Watching the new The Paul Reiser Show, I immediately thought “hey, this feels like it’s supposed to be Curb Your Enthusiasm” (not that I’m any expert, having seen two or three episodes of that show over the years) “both in feel and in the way they build it around the real Paul Reiser’s life, looking at his life as a stay-at-home dad in his after-the-hit-sitcom days. It’s not just the concept, it’s the texture.” And then, they mentioned Larry David, and I felt like they were trying to address people having that reaction by acknowledging it and moving on. But then David himself appeared, so I’ve got to assume that this is all purposeful, probably with someone from the Curb team involved. I’m not sure if the world needs another Curb (which is not a complaint about Curb; I thought the episodes I watched were reasonably enjoyable, but wasn’t certain whether further exposure would bring me more into its depths, or whether its annoying characters would become annoying to watch.
But if the Reiser show is Curb, it isn’t pure; it’s Curb grafted onto some other, more normal modern sitcom about a bunch of male friends who have nothing in common, but hang out together because their kids go to the same school. And this ends up an awkward mix – the sitcom that is grafted on isn’t a particularly good one. If these other dads were just one part of the wacky set of folks who surrounded Paul in life, that would be one thing, but it’s clear this is the core concept of the show, and it drags it down; “the life of Paul Reiser” is a more interesting concept than “the life of five guys who don’t really like each other but hang out due to circumstances, each of whom has their official quirks.”
