"I brings the ruckus to the ladies"

"Get in that ass, Larry!"

Larry David is one of my biggest heroes and I love Curb Your Enthusiasm with all my heart, I do, but I think it's fair to say that the sixth season - just finished airing on More4 this week - was probably the show's weakest so far.

It's a compliment to the show, really, because it was still hilarious and it still stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of other TV comedies, but in terms of its own canon there was something slightly different about it that turned me off a little bit. In some ways it actually reminded me a little of Seinfeld after Larry left; still great, but drifting slightly from what the show had been, growing a bit more outlandish and reaching a little further for material. Sometimes it worked beautifully and other times it felt a bit clunkier, but all the same it often lacked that definitive Curb... feeling.

'The Therapists' (s06e09) was perhaps the best example of this. It didn't feel like typical Curb... at all. It was meticulously structured as you'd expect and of course it was still riotously funny, but where did the story emanate from? The best Curb... stories almost always stem from some kind of argument about social interaction/behaviour, and this wasn't like that at all. Larry's therapist gave him obviously awful advice, he followed it, hijinks ensued. It was a much more typical sitcom story that didn't engage the audience in the same Socratic, "is Larry wrong? Is Larry right?" kind of way. Without that element I don't think Curb... will ever be at its best, and it's definitely something that featured less strongly this season.

That all said, for all Larry's neuroses about whether to continue the show past Season 5 or not, it's obvious he made the right decision. After all, while post-Larry Seinfeld featured most of the show's weakest episodes, it also played host to a few of its best, and the same could be true of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Why sacrifice great highs when the lows are still as hilarious as 'The Lefty Call' (s06e04)? Hopefully Larry feels the same way and we have a lot more Curb... to come.