Happy Birthday Edie Falco

She is a chameleon and a vessel: drop her into any diseased milieu and she’ll absorb it like a sponge, her face manifesting pathologies unique to that broken atmosphere. Whether it be the smothering constant danger of the Oswald Correctional Facility or the banal sleaze and empty suburban malaise of New Jersey, Edie Falco is a crucible of anxieties and pathos. She was the standout actress on HBO's very first series, Oz, a steely female presence that is the antithesis of the women on HBO's second series, Sex & the City.

As Corrections Officer Diane Wittlesey, she lives in a sterile Plexiglas subculture of feral, unpredictably lethal inmates. As Wittlesey, her face is as taut and plain and hard as the stretched top of a water drum, while her eyes, feverishly alert, dart in the stone of her face, the paranoid eyes themselves prisoners of her hard vigilant expression. This actress alone, and this character alone already powerfully conveys the claustrophobic frenzy that is the aura of Oz: Seasons 1 and 2. It is also divulged over the course of the first few seasons that she is a divorcee struggling to outrun poverty and, it is not a surprise, as her weary face does not hide her character’s hardscrabble background. This complete and utter lack of glamor is what makes her perfect to play a female prison guard. As Diane Wittlesey, she seemed perfectly at home as the only white female Corrections Officer in Oswald State Penitentiary, her probing face was hard as granite and completely scrubbed of pretty embellishments. She wasn’t a clichéd ballbuster type, either; she was self-effacing in her toughness, a thoroughly layered character, incapable of being insubstantial. People who have only seen her as Carmela Soprano have no idea how much range this woman has.

A character that couldn’t be more the polar opposite of the hyper-alert, ossified Corrections Officer is Carmela Soprano, a spoiled, unfulfilled New Jersey housewife whose face becomes more slack and vacant as her character becomes more used to her materialism and her moral complacency. She’d like to believe she is the unwitting First Lady of the New Jersey criminal empire, but the authority and the poise with which she holds herself in the presence of her husband’s associates’ wives shows, just so subtly, that she knows quite well that she is the Alpha Bitch.

Her first HBO character is often overlooked because of her astonishing work on The Sopranos, but I'm comforted in the knowledge that Carmela Soprano is as rich and complicated as Diane Wittlesey, very likely moreso because we spent twice as much time with Carmela. When thinking about The Sopranos, I often forget how many terrible attributes Carmela has: she is materialistic and has dubious motives when it comes to her relationship with her husband that verge on flat-out gold-digging, but these are trivial considerations when they are being exhibited by someone with as much humanity as Edie Falco. I always forgive her wrongdoings, no matter how selfish or thoughtless. Falco really broke new ground during her time on HBO, resulting in the first truly complex female dramatic television character. In fact, she is the first actress to ever sweep the top three television awards. In 2000, she received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, The Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series, and the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, all in the same year for her performance as Carmela Soprano.

HBO has introduced me to many great actresses: Molly Parker and Paula Malcolmson in Deadwood, Polly Walker in Rome, Amy Ryan and Sonja Sohn in The Wire, but Edie Falco is the original HBO actress, and just like Carmela among the gangster housewives of New Jersey, she is #1.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 6 - Episode 2, "The Anonymous Donor"

In “Meet the Blacks” I was irked at how pushy Ted Danson was with Larry, commanding him to come inside his house more than insisting, and now Danson is becoming overly friendly with Cheryl, calling her cell phone to chat, and playfully patting her shoulder in person. Larry theorizes on this behavior to Jeff: “That’s like, you know, sex for platonic friends. Because they can’t touch each other; it’s forbidden, so they…do the playful slap.”

And Cheryl eats it up too – she does the “flirtatious tap” right back to Ted when Larry and she arrive at an NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) function where Larry has had a wing credited to him for his donation. The other donated wing has been credited to ‘Anonymous’, which immediately sets Larry off because it makes his donation look less selfless and honorable. Cheryl informs him that Anonymous is actually Ted Danson.

Later when Larry is talking to Sen. Barbara Boxer at the function, Ted comes up behind him, grabs both his shoulders and says to the Senator, “Isn’t he great?” So not only is Ted Danson flirting with Cheryl, but he’s patronizing Larry. Also, he’s a Pharisee.

Meanwhile, Larry, Cheryl, and the Blacks have moved into a new house. An unexpected visitor shows up in the form of Leon (J.B. Smoove), an affable black guy who turns out to be Loretta’s brother. When he enters Larry’s house with his suitcases, Larry asks if he was in the Hurricane too. Loretta: “No he lives here in L.A.”

The next morning, Cheryl, looking troubled, asks to speak to Larry. She tells him she found a stain on Leon’s blanket that could be nothing other than evidence that Leon has been masturbating with impunity on their linen. When Larry confronts Leon about the stain in question, Leon denies it. Later, at the NRDC function, Jeff admits to Larry, while the two chat with Ted, that he is the culprit of the trespassing semen. On the drive home, Cheryl tells Larry she knows it was Jeff who masturbated on their blanket and that he is banned from their house. Larry correctly assumes Ted told her and is angered that he tattled to Cheryl while Cheryl is angered that Larry is angry about the tattling and not the masturbating. Ted Danson is effectively driving a wedge in Larry and Cheryl’s marriage on multiple fronts.

When Larry goes to Jeff’s house to let him know he’s banned, Susie comes in and wants to know why.

After a shitstorm of Susie Greene-style obscenities and rage, Susie bans Larry from her house.

Larry goes to the dry cleaners to drop off the soiled blanket and to pick up a Yankees jersey. When he can’t find his jersey, he is told by Gina Gershon’s character that when the wrong customer accidentally takes an item of clothing, there’s nothing to be done - somebody else now owns his Joe Pepitone N.Y. Yankees jersey. He is not consoled when she explains that it’s the Unwritten Law of Dry Cleaning.

When he is driving around with Leon later, he spots a man wearing his pilfered jersey, and after pointing the man out to Leon, Leon is quick to get out of the car and reclaim it. Later Larry spots another guy wearing a jersey that looks like his and after inspecting the first reclaimed jersey, realizes it’s not his, but that one is. Again, Leon is in the guy’s face, and before long, Larry and Leon are sitting in Larry’s house playing cards in matching Yankees jerseys.


Choice Lines

Cheryl: “I know who it is…It’s Ted, Ted is Anonymous...Isn’t that great? He donated the whole wing and didn’t want anybody to know.”
Larry: “He told you. So apparently he wanted somebody to know.”
Cheryl: “He told me…Okay?”
Larry: “Who else did he tell?! How do you know he just told you?!”
Cheryl: “I don’t know – the point is that he didn’t need all the fanfare…”
Larry: “Fanfare?! What fanfare?! I don’t like the fanfare! Are you saying I like fanfare?!”


Leon: “I wonder if cooking good is hereditary. You know what I mean?”
Auntie Ray: “Yeah, see, Loretta put her foot in it this time.”
Leon: “Loretta put her foot in it, turned it around, and kicked you in your own asshole!”


Larry: “I just spoke to my wife…and she found…a stain…on your blanket…”
Leon: “A stain on my blanket, huh? What, like, uh, juice, syrup, maybe syrup or something like that?”
Larry: “No”
Leon: “Gravies maybe…something in the gravy category?”
Larry: “Unh-uh. No.”
Leon: “What kind of stain was it?”
Larry: “……Ejaculate…”
Leon: “E-wha?”
Larry: “Ejaculate.”
Leon: “Ajackalit?”


Susie: “You what?! You jerked off in their house?!”
Jeff: “Yeah…”
Susie: “Oh, that is sick! You have wrought your semen outside our home, Jeff?!?!
Jeff: “Yeah.”
Susie: “You masturbate in this house and this house alone!! Maybe a hotel! Not at a friend’s house!!”
Larry: “I have to, I have to agree with her, really…”
Susie: “Alright, you know what Larry? I can handle this. He’s my husband. Shut the fuck up, okay?
Larry: “Okay.”
Susie: “It’s sick Jeff. You don’t jerk off in somebody else’s home!” (To Larry) “And Cheryl kicked him out?”
Larry: “Yeah, she’s banned him.”
Susie: “Who the fuck is she to tell my husband what to do?”


Stray Observations

- Cheryl Hines is hot.


- Larry tries the playful tap out on Susie. Does that mean he subconsciously wants to have sex with her? No. Can it?


- Leon adds much comic momentum and provides Larry with considerable to work with.


- I have long taken for granted how well Curb weaves the various story threads together in a single episode. I’d take issue with contrivance, only it’s a half hour comedy show.


- I can’t decide what is the bigger ethical quandary: Masturbating on a friend’s blankets or breaking the unspoken agreement of not squealing on a buddy’s transgression, especially when it has nothing to do with you. Both Larry and Cheryl have valid points. But seriously, Jeff: come on.


* Larry’s Biggest Act of Assholery: Allowing Leon to intimidate the Yankees Jersey off two different guys comes close, but Larry isn’t doing something he knows is wrong – he’s just retrieving his stolen property. Plus he really can’t be blamed for not being able to stop the loose cannon that is Leon. So, no assholery as far as I’m concerned, just standard Larry pettiness: “So you know not one person, not one thanked me for the donation.” If anything, Ted Danson is the biggest asshole of the episode, the smug chucklehead.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 6 - Episode 1, "Meet the Blacks"

Like Season 6, Part 2 of The Sopranos, Season 6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm opens with our beloved hero asleep in his bed.

Larry and Cheryl are awoken in the middle of the night by a smoke alarm in the kitchen. Larry gets up on a stepladder and unscrews the alarm, but can’t deactivate it. After a hilarious close-up of Larry’s face twisted in aggravation, he fixes the problem with a baseball bat. Naturally, the absence of the fire alarm will prove to be a liability later in the episode.

Larry, Jeff, and Richard Lewis congregate in the changing rooms of Larry and Jeff’s country club while the television broadcasts news of “Hurricane Edna.” Richard acts pissy while Larry and Jeff devise an alibi to explain to Marty Funkhouser why they were not at his party the previous evening. Larry decides he’ll tell Marty he confused tonight with yesterday. Jeff says he'll use his young daughter as an explanation, which Richard finds reprehensible. Larry: “It’s a perfect excuse. No one can argue with that…It’s a great reason to have kids.”

As Larry and Cheryl drive to a party at Ted Danson’s house, Cheryl proselytizes about how the “Edna” victims need help desperately and how they should adopt one of the displaced families. Larry says he’ll need a couple of months to “…mentally prepare for that.” Larry tells her they need to make a quick stop by Marty’s so Larry can lie to him about the party. Larry and Cheryl show up on Marty’s doorstep displaying faux bewilderment at the lack of party guests. Marty insists that they stay. Cut to Larry slouched in Marty’s living room.

Jeff and Susie show up with Larry’s stolen excuse. Jeff, Susie, Cheryl, Marty, Marty's wife, and Larry eat cake, delicious, delicious chocolate cake whose bakery Cheryl asks the address of from Marty.

The three couples play the Newlywed Game and when the question “If you could have sex with one of your friends’ wives or girlfriends, who would it be?” comes up, Larry makes the mistake of saying Cha Cha, Richard Lewis’s new girlfriend, which pisses off Cheryl enough to exile him from their bedroom later that night. Standing outside the bedroom door holding blankets, he says he’ll do anything. She opens the door, “Anything?”
Larry: “Well, you know…short of adopting this Hurricane family…”

Cut to Larry and Cheryl driving to the airport to pick up the displaced family they’ve adopted. But Larry tells her they have to make a quick stop by Ted Danson’s house, whose party they missed last night because they got stuck at Marty’s. Faux bewilderment. Ted insists they stay.

Cut to Larry slouched in Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s living room. Richard Lewis and Cha Cha (Tia Carrere) show up using Larry’s excuse.

Cheryl and Larry pick up the family, the Blacks, who are black and consist of Loretta (Vivica A. Fox), her Aunt, and her two kids, Keysha and Daryl . Loretta smokes cigarettes, which Larry does not want her to do in his house. Cheryl decides to throw a party to welcome the Blacks.

Cheryl and Larry stop by the 26th Street Bakery, the one Marty recommended to them, and I couldn’t help but be distracted by the giant erect penis exhibit in the background of the store. Then the guy behind the counter places a giant brown penis on the counter, confusing Larry, which is a reasonable reaction from someone who has asked for cake and finds himself staring at a penis. He is told that the giant brown penis is the cake and that he and Cheryl are standing in an erotic bakery, an establishment I had never been introduced to, though whose existence does not surprise me.
Larry (to Cheryl): Funkhouser! He knowingly served us penis!! What is wrong with that guy!! What an idiot!!” (and then to the baker) “Cake is uh…delicious by the way…

At the party, Jeff brings over a cake from the 26th Street Bakery, and before Larry can stop it, one of Loretta’s children has been traumatized.

Cut to Larry sitting alone at his kitchen table eating the penis cake. Loretta, cigarette in hand, comes down to talk to him.

He asks her if Keysha is okay and then asks if she could perhaps not smoke in the house. She then rudely extinguishes her cigarette in his plate of penis cake. The plate ends up in the wastebasket at the foot of the wall formerly manned by a smoke alarm, and the episode comes full circle as Loretta’s not quite snuffed out cigarette begins a fire in the kitchen.


Choice lines

Cheryl: “I can’t stop thinking about the Hurricane”
Larry: “Oh my nose is really itching me....”


Cheryl: “Imagine for one second if you lost every single thing you had in your life.”
Larry: “What do I have? I dunno…What do I have? I like this sport jacket…”


(Jeff and Susie compete with Larry and Cheryl in offering excuses to Marty Funkhouser about why they can’t stay any longer)
Larry: “My dad has a virus…
Susie: “Your dad always has a virus.”
Larry: “Fuck you – he doesn’t always have a virus.”


(Ted Danson offers Richard Lewis a drink.)
Richard: “I’m a recovering alcoholic."


Cheryl: “Where have you been?”
Larry: “Ate some penis.”


Stray Observations

- I am flummoxed as to how a nebbish little goblin like Richard Lewis could bag Tia Carrere.


- Why Jeff is cooler than Richard Lewis:


Larry: “You stole my ‘wrong night’ bit!”
Jeff: “I didn’t steal it - I gave you full credit! It’s a brilliant idea! I told Susie it was your idea.”


Larry: “What’d you steal my thing for?!”
Richard: “What thing?!”
Larry: “Showing up the wrong night thing!”
Richard: “What - you have a fucking copyright on this stupid little thing?!”


- In the wrong hands, the erotic bakery gags could have been terrible. Maybe it’s just me and my unreasonable faith in Larry David, but he made penis cake pretty goddamn hilarious.


- Couldn’t they have gotten somebody better than Vivica A. Fox to play Loretta Black?


* Larry’s Biggest Act of Assholery: He was pretty well behaved in this episode, and wasn’t really an asshole. Lots of faux pas (“Your last name is Black? That’d be like if my last name was ‘Jew.’”) but nothing that bad. So far.