‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Season 12’s Best Guest Star Steals Larry’s Cringe

Editor’s Note: The below contains spoilers for ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Season 12, Episode 6.

The Big Picture

• Curb Your Enthusiasm
  delights in awkward laughs with a guest star more cringe-worthy than Larry David himself.
• Lori Loughlin’s appearance on the show highlights her scandal, showcasing the actor in a hilarious light.
• The uncomfortable humor of
  Curb Your Enthusiasm
  brings reality into comedy, making audiences recoil with laughter.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is all about making its viewers uncomfortable. Larry David has made a career out of humor found in the awkward moments, from the failures of George Costanza (Jason Alexander), on Seinfeld, who is based on David, to the weekly mishaps of an exaggerated version of the real life Larry on Curb Your Enthusiasm. As the HBO series makes its way through its 12th and final season, a guest star emerged who showed that they could be even more cringe than the show’s creator and star. In the episode “The Gettysburg Address” (Larry is trying to learn the famous speech during the usually wasted moments of using the bathroom), Lori Loughlin of Full House fame stars as a version of herself. Loughlin isn’t shown in a good light, however, as the focus is on her college admissions cheating scandal and the idea that she might still be someone who lies to get her away. It’s an awkward way of bringing reality into comedy, making you laugh as you recoil.

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Finds Uncomfortable Humor in Reality

This season, Curb Your Enthusiasm has done a deft job of once again bringing real life into the series, with Larry David finding himself in trouble after giving a bottle of water to a Black woman outside a polling place in Georgia. As it’s illegal to do so, David is arrested and inadvertently becomes a hero to the liberal and the Black communities. His angry looking mugshot even closely resembles the infamous one of a certain recent past President. Of course, since this is Larry David, he finds a way to mess up all the good will he’s amassed. Last season, Curb Your Enthusiasm brought in Alexander Vindman, the former Director for European Affairs for the NSC, who ended up at the forefront of the Trump-Ukraine scandal, and put him in a similar plotline with Larry. The most cringeworthy moment of all had Michael J. Fox come aboard as himself in Season 8, where his character hinted at faking Parkinsons.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, of course, doesn’t need real life to be both funny and awkward. The series can find humor in the most cringeworthy of made-up situations. For example, in perhaps their most uncomfortable episode ever, 2001’s “The Doll”, Larry pops the head off a girl’s doll to replace it after he cuts its hair off. If that’s not enough, he hides the doll’s head in his pants, leading to a rash that results in him sticking a cold water bottle down the front of his trousers for relief. This being Larry, he then uses a women’s bathroom, where he runs into the same girl while still having the water bottle in his pants, causing her to run out screaming and Larry to run for his life. It’s hilariously awkward, an episode made worse by the minute due to Larry’s inability to make the right choice. It’s a type of cringe only a few shows, like Curb Your Enthusiasm, can get away with.

Lori Loughlin Went to Prison Due to a College Bribery Scandal

Lori Loughlin will always be best known for her role in Full House, where she played Becky Katsopolis, the wife of John Stamos‘ Jesse. After the ABC series ended in 1995, Loughlin had roles in other TV shows and movies, but nothing matched the success of the part which had made her famous. In 2016, she returned to the role of Becky in a recurring part on Netflix’s Fuller House. She was in 13 episodes during the first four seasons, but she wouldn’t be there for its last.

In 2019, 50 people, including Loughlin and actress Felicity Huffman, were arrested as part of a college admissions scheme, where rich parents paid big money to increase the chances of their children getting into America’s elite colleges. This was done by others being paid to take tests for their kids, along with bribing administrators and coaches. As for Loughlin, she and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, paid half of a million dollars to increase the chances of their two daughters getting into the University of Southern California. Lori Loughlin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two months in prison, 100 hours of community service, and given a $150,000 fine. She was written out of the last season of Fuller House, with it quickly explained that Becky was in Nebraska helping her mother.

Just because Lori Loughlin went to prison, that didn’t mean her acting career was over. For Curb Your Enthusiasm, that awkwardness of real life only made them want the actress more. Series producer Jeff Schaffer told The Hollywood Reporter about how they landed Loughlin for a guest spot on the show alongside Larry David. Writer Teddy Bressman had the idea of having Loughlin come in to play a version of herself, someone who still might be a cheater. Schaffer said:

“So we called her manager up, who loved it, and who then talked to Lori, and she said: ‘I’m in, I’m totally game.’ And she was. She was so great. Everything we threw at her, she was game to do. She makes the episode.”

Lori Loughlin’s Lying on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Results in Awkward Laughs

Lori Loughlin and Curb Your Enthusiasm shouldn’t go together. Loughlin made her name playing wholesome characters in family shows and movies, while wholesome is the last word you’d use to describe Curb Your Enthusiasm. The fact that Lori Loughlin is an ex-con, however, makes her perfect for Larry David and company — the stranger, the better.

Loughlin appears in “The Gettysburg Address” as herself, a woman who has been to prison for a college admissions scandal. She needs help getting into the country club Larry belongs to, so wanting to do a good deed and thinking Loughlin has paid her debt to society, Larry decides to be her sponsor. Quickly, Larry learns that Lori might not have changed her cheating ways. She gives someone 50 bucks to get her and Larry a better tee time, and if that’s not bad enough, she says she has Epstein-Barr so she can drive her golf cart wherever she wants and park her luxury car in a handicap spot. Larry is shocked by it, but Lori just smiles and swears she’s telling the truth. Loughlin’s appearance is reminiscent of the time Michael Richards, who played Kramer on Seinfeld, had a role in Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he too played himself. In one scene, he’s caught yelling at Leon (J.B. Smoove), an uncomfortable moment that harkens back to the real life moment of Richards going on a racist tirade towards a Black man at a stand-up show years before.

Richards on Curb Your Enthusiasm was cringe enough, but he’s an actor used to doing over-the-top stunts. Lori Loughlin will always be sweet Becky on Full House, where the biggest drama was someone not doing their homework and issues were often solved with a hug in 30 minutes or less. Now, she’s cheating, pretending to be handicapped, and flaunting money to get ahead. It’s so awful that even Larry, the king of cringe, is taken aback. Loughlin’s eagerness to accept her past and play against expectations helps create one of the best guest characters the series has ever seen. For some, it could be offensive to see a criminal making light of their crimes, but if you’re offended, that’s exactly what Larry David wants. Curb Your Enthusiasm thrives in it.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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