The fictional Larry David gets himself into a plethora of uncomfortable conclaves in Curb Your Enthusiasm. He functions with his own set of rules that he expects everyone to follow. When they don’t, he sees to it that they learn his ways.
While he can be wrong at times, the majority of the time, he has a point that the general public can get behind. He’s like that friend that says the thing we all want to say but don’t because of societal norms. Referred to in Curb Your Enthusiasm as a “social assassin”, Larry is like a superhero whose powers come from his fast tongue and biting wit instead of physical powers. Although Curb ended in 2024, Larry still spreads his world views in the brand new sketch show, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America. So, here are five times he was the ultimate social assassin across both of these hilarious shows.
5. The “People Repeller” MAGA Hat
When the real-life Larry David delves into political matters with his writing on Curb Your Enthusiasm, he often does so by filtering grand ideological debates through the lens of petty social anxieties. In the first episode of Season 10, entitled “Happy New Year”, Larry realizes that wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat on the liberal Westside of Los Angeles acts as an instant human forcefield. He uses it as a cynical hack to avoid a lunch date with Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal, clear out a crowded sushi counter, and even diffuse an aggressive motorcyclist.
So, how does this fall into social assassination? Well, Larry takes a massive, explosive national cultural lightning rod and strips it down to a purely selfish, functional tool for personal isolation. Of course, it comes back to bite him on the backside when his assistant, who is planning to sue him, sees his hat and cements her decision.
4. Time-Traveling to Roast Trump with George Washington
Despite being a loose history lesson, Larry David’s new show doesn’t sway too far from his roots. Often called Larry, his opinionated character exists within every single sketch and always has a lot to say. And it didn’t take him long to have another swipe at Donald Trump. This time it wasn’t so direct, but pretty much everyone picked up on it.
In Episode 2, Larry is dropped into the 1700s alongside George Washington (played by the late Rob Reiner). When Washington announces he won’t seek a third term, Larry derails the historic moment by aggressively asking about a hypothetical future president who is an “a**hole” and a “narcissistic pr**k” who would refuse to accept election results and “cheat at golf”. Larry completely shatters the noble, patriotic atmosphere of America’s founding to deliver a hyper-specific, blistering critique of modern politics right to George Washington’s face.
3. Calling Out Bad Habits
This moment right here is where the term “social assassin” was coined. Sure, he’d been doing it all along, but this highly-rated episode set the groundwork for Larry’s brash, public behaviours to intensify. Larry realizes he possesses a rare superpower: he can say the unsayable without caring about social fallout. And more importantly, the people around him notice it too, and they want a piece. Only, they don’t have the guts to do it themselves.
After a remark at a dinner table about the food being cold, Larry’s friend Ron (Jason Kravits) enlists Larry to tell his wife to stop saying “LOL” out loud. Shortly after, young Sammi gets in on the action, blackmailing Larry into telling Susie to stop smacking her lips after she takes a sip of a drink. The hilarity comes from the fact that Larry doesn’t need to be asked or blackmailed to point out people’s bad habits, he’ll do it for free, enjoy it, and feel no remorse.
2. Opening a “Spite Store” to Destroy a Rival
When most people have a bad customer service experience, they ask to speak to the manager or leave a bad review on Yelp. As we all know, Larry David does things differently, and he has the money to back it up. After being banned from his local coffee spot, Mocha Joe’s, over a dispute regarding a wobbly table, cold coffee, and a lack of “defensive urination” rules, Larry doesn’t just complain. He buys the property next door and opens “Latte Larry’s” – a competing coffee shop built entirely out of pure spite to put Mocha Joe out of business.
This wound up being the arc for the entire season, and things got juicy when Larry’s scheming assistant teamed up with Mocha Joe to take Larry down. But Larry was not only backed by mega A-List talent, he kickstarted a movement. The final episode of season 10 had hilarious guest spots from Sean Penn and Jonah Hill, both of whom leveraged their wealth and fame to put their own retail enemies out of business.
1. Halting the “Chat and Cut”
If there’s one thing that universally annoys all of us, it’s people who cut in line. It’s safe to say that in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry will not stand for it. But he also has an eye for a particular sub-category of cutting in line called the “chat and cut”. In the Season 8 episode titled “Vow of Silence”, Larry spots a woman attempting a classic buffet-line maneuver: pretending to know someone near the front of the line, striking up a brief, fake conversation, and using it as an excuse to smoothly insert herself into the line ahead of dozens of waiting people. Larry publicly intercepts her, calling out the “chat and cut” with mathematical precision.
While this may be his most basic of social assassin hits, it’s one we can all relate to. It’s also one that many of us may enough moxie to pull off ourselves. This segment became so iconic that David revisited it in Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America.
Read Next: 5 Times Larry David Went Too Far on Curb Your Enthusiasm
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