Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Fourth Season

Larry David's inventive, improvisational HBO sitcom remains one of the ongoing delights of cable television. The 2004 fourth season kicks off with a plot gimmick that undergirds the entire year of shows: after hearing Larry sing at a karaoke bar, Mel Brooks invites him to co-star on Broadway in The Producers as Max Bialystock, and Larry accepts the offer, originally playing against Ben Stiller as Leo Bloom. In “Ben's Birthday Party,” Stiller becomes annoyed when Larry refuses to sing “Happy Birthday” at his party, leading to complications that are positively sidesplitting. Perhaps the season's best episode, however, is “The 5 Wood,” about rescuing a treasured golf club from an about-to-be buried casket, which is also an homage to one of David's classic Seinfeld episodes. In other standouts, Larry risks losing his country-club membership when he picks up a prostitute in order to use “The Car Pool Lane” and make it to a baseball game on time; he and Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) repeat their marriage vows in “The Survivor”; and in the season finale, Larry heads to New York for his Broadway debut (opposite David Schwimmer, the new Leo). The final episode is particularly poignant, as it co-stars the late Anne Bancroft as herself, the former Mrs. Mel Brooks. As always with Curb Your Enthusiasm, the show hinges on David's uncanny ability to turn the most banal situations into hysterically funny set pieces, and he's a master here. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (E. Hulse)