‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’: Will Season 11 Find Larry David Dealing With A Post-Pandemic Life?
At some point, life as we now know it will have to get back to some semblance of normal. What will a new normal look like for Larry David on the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm?
Or is the new normal the real normal the comedian and actor has always longed for?
How the last season ended
When we last saw Larry David in the season 10 finale, “The Spite Store,” of Curb Your Enthusiasm, he had opened Latte Larry’s coffee shop. Banished from Mocha Joe’s, Larry sets up his own place, in hopes of taking away the neighborhood shop’s business.
During the episode, Larry also manages to upset his knee doctor when he says he’s getting a second opinion; offend expectant parents about what their child’s skin color might be; and inspire Mila Kunis, Sean Penn, and Jonah Hill to guest star as owners of their own spite stores.
By the end of the episode, David’s nifty coffeehouse “perks” all lead to his business literally going up in flames. One of his self-heating coffee cups bursts into flames when one of his employees, a recently transitioned male, accidentally knocks one over with his large genitals. It falls onto paperwork and starts a fire. At that point, David’s large storehouse of hand sanitizer only adds to the inferno.
Another victim of the blaze was Mocha Joe’s, who ended up in the last scene having a big party with his fire insurance settlement, giddily telling David it was a “spite party.”
Larry David is born for social distancing
The last two months or so have been an era of isolation, of being apart from loved ones and friends, and of hyper-vigilance in personal hygiene. Basically, all the things Larry David loves, at least as he’s represented on the HBO hit.
Jeff Schaffer, an executive producer on the series, says that the new social “normal” being enforced on all of us lately is just exactly the world as Larry David likes it.
“The [real] world changed so much between episodes 7 and 10 [of season ten],” Schaffer told EW in May 2020. “When we burned down the store, everyone was just thinking, ‘Oh my God, what a waste of Purell!’… It’s so insane how fast this came upon us.”
“But look, Larry tried to tell everybody how to behave. He hadn’t been a fan of handshaking for a long time. He puts the Purell on the tables. He doesn’t want you defecating anywhere near him. And he was practicing social distancing long before there was a term for it. I think he was born with it.”
How ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ could approach the topic of the pandemic
Throughout this series, viewers never really have known if and when David will be in the mood to go for a new season. There were two years, after all, between seasons 9 and 10.
As for season 11, it’s anybody’s guess if Larry David will feel a pressing need to start production on it as soon as studios get the OK to resume filming. It’s also going to be difficult to predict what our current world will look like in a new season.
“Everybody wants to see how Larry would tackle these issues in this strange time,” Schaffer continued in his conversation with EW. “The way we’ll address it will have to be very specific and unique to Larry, and not the thing that everyone’s talking about all the time. No one wants to see us do the same thing that everyone just did. So we’ll do something [that addresses] the changes that world has gone through.”
So, when will season 11 be expected, according to Schaffer?
“Here’s what I would say: Larry doesn’t want to do another season until he has enough great ideas to make a season he’s 100-percent happy with. But I wouldn’t bet on him running out of ideas.”
