'Curb Your Enthusiasm' season premiere recap: Larry's hot and bothered

C’mon, admit it, you missed that constantly bothered, constantly blamed man we love to watch flounder at the mercy of society. Larry David is back, and unlike Cheryl David’s low tolerance, I personally can never get “too much Larry.” With most of the colorful players that make up Larry’s easily offended world in tow (and then some), and Larry just being…Larry, the first episode of the seventh season did not disappoint.

As season six ended in 2007 with the sudden spark between Loretta Black and Larry at a Bat Mitzvah, the season premiere began with Larry arguing with a bedridden Loretta over the subject of a comfortable room temperature for the house. Seventy-five degrees??? That’s way too warm! Yep, he’s back alright. As we soon found out (surprise, surprise) Larry was not in it for the long haul with Loretta, as he discussed with Jeff and Susie the urgency of breaking up with her before her biopsy results come back. Duh, you can’t break up with someone with cancer!

Larry chose another battle when he called out Dr. Ball as he helped himself to Larry’s lemonade. Rude. But even Jeff admitted when it comes to helping yourself to someone else’s food and drink, “liquids are okay.” Of course. Everyone knows that. Then Larry made a monumental empty gesture mistake, as he flippantly offered to help Marty Funkhouser with his mentally disturbed sister. And as all Curb fans know, of course Funkhouser took Larry up on his offer, and of course our anti-hero subsequently found himself up to his ears in the disapproving glare and shaking heads of all his friends (although I’m not so sure he’d call them that).

So poor L.D. was forced to visit the nonsensical and easily-irritated Bam Bam, played by guest star Catherine O’Hara, who did a darn good job of playing crazy. Jeff, who accompanied Larry on the visit, also learned never to make an empty gesture to a Funkhouser. He offered to help Bam Bam with her boredom, and she took him up on the offer, as a terrified Larry overheard them doing the deed in a bedroom, a pretty extreme move by Jeff if you ask me. At the dinner party, Larry got in a few more altercations over his surprise that Dr. Ball is gay, and Bam Bam’s “crazy” claims that she and Jeff had sex. Jeff and Larry joined forces to stifle her claims, which ended in Bam Bam’s dramatic exit as she screamed, “You’re serving nothing but lies in here and I’m not hungry!”

Later Larry ran into Cheryl (!) and Wanda Sykes dining together, and our beloved misanthrope actually scored a bit. After he got significant respect from Wanda (fist bump and all) for dating a black woman, Larry had a precious-though-brief moment with Cheryl as they bonded over not being able to read the menu in the dimly lit restaurant. Sitting outside, they laughed about the (good?) ol’ days. And Cheryl even admits she misses him, adding “well, kind of” a short pause later. Oh, she knows she does!

Now that he is no longer working on Seinfeld, Cheryl admitted that all his time at home was just too much for her. Insisting that he can reduce her Larry exposure, he joked, “I’ve got 24-hour Larry. You think I like it?” Their endearing meeting was cut short when Larry had to race home before the doctor can get back to the house with Loretta’s biopsy results.

Uh oh, the biopsy came back positive for cancer, and Dr. Ball went on to outline what this means for the next four years of Larry’s life: turning up the heater (don’t you love how the first tiff always comes back to haunt him?), driving to appointments, vomiting, mood swings–Oh, and worst of all, no golf. Not even nine holes? Zero holes, Mr. David. This is serious.

So, it looks like all bases were covered. Larry’s struggle with the rules of common courtesy? Check. Awkward dinner table snafu? Check. Special Larry/Cheryl moment? Check. Although I could have used a little more Leon, I’d say it was good. Pretty, pretty good. And it only makes me more excited for the anticipated reunion of the Seinfeld cast on the show later in the season.

What about you PopWatchers, what were your favorite Larry-isms from last night?