Curb Your Enthusiasm

This season has to rank up there with the best Curb seasons ever with Larry David reaching new comedy zeniths week on week as the season progresses.   It’s great to see Larry and Jerry Seinfeld riff together as they did on the ‘Bare Midriff’ episode, working across from each other on a studio back lot attempting to write the script for the long awaited Seinfeld reunion episode.  It remains to be seen if the show will ever be written and shot but it doesn’t matter; Larry David has ingeniously woven the Seinfeld reunion subplot into the season narrative and refuses to bow to the assumed and hoped for laugh-a-thon with the full Seinfeld cast.

Instead, we get genius comic timing and classic Larry David angst in every episode as we build up to the season finale.  Watch out for Larry in Woody Allen’s Whatever Works, now out on DVD.

Bored to Death

Starring Jason Schwartzman, Galifianakis and Ted Danson, this is the sleeper comedy of the year on HBO.  The show features Schwartzman as a struggling Brooklyn novelist named Jonathan Ames who moonlights as an unlicensed private detective.  Schwartzman is also a borderline alcoholic who refuses to acknowledge he has a problem and attempts to justifiy it by only drinking white wine.

Galifianakis plays Schwartzman’s best friend, Ray, a sex obsessed and deprived neurotic comic book artist while Danson plays an aging Madison Avenue magazine publisher, George Christie, with a penchant for single malt scotch and marijuana.  George frequently employs Jonathan as a free lance writer for his struggling magazine.

Each episode centers on a new private detective caper that Jonathan has landed via Craig’s List ads in Brooklyn.  Smart script and great comedic acting all around.

Mad Men

Season 3 is reaching spectacular dramatic heights with last week’s episode covering the JFK assassination and how that cataclysmic event affected each of the show’s main characters.  Jon Hamm continues to shine and rise above the material, giving even greater depth to Don Draper’s dual life and hidden past.

Ingeniously set in early 1960’s American and moving forward in that decade, this show’s thematic future seems bright, with an endless potential for plot twists and turns set against one of the most dramatic and cultural shifting decades in American history.

If you’ve heard about the show and are curious, you would be well rewarded in either picking up Mad Men – Season One and 2 on DVD or seeking out downloads in the usual places.  Some prior episodes are also available on AMC’s website.  Simply outstanding television.

Season 3, Mad Men, Episode 1,  in it’s entirety right here