On September 28, 2021, writer and producer Larry David launched a trailer for season eleven of his show, Curb Your Enthusiasm. The trailer was a forty-five-second clip of the Earth with “The world has changed” displayed at the end. The Earth slowly took the shape of Larry’s head, with the text then saying, “He hasn’t.” At the end of the trailer, a release date for the first episode appeared, with the date being October 24, 2021. 

   The first episode aired and I was immediately impressed with this season’s storyline. The first episode starts out with Larry waking up and finding a dead body floating in the pool. He calls the police and the police tell him that Larry needs to install a five-foot fence around his pool. The next day, Larry goes to Netflix headquarters with his manager, Jeff Greene, to talk about a new series that he has been working on called Young Larry. Netflix agrees to take on the project, and Jeff and Larry leave the office. When Larry gets home, he finds a letter on his doorstep from a man named Marco, and the letter tells him to come to his restaurant. When Larry gets there, Marco tells him that he is the brother of the person that fell into his pool and that if he doesn’t cast his daughter, Maria Sofia, into Young Larry, that he will be taking legal action against him. Larry meets with Maria Sofia, and she is one of the worst actresses that Larry has ever seen. She can’t get her lines right, she is rude, and she doesn’t do what the directors tell her to do, but Larry has to keep her on the show in order to not get sued. 

   Later on in the season, though, Larry pursues a relationship with a local politician named Irma Kostroski. Larry is appalled by her, and a lot of the people she surrounds herself with are also appalled by her, but Larry continues to see her so that way he has a chance of getting the five-foot fence law changed so that way he can fire Maria Sofia. 

   Now, I love Larry, and I love Curb Your Enthusiasm, but season eleven was the worst season of the show. Curb Your Enthusiasm will always be a favorite show of mine, but I was not impressed with a lot of the episodes of this show. The season started out promising with “The Five-Foot Fence” and “The Mini Bar,” but the season started to go downhill with episodes like “Igor, Gregor, & Timor” and “The Watermelon,” which I think is the worst episode of the series. Don’t get me wrong, some of the episodes were watchable, but I will most likely be rewatching just one or two episodes from this season, which is something that I frequently love doing. I love rewatching the full seasons of this show a lot, but I can’t see myself doing that with this one. This season managed to be one of two seasons from this show that has never had an episode get above a nine on IMDb. The only other season that hasn’t done this was season one, which is the second-worst season. Even then, I still love rewatching season one and have done so many times. 

   To be positive, though, let’s talk about an episode that I actually liked. My favorite episode from this season is “The Five-Foot Fence,” which was the first episode of this season. In this episode, they set up the whole Young Larry story. However, there was more that happened. In the episode, an actor friend of Larry’s named Albert Brooks invited him to his own funeral that would be happening in a couple of weeks. Albert is obviously alive, but he still feels the need to watch over his own funeral to see what happens and who attends. I won’t say how this whole storyline turns out, but when Larry gets on stage to read his speech, I laughed so hard because of what he said, and it just proved to me that Larry will always manage to get a laugh out of me. Then, the rest of the season happened.

   My least favorite episode from this season is “The Watermelon.” This episode just really made me uncomfortable. I won’t go into the full story of the episode, because that part gets overshadowed by the bad part anyway. Larry had just come from an eye appointment where he had been temporarily blinded and he was walking the streets of Santa Monica, CA, where he lived. A Ku Klux Klan rally was going on there, and Larry accidentally bumped into a Klansman named Joe and he spilled coffee over his Klan robe. Larry apologizes to the Klansman and offers to get it dry cleaned for him. Larry goes to a dry cleaner that is run by a Jewish man. The Jewish man refuses to clean it for him, and Larry responds by saying “Come on, Joe isn’t that bad of a Klansman.” That was the moment when I had to turn off the TV for a while. I had to finish the episode later. Hearing that come out of the mouth of someone that I respected made me feel so weird, uncomfortable, and sick. What really baffled me was that this episode in this season did the best in terms of ratings. On IMDb, this episode has an 8.8, which is the highest number of stars an episode has gotten during this season.

   Overall, season eleven of Curb Your Enthusiasm was a very disappointing return for the show for me. I enjoyed some of the episodes and some of the jokes, but it doesn’t hold a candle to many of the other seasons and the episodes within them. I hope that season twelve will be a better, funnier return to form.

   Season eleven of Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as the rest of the series, is streaming exclusively on HBO Max. 

   The ten episodes are

   Episode 1 – The Five-Foot Fence

  Episode 2 – Angel Muffin

  Episode 3 – The Mini Bar

  Episode 4 – The Watermelon

  Episode 5 – IRASSHAIMASE!

  Episode 6 – Man Fights Tiny Woman

  Episode 7 – Irma Kostroski

  Episode 8 – What Have I Done?

  Episode 9 – Igor, Gregor, & Timor

  Episode 10 – The Mormon Advantage