Curb Your Enthusiasm, "The Reunion": Not that there's anything wrong with that

Spoilers for tonight's "Seinfeld"-ian "Curb Your Enthusiasm" coming up just as soon as I figure out why Christopher Walken was on the boat...

"You know those reunion shows, they're so lame, really. They never work, the actors are 10 years older. It doesn't look right. I don't think so." -Larry

Thankfully, Real-Life Larry is a clever enough man to figure out how to make a "Seinfeld" reunion happen in TV Larry's world, but in a way that's not going to be as disappointing as a real reunion would. This is the last episode I've seen in advance so far, but if "The Reunion" is anything to go by, this plotline is going to be terrific.

We knew from season two that putting Larry in a scene with Jason Alexander was gold.Alexander putting down the character of George (and, by extension, insulting Larry) is a joke that I never tire of, ditto the constant one-upsmanship between the two over things like the tip. And we knew from that season that Julia Louis-Dreyfus could fit into this show just fine. So the real pleasure of this one was seeing Larry and Jerry work together. It's clear from watching "Seinfeld" and "Curb," and from listening to the two of them do "Seinfeld" DVD commentaries, that these are two men with fairly simpatico worldviews and who enjoy bantering with each other. Jerry's still a pretty terrible actor (Larry is, frankly, much more natural than he is at this point), but his awkwardness is almost part of his charm, and it was fun to listen in on their whole digression about Natalie Wood. Not much of Michael Richards in this one, but I hold out hope that an upcoming episode will put him in a room with Leon.

But what I really loved about "The Reunion" was how it was still very clearly an episode of "Curb," even with the fab four in the house, and even with the plot mirroring the "Seinfeld" season four arc where Jerry and George got NBC to produce "Jerry!," down to Larry incorporating previous storylines from the show (giving a doll a haircut, hooker in the carpool lane) into the script. It's still first and foremost about Larry being selfish and myopic and unwilling to conform to society's expectations if he doesn't agree with society.

Larry saying, "This is me apologizing. It's about as sorry as I get" was at least as funny as anything that happened with the "Seinfeld" actors, and the brief hint of the closing credits before Larry stopped to ponder the two alternate futures was hysterical.

What did everybody else think?