Black Characters Made ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Legendary
The show always embraced awkwardness, but it became something special when its Black characters got lives of their own
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HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm opened its 10th season with star and series creator Larry David reestablishing his race-riffing repartee with on-screen crony Leon Black (J.B. Smoove). “You like your color?” asks Larry, self-conscious about his own saltine skin tone. “I fucking love my color; I’m fuckin’ mahogany,” Leon replies without missing a beat. “You’re like a… a porridge. A Cream of Wheat, a Farina — that kinda shit.”
It’s a simple setup: Get an improvisationally agile Black person talking about skin color and unlock all kinds of funny. Yet, the scene is a tag-team act, a routine that hinges on both performers recognizing the subtle inversions that racism creates — in this case, the fact that Black folks upended being judged for the color of their skin, flipping that shit to salvage their own beautiful truth.
That same phenomenon has occurred again and again since the HBO series’ 2000 premiere. Sure, Curb is steeped in the crusty-crass observational humor that David has…
