Relocate Your Enthusiasm

There are those who like Larry David's raucous HBO sitcom, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," not one bit, and will greet rumors of its impending demise with uncurbed joy, toasts to the future of television, and hopes for the moral improvement of mankind.

Then there are those of us who love it, and who would count "Larry David" the character as one of the great comedic icons of recent years. He is not simply funny in what he does and says; he is also, like Groucho Marx, funny as an idea. For those of us who count ourselves among Mr. David's fans, the memory (should the ongoing sixth season indeed be the final chapter) of this self-centered lunatic getting into fights at every opportunity in the bland environs of moneyed West Los Angeles will occupy a permanent corner of treasured humor in our brains.

Yet even we can see there's a problem with the show, a creeping staleness and the attendant need to keep raising the ante of outrage and obscenity (even if lately he's been playing nice) to compensate for it. Briefly put, Mr. David has pretty much squeezed all the comic juice to be found under the palm fronds of L.A. How many more fights can he pick in clothing stores and dry cleaners and doctors' offices and at birthday parties for his rich friends? How many more missteps can he make with minorities? The more he strains and stretches his comic premises to the breaking point, the less laughter he has as a reward.

So what to do about it? If Mr. David were suffering from a personal rather than a professional malaise, a doctor might do what doctors have done for centuries when confronted by wealthy patients facing crises: prescribe a change of scenery. Travel. See the world. The where doesn't matter. The point is to alter context and perspective. Why can't the same advice apply to a sitcom? One place to relocate "Curb" would be Larry's old stomping grounds in New York, but I don't think that goes far enough. He needs — doctor's orders — to go abroad. Something tells me that if "Curb" were relocated for a 10-episode season in France, the result would be a revelation. And anyway, wouldn't it be nice to see any American television series set in another country? (And I'm not referring to Middle-Eastern night-vision commando raids on "The Unit.")

But why France, and why would Larry David, of all people, go there? To answer the second question first: for any old reason. Maybe Cheryl, if she finds it in her heart to take Larry back, wants to go. Or some enterprising American professor in a provincial French city could invite him to teach a course in comedy writing for bilingual French students.

"You know what?" Larry would tell his agent, Jeff Garlin, in that blithe, offhand way of his, "I think I'm going to do it!"

"You're going to teach a comedy class in France?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Why not indeed? And once he had been there a few weeks — receiving an inevitable visit from a mopey Richard Lewis trailing a supermodel Parisian girlfriend, soon to be followed by visits from Ted Danson, Wanda Sykes, and the rest of the crew, he'd just as blithely announce, "You know what? I kind of like it here. I think I'm going to stay a while!"

And why might this be interesting? Because, instead of haggling endlessly over minute breaches of etiquette, as he does on his home turf, Larry would suddenly have a whole slew of meaty cultural differences to navigate, misunderstand, and get into arguments about. I can just see him, for instance, dealing with the rigid, ironclad greeting etiquette of the average small food store — the butcher, baker, etc. — where the French still do most of their shopping.

By which I mean the "Bonjour, monsieur" that greets you the moment you walk in, and which must immediately be answered by your own "Bonjour, monsieur," followed by "Au revoir, monsieur," which must be countered by your "Au revoir, monsieur," — except in the evening, when it suddenly becomes "Bonsoir, monsieur," and at some vague point, "Bon nuit, monsieur," and so on.

It practically writes itself. Best of all, such an extreme change of scenery would not only allow Mr. David to weave countless fresh comic scenarios, but would provide his radical egotism with something genuinely weighty — namely, a foreign culture with its own entrenched ideas about how things are supposed to be done — to bounce off of. Furthermore, with his penchant for microscopic inspection of social mores, contradictions, and customs, it's hard to imagine him having anything other than a field day abroad. Hell, as a humorous primer on cultural differences, it might even be educational as well as entertaining.

bbernhard@nysun.com