closer to the D.”) Curb loves puncturing egos to let all their hot air fart out, and not even Richard is immune, his seasoned-lover persona a front for the same garden-variety horniness as anybody else.
“Foisted!”
Season 9, Episode 1
Of this show’s innumerable etiquette calculations, there’s none simpler or more idiotic than this episode’s quandary: Larry’s standing over here, Richard’s standing over there, so if they want to chat, who walks over to meet whom? They agree to meet in the middle, a zone contested by Larry, who insists he took more steps to get there. The lowness of stakes becomes a schtick unto itself in this episode, as Richard chastises Larry for his callous text of condolence — “Sorry about your bird, the good news is I’m still alive” — after Richard’s parakeet goes to the great newspaper-covered cage in the sky. None of this matters, Larry argues; it’s not like a high-value bird such as a toucan kicked it. They go in futile circles until Richard snaps them both out of it: “You know why I’m laughing? At the sadness of your entire existence. There’s a lack of empathy and sympathy and compassion. Don’t you ever feel good?” The closer Larry allows a friend to get, the more piercing their assessments of his anhedonia. (Same goes for Susie.)
“Running With the Bulls”
Season 9, Episode 4
“Are you vying for the title of the Most Pretentious Man in the World?” asks Larry, beholding a Nehru-jacketed Richard at the unveiling of his painting exhibition. “I never showed you my paintings at home because I knew you’d just mock me and destroy me,” Richard replies. For all their shared mental agita, they harbor drastically different ideas about art; Larry’s violent allergy to pomposity is at odds with Richard’s renaissance-man aspirations. Later, they get into it over Richard’s habit of showing up at lunch dates early so he can claim the superior, outward-facing booth seat under the premise of preemptively grabbing the bill, which spins out into a shouting match over who can be more considerate. At a certain point, yelling loses its power to convey anger, simply settling into the default dialect with which these two speak to each other.
“Artificial Fruit”
Season 10, Episode 3
Speaking of which, the most poignant scene between these characters may be another drag-down squabble about who will treat whom to lunch, this one ending with a beautiful encapsulation of the impotency and intimacy in their dynamic. “Fuck you, I’m paying, and I’ll see you tomorrow!” rules Larry, as Richard whips a stale scone at him. That’s the very essence of true friendship: a special relationship with someone you love so much, you can hurl both invective and baked goods at them in the assurance that they won’t take any of it to heart.
“Elizabeth, Margaret, and Larry”
Season 10, Episode 8
Is this a retread of “Vehicular Fellatio,” with Larry assuming another faux medical condition to spare Richard some friction with his new squeeze? Maybe, but when that condition happens to be “bleeding rectum,” a viewer is willing to look past a lot. Richard has never humiliated Larry to this extreme, which draws a proportionate explosion from Larry at an inopportune moment during a dinner party, but the real treat here is Richard’s reaction as Larry brings his mini-me Jon Hamm to dinner earlier in the episode. Jon’s “becoming” Larry as research for a role, a notion that provokes a wave of dread in Richard as he realizes, “Oh, my god. There’s two Larry Davids. Holy shit!” The horror, the horror!
“Beep Panic”
Season 10, Episode 9
Conversational, low-key naturalism is the lingua franca of Curb, allowing performers few opportunities to really ham it up. So when Lewis gets his chance, as Richard treads the boards playing test subject Charlie in a local theatrical rendering of Flowers for Algernon, he doesn’t miss his chance. His muggy facial expressions gesture to a sort of actorly vanity about commitment to a role. It’s only a handful of shots, but they afford a revealing glimpse into the psychology of a character desperate for respect, stranded with a best friend constitutionally incapable of taking anything seriously.
“Irma Kostrowski”
Season 11, Episode 7
Lewis’s health began to decline between the ninth and tenth seasons, his shoot for “Beep Panic” an arduous physical ordeal due to recent back and shoulder surgeries. With his looks finally catching up to Larry’s constant teasing about aging, he confined himself to a single pop-in for each of the final two seasons, both taking the piss out of the looming specter of his own mortality. As they mutter to each other at a fundraiser, Larry idly wonders, “When are you gonna die? Will you please die?” Richard sticks around long enough for a farewell in the currently running 12th season, as he tries to force Larry to accept a bequeathment from his last will, which Larry takes as an obligation to amend his own. He doesn’t want anything, but Richard stands firm: “I’m giving it to you anyway, pal.” To the very end, they could only be themselves, comfortable in their unceasing verbal sparring. We should all be so lucky as to have someone to yell at for our entire lives.
Related
- The Master of Oversharing
- The Comedy World Remembers Richard Lewis
- Richard Lewis, Legendary Stand-up and Curb Actor, Dead at 76
Charles Bramesco , 2024-03-01 21:33:27
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