In "Curb Your Enthusiasm," David brazenly recycles -- OK, steals -- his old show's nothing-and-everything premise and domino-effect plot structure. But, look, it was a great premise and plot structure, and he seems to have more than enough funny stuff to do it justice here, so I'm inclined to let the grand-theft-sitcom charges slide.

Most of Larry's problems arise from his adherence to an arcane code of urban interaction and etiquette. He gets into arguments about decorum with wait captains at restaurants (to tip or not to tip?), shoe salesmen at Barneys (how is he supposed to know that the salesman would lose his commission if he canceled his special order?), even his own friends. When he and his wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), are invited to a Paul Simon concert by Steenburgen and Danson, and then seemingly forgotten, David sits by the phone fuming that the couple doesn't even have the decency to call and make up a lie to disinvite them: "A lie is a gesture, it's a courtesy. It's a sign of respect!"

David is so obsessed with maintaining his own fragile comfort level, he's nearly oblivious to the needs of his family and friends. The people in David's orbit -- manager Jeff (Jeff Garlin), the too-forgiving Cheryl, buddy Richard Lewis (he's Jerry to David's George) -- may as well be space junk. All of the plots of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (I've seen four upcoming episodes) hinge on David lying to, offending or insulting someone, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes on purpose. Consequently, David's always being prodded (by Cheryl, Jeff or Richard) to make an apology, which he is loath to do since, like George, he prefers to thinks of himself as the injured party.

How much of the Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is the real Larry David? Well, in the special, Alexander recalled that he thought some of the things that happened to George on "Seinfeld" were too weird and unrealistic, until David told him that they had actually happened to him. And art and life converged when David performed at that Gore/Lieberman fundraiser last month. He told a joke ridiculing George W. Bush's "personal relationship" with Jesus ("Like Bush, I too found Christ in my 40s. He came into my room one night and I said, 'What, no call? You just pop in?'"), which got back to the Bush camp and nobody was amused. The joke even drew the disdain of both vice presidential candidates in last week's debate. Just as he did with the horrifyingly funny death-of-Susan episode of "Seinfeld," David had managed to offend everybody. So what else is new?

In the ironic, O. Henry universe of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (and "Seinfeld"), wrongs can never be put right, apologies always backfire and lies, offenses and insults come back to haunt the perpetrator. "Seinfeld" took heat from some (humorless) pundits for "glorifying" bad behavior. But the truth is, "Seinfeld" was a very moral show, and so is "Curb Your Enthusiasm." As he did on "Seinfeld," David punishes his characters -- well, here, he punishes himself -- with retributions on an Old Testament scale. Halfhearted apologies don't count for squat, and humiliation befalls the sinner. There's a magnificent running joke on "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; whenever David tries to trade on his "Seinfeld" fame to get somewhere with maitre'd's or studio heads, the response is always, "Oh, I never saw the show." The self-loathing in that joke (I'm a genius ... in television) is awe-inspiring.

And David's intricate, well-oiled, retribution-by-comedy machine is a thing of beauty. The Oct. 15 series premiere, "The Pants Tent," was rife with Seinfeldian complications, the capper being when David refers to his wife as "Hitler" while talking to Jeff on his car phone, unaware that Jeff has him on speakerphone in his car, with his elderly Jewish parents in the back seat (shades of the "Schindler's List" episode of "Seinfeld"). Of course, the various plot strands eventually come together and things end very badly (for Larry). Jeff's parents reappear in the must-see Oct. 29 episode, "Porno Gil," which also features Bob Odenkirk in an unforgettable turn as a former porn star. This episode is the funniest half-hour of any sitcom since "The Contest." Really!

But, the question remains: Why is David doing this? Why try to top your one perfect, untoppable success? Maybe the answer is "hubris"; maybe David wanted to see if "Seinfeld" would fly with George at the forefront, not the more congenial Jerry.

Or maybe David feels he didn't get it right the first time. After all, the "Seinfeld" finale was its strangest, most unsatisfying episode. The jokes were flat and forced and Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer seemed to be not quite themselves. For nine years, they had behaved badly yet remained sympathetic figures because, no matter how small, nutty or selfish they were, they always got their comeuppances at the hands of worse people than them. This was, after all, New York.

But in that final episode, David abruptly made them unsympathetic; called to answer for their past transgressions, they reacted with obliviousness, glibness and cowardice. David's resolution -- putting them in jail -- was probably meant to be a surreal final metaphor: These four would always be prisoners of their own pettiness. But it seemed too literal, too heavy-handed an ending for a show where punishment had been doled out so subtly and ironically in every episode before. Since the characters had never really gotten away with anything on "Seinfeld," the prison cell finale seemed like overkill, more intended for us, the viewers, than Jerry and the gang. It was as if David were hectoring us saying, No, no, no, you weren't supposed to like them!

In "Curb Your Enthusiasm," David makes many of the same points he made in the "Seinfeld" finale -- that Larry is trapped in a negative force-field of his own making; that he is a character many of us might identify with, but it's something we shouldn't be proud of. Here, though, he does it within a more elegant comic structure. And he seems to have resisted (for the moment) the impulse to tear everything down. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" dials the moral tone back a few years, to when "Seinfeld" was deftly, hilariously, showing us the dark truths about our baseness as humans and as a society. Whenever Larry tries to apologize, tries to be a better person, the injured party ingraciously dumps on him, gets carried away with indignation and turns self-righteous, petty and crazily vengeful. It's as if Larry is eternally lashed to some great karmic wheel, taking punishment that is spectacularly out-of-proportion to his crimes. He's repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to do the right thing by one immutable fact of life: other people.

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