There's nothing funny about mental illness or cancer except, of course, when Larry David is involved. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" made its two-years-in-the-making return to the air last night in much the same way it left us - social mores taken to their logical extreme through myriad heightened circumstances. It wouldn't be a "Curb" return if these circumstances didn't make the audience cringe a little bit, and feel guilty for laughing afterwards, and that bit of dichotomy was fully on parade last evening.

We quickly discover, after the show's long absence, that Larry is still involved with Loretta Black (Vivica A. Fox) in whose company he took solace after Cheryl's leaving him last season. Unfortunately for our curmudgeonly hero, the relationship isn't going well, and Loretta's impending cancer diagnosis is making it very hard for him to extricate himself from the relationship.

Additional headaches for the bald one come from Marty Funkhouser (Bob Einstein) who takes Larry's empty offer of doing something to help Funkhouser's sister who was recently released from an asylum as genuine. This leads to an awkward scene involving Jeff, Larry and Funkhouser's Crazy Sister (Catherine O'Hara) resulting in Jeff's bedding the former mental patient.

This sort of explosively offensive territory for humor is exactly where we'd expect Larry David's transcendent series to tread so early in the season. In a show known for pushing the envelope as far as it could possibly go, it's sort of astonishing to see David still be able to find new ways in which to shock us into belly laughter, but even seven years in we're still blown away by the new controversial sources into which Larry dives to find some laughs.

But it's not the extreme offensiveness of the show that makes "Curb Your Enthusiasm" one of the top comedies ever on television, it's the way Larry uses these extreme situations to comment on the mundane and everyday. We don't find humor in simply blindly mocking cancer, or a mentally imbalanced woman, it's the way Larry relates those situations to social conventions.

The biggest problem for Larry in having to endure an afternoon with a recently released mental patient wasn't the act itself, it was the fact that he made what he assumed everybody thinks is an empty gesture - asking Funkhouser if there's anything he can do. A question we all ask in these situations, but of course none of us actually intend to supplement with any sort of real action.

Furthermore, Loretta's cancer diagnosis doesn't examine disease. Instead, it painfully faces a dilemma we've all had to encounter - when is it appropriate to end a relationship? Even more, how do we deliver bad news that could be seen as selfish to an outsider when the timing is completely at its worst.

Yes, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is back at last and in extremely fine form, it may not be what many first time viewers were expecting (with the promise of an impending 'Seinfeld' reunion on their minds) but for David devotees, this season premiere is exactly the type of cringe-inducing examination of minutiae we've always loved.

Grade: A -


Story by Andrew Payne