The Paul Reiser Show

They bring David himself on as a kind of nudge to the ribs, as if to say, "Of course we know we're ripping off Larry's show." But what the hey? David's clearly in on the joke and is well paired with Reiser as the two of them riff off each other over lunch.

Some of the humor is decent enough, but some also has the same feeling as Paul's life: We're here and there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well tell jokes.

Much of the action arises from Reiser's inability to manage his mouth, but where David boldly owns the dark and limitless empire of his self-absorption, Reiser still wants to be the happily married Dad who may say the wrong thing once in a while but whose heart is still in the right place. A guy who's just like you, only much richer with his own show. But you can't have it both ways; just ask Larry David.

Reiser, a precise, nimble comic, doesn't have the gut-level energy to bully life into this contraption. It's stalled. [25 Apr 2011, p.46]

The adventures aren't funny, and the friends aren't believable. But the real flaw is Reiser seems to have missed one of the central points that gives Curb its odd, counterintuitive appeal: David's willingness to paint himself in an unwaveringly horrid light.

Nothing in the first two of these trite NBC versions makes you want to continue with the others.

It's hard to imagine a worse idea than The Paul Reiser Show, creating a new void to replace the void that was Perfect Couples.