Larry David is excited.
This is a big deal. The prolific, hilarious curmudgeon’s whole raison d’être is that he’s always over it and unmoved, barely able to muster more than that trademark Ehhh and a shoulder shrug. But last night at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Legion Theater, in front of an audience that ranged from Avengers-level legends (Vince Vaughn, Timothy Olyphant, Henry Winkler) and random seat-fillers such as myself, LD admitted—volunteered, even, in a great bit during his opening remarks concerning a childhood family trip to Miami that his parents dragged him on—that he was actually hype to debut his latest work, the limited series Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America.
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The enthusiasm, to pardon the basic pun, was palpable; I’m happy to report that Life, Larry is perhaps the most Larry David of David’s creations to date. Later in his introduction, Larry revealed he majored in history, something anyone who’s watched Seinfeld or Curb could probably have guessed; how many Monk’s Diner scenes revolved around banter about world leaders or dictators? Almost History packs about four sketches to an episode, each tracking some seismic event from the 250-year American story, and in true Larry fashion, surfacing the most banal, petty “what if” scenarios revolving around either notable figures or imagined nobodies adjacent to that history. It’s LD Unleashed, delving into his longtime obsessions and deconstructing the nuances of everyday social interaction, free from the shackles of serialized narrative.
The Rolodex of guest stars and cameos is as elite as you’d expect. (I’m not sure what’s been teased and who’s in the trailer, but I went in completely cold, and as asinine as the idea that listing someone’s appearance in a show like this might be a “spoiler” seems, there’s a genuinely great surprise factor in the two episodes that I saw that I wouldn’t dream of ruining, just in case.)
But most important is how locked-in Larry is. Before the screening started my friend Jordyn said he looks especially invigorated in the trailer, and after watching two episodes I’m inclined to agree. The first sketch is basically just Curb with powdered wigs, but once he gets that out of his system, he commits in a way that elevates this from feeling like a retread. He isn’t just playing LD the Bald Asshole in various different costumes; the characters in these sketches feel like distinctly different positions on his dial. He’s delightfully spineless in a standout 1917 sketch set in the trenches of WWI; he goes full Tyler Perry and plays a woman in another.