No one likes an incomplete massage. You’re naked, you’ve hit the off switch on a flickering mind, and with the mounting pressure of the masseuse’s knuckles on your limbs, there’s an increasing expectation that you will leave the session feeling, if not transformed, reset, de-knotted, satisfied. So I sympathized with Larry when his massage with Chunhua was cut short at 35 minutes at the outset of this episode. The second-to-last-ever episode of Curb was also just under 35 minutes — a sort of meta-joke, perhaps — and while it was an undoubtedly enjoyable just-under-35 minutes, I was left feeling as cheated as Larry. After a somewhat abrupt ending introducing even more unresolved characters and plotlines, it’s hard to believe Larry David, Creator, will tie up all this season’s loose ends in the next episode. Then again, it’s hard to believe Larry David, Character, can fuck up a trial in which his only crime was handing a thirsty woman a water bottle. Both Larrys are capable of more than we could imagine.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, back to the massage table. Larry’s being worked on by Cheryl’s favorite masseuse, Chunhua (Tania Gunadi), who has no qualms about telling Larry his ex-wife was too good for him. (And that her new beau, Ted Danson, is “handsome and flexible.â€) When Larry protests her hasty finish, she believes he’s asking for a happy ending — a reference to the season two finale, “The Massage,†when a psychic busts Larry by telling Cheryl he is “having sex with [the masseuse’s] handâ€â€” and storms off to presumably tell everyone. This is not a good look for Larry, whose water-bottle trial is coming up any day now. He should have the case in the bag; after all, he’s the liberal hero whose fans include none other than Bruce Springsteen. All he has to do is maintain this public image, which, for Larry, who’s still managing to get himself into new pickles, is basically impossible.
Larry meets with Leon and Jeff at a local deli called Ollie & Al’s, which is actually run by a guy named Lorenzo. After a brief debate on the meaning of the word hunch — “a hunch is something that’s shared. Otherwise, it’s just a thought in your head … Eleanor Roosevelt, what if she had a hunch about Pearl Harbor?†— Jeff tells Larry that Springsteen is coming to town for his Farewell tour and has asked to meet him. An excited Larry gets distracted when he sees Lorenzo changing the health grade on the restaurant window from A to C. Lest we forget, this is a man who wouldn’t hug Laverne Cox when she had a cold, even if it made him look transphobic, and wouldn’t share a toothbrush with his ex-wife, no matter how many years they had spent having sex. And don’t get him started on using tongs on a cookie platter. It needn’t be said, but I’ll say it anyway: Larry is not a C-eater.
Outside Ollie & Al’s, Larry runs into Les McCrabb (Matt Berry, also known as regular human bartender Jackie Daytona). Les McCrabb, who directed two episodes of “Young Larry,†is one of those perfect rivals for Larry à la Mocha Joe or Mr. Takahashi. He is grandiose and completely un-self-aware, and he says things like, “I’m in talks about this Waze app feature — Ron Howard’s people. A guy called Jeff Donut. He works with Ken Puffin.†(I wonder if Larry has seen Barbie?) McCrabb corners Larry in asking if he’s read his autobiographical manuscript, “Hang a Lantern on It,†a reference to the trick screenwriters use to draw attention to plot holes rather than covering them up. Larry lies, says he’s read it, and then bemoans to Leon that he must actually read it.
Meanwhile, Larry finds a new lawyer, played by Sanaa Lathan, who also played Kendall Roy’s lawyer in Succession. (Lathan seems to be carving out a niche for herself in the role of lawyer for pitiful men.) Leon immediately hits on her, giving one of his funniest lines of the season: “In that bungalow I got back there, I had a lot of hit-and-runs … so, if you ever wanna get in an accident, that could be, uh, T-boned, sideswiped, head on, or rear-ended. You feel me?†Larry impresses his lawyer, looking professional in his new suit, when Cheryl comes in, notifying Larry of Chunhua’s accusation that he asked her for a hand job. With the trial coming up, Larry needs to keep his reputation squeaky clean, so he offers to clear the misunderstanding by introducing Chunhua to Bruce Springsteen. Driving past the deli, Larry is appalled to see Lorenzo in the window, changing the C back to an A.
Larry finally meets the Boss at Jeff and Susie’s, and he fits right in. Larry brings up his health-grade quandary — “I’d eat at a B,†Springsteen says — and everything is fine and great. That is until Springsteen’s manager shows up. He introduces himself as Ken, formerly Kendra (played by trans comedian Ian Harvie), an old hookup of Larry’s. Larry is visibly disgusted at the suggestion that he had sex with a man. “Ken is Ken, Kendra is Kendra, never the twain shall meet,†he says, quoting Rudyard Kipling. The exchange is particularly funny because it masks something of a debate about trans identity, and on Trans Visibility Day, no less. (Side note: Springsteen is a vocal advocate for trans rights, having canceled his show in North Carolina to protest the state’s anti-trans “bathroom bill.†Harvie is one of several trans actors to have been featured on Curb, along with Cox and Chaz Bono.) Ultimately, Ken has the final word: “Oh, we’ve met. I’m Ken, and we banged it out.†Ken has no problem spilling on Larry’s sexual preferences — particularly that he’s a “floor fucker.†Everyone is surprised, including Bruce. After all, Larry is a germaphobe, as we all know. (He and Bruce have a little debate at the table about whose water is whose, and Larry declares he “follows his water like it’s a three-card monte game.â€) So the reason Larry is a floor fucker comes down to the fact that people don’t like spending time on the floor, and he doesn’t like to talk or cuddle after sex. In real life, the late Richard Lewis has said he had a similar intimacy problem; his therapist told him to look his wife in the eyes and say, “I love you, Joyce†during orgasm, and when he tried it, he ended up saying, “I love you, ladies and gentlemen!â€
Bruce leaves abruptly before dessert (no happy ending!). When Chunhua shows up for her promised meet-and-greet, Bruce is on his way out, and she’s even more annoyed.
It’s no surprise that Susie, Professional Yenta, immediately takes this floor-fucker information to Cheryl. When Cheryl confronts him about his fear of intimacy, we have to pity the woman a bit. (Cheryl: “You can’t say ‘I love you, and you’re the most important person to me in the whole world?’†Larry: “People talk like that?†Cheryl: “Yeah. That’s what happens when people have sex.â€) This is yet another damning accusation ahead of Larry’s trial that he simply cannot afford. And, because bad news comes in threes, Larry comes down with COVID, and so does Springsteen, who publicly accused Larry of giving it to him and has been forced to cancel his concert. The sequence of Larry testing for COVID is hilarious, and his sick voice is quite convincing. He goes down a list of people he interacted with as if it’s a hit list. Meanwhile, Leon is doing his best to avoid Larry, holding his breath while hoarding cereal and toilet paper. Why bother with double-masking when you can just get a gas mask that makes you look like an alien with a durag?
Naturally, Susie has also come down with COVID, and, in one of their best face-offs of the season, if not the series, she calls him a “walking fucking virus.†As Larry endures quarantine, picking up and putting down “Hang a Lantern on It,†Cheryl informs him Chunhua is still upset about her lack of face time with Bruce. Larry offers to drive her to his home, despite him being sick with COVID, and has to hide in the back of the car to avoid being attacked by the Springsteen fans who have gathered outside his home to mourn the missed concert. Chunhua aggresses her way past the gate and gets a picture with an unwilling Bruce through the window of his living room as he’s watching The Young Mr. Lincoln, a favorite of Larry’s. As we explored in the recap for “The Gettysburg Address,†Larry is a huge fan of anything Lincoln. Could this be a hint we’re about to get an address of our own? Though he has to endure another confrontation with Ken and is nearly attacked by rabid Springsteen fans in red bandannas on the drive out, Larry has successfully appeased Chunhua and, by extension, his lawyer.
Out of some sense of justice (or a grudge), Larry returns to Ollie & Al’s to confront Lorenzo about changing the health grade. It turns out the restaurant got a C because one of the staffers had sex with a waitress on the floor. Lorenzo gives an impassioned speech about the indignity of being someone who copulates like that, and Larry wonders about his fellow floor fucker. Now that nearly everyone in town knows Larry is one of them, could this be the nail in his reputational coffin? Only God knows.
Les McCrabb is next on Larry’s list, and he finally decides to call him up, but not before fidgeting with his hoodie zipper, something that has been bothering him all season. When he finally does call, it’s just seconds after McCrabb gives up his phone to head to the bus taking him to his weeklong yoga retreat. Les, who may very likely have COVID, hops on the bus and leads his cohort in a “cleansing breath.†Breathe in, breathe out, yell at the top of your lungs. You can practically see the COVID particles flying in the air. As the Boss himself said, you can’t start a fire without a spark.
And the spark has been set. The massage is over. It’s hard to believe we’re so close to the end, to the post-coital non-cuddle. Will all of this, any of this, come back to haunt Larry in the end? Will all of the Seinfeld references amount to some sort of parallel finale, in which we get to see Jerry Seinfeld’s resurrected hairline or some sort of “zipper karma†justice for all the people who Larry David has personally victimized?
While no one’s asking for a happy ending to this series, it would be nice to have a satisfying one. In a show whose writing is defined by its deft plot weaving, here’s hoping we leave with our shoulders unhunched and a smile on our faces as cheesy as Vonderdonk.
Leonisms
• On hunches: “A hunch is like a sneeze. Gotta let that shit out.â€
• On berries and cannibals eating Black people: “Fucking berries are fucking delicious. You know what they say: The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice. The darker the berry, meaning the darker you are, the sweeter your juice is. If a cannibal ate me, that motherfucker would be like, ‘Mm! Wow, this motherfucker’s delicious.’â€
• On Larry’s walking exercises: “You start walking like that, man, they gotta give you your own fucking lane. That way it won’t throw regular motherfuckers off. You know? You’re moving along, people see it, everybody’ll start doing it. And then they’ll add you to the evolution-of-man chart. Like motherfuckers who walk normal, and then all of a sudden, at the end … modern-day motherfuckers walk like this. Next thing you know, you go down in history.
• On zippers: “You gotta jiggle it.â€
• On how Larry looks in a suit: “Like a mortician. Like you ’bout to bury a motherfucker.â€
• On Chunhua: “Maybe I should go over there and talk to her and make sure she’s even qualified to be giving hand jobs to people … maybe Bruce Springsteen would like a hand job.â€
• On COVID: “Harassing you? You got me fucked up right now. I’m over in that bullshit-ass, little-ass house, and you got the good bathroom. I can’t take number twos over there. It’s too small.