And if the thrust of David’s newest TV project, the HBO sketch series Life, Larry And The Pursuit Of Unhappiness, is to be believed, the world has always been full of Larry Davids. Timed to the semiquincentennial of the United States’ declaration of independence from Great Britain, Life, Larry scans a 250-year timeline for spots where some prick who looks like the show’s namesake star loused things up, refused to take part in a mutually agreed upon norm, or picked an extremely strange hill to die on. The fun in that setup is that sometimes the hills and the dying are literal; unlike Curb’s small potatoes misunderstandings, the stakes here are sometimes no less than the very future of the republic. The drawback is that even within two and a half centuries of historical reference points, there are only so many ways to show David sticking his foot in his mouth, or taking the coward’s way out.
Some of this comes down to the semi-improvised manner in which David and co-creator (and frequent collaborator) Jeff Schaffer have been working for the past 26 years. The dialogue of Life, Larry And The Pursuit Of Unhappiness has the shaggy, off-the-cuff feel of Curb, or Schaffer’s fantasy-football comedy The League—but within the confines of a sketch, there’s no time to meander toward the type of explosive conclusions that those shows could sometimes reach. And when the improv is further hemmed in by period clothing or elaborate set dressing, the results can feel a little one-note: A first draft of the Declaration of Independence ruling against a laundry list of Davidian pet peeves, for instance, or riffs on modern air travel squeezed into the Wright brothers’ first flight. The pacing suffers, which certainly doesn’t help the material that’s based on minor inconveniences like waiting in line.
What can help: Setting David up with a proper sparring partner. It’s little surprise that one of Life, Larry And The Pursuit Of Unhappiness’ highlights is a two-hander that casts him opposite J.B. Smoove; the pair draft off the easy, high-energy back-and-forth of their Curb characters to hit the ground running in a sketch that quickly transcends its dicey Underground Railroad setup (while also using it to establish one uncrossable line between their characters). Really, anytime the show manages to map a particular relationship dynamic or character game onto its history lessons, it scores: Reading a degree of domestic shirking into the Lewis and Clark expedition, for example, or an Army-McCarthy hearings sketch that essentially takes the same tack as the Declaration of Independence one, but just finds a steadier rhythm and a more entertaining register for David to play.
Yet, when the jokes aren’t landing, or a sketch is dragging on for one or two beats too many, it’s hard not to wonder: Why this? Sure, David is invested enough in history to have taken his daughter Cazzie on a meme-ready tour of Civil War battlegrounds and gone on Finding Your Roots to be told by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that his connection to Bernie Sanders runs deeper than a Saturday Night Live impression. But after a while, it starts to feel like Life, Larry And The Pursuit Of Unhappiness is just a bigger budget version of an SNL political cold open, or a “Washington’s Dream” with higher star wattage and a production credit for a former president and first lady. Any attempts to comment on the current state of affairs in the U.S. are too sweaty or strained—though there is one righteous, unequivocal shot taken at David’s second-degree connection to the second Trump White House. Still, in the face of the squarely patriotic America250 (or its UFC-match-on-the-White-House-lawn evil twin), it’s at least refreshing to see some commemoration of the semiquincentennial that’s willing to acknowledge the good and the bad in America’s past. Larry David is fit to encapsulate both, even if Life, Larry And The Pursuit Of Happiness is unlikely to follow him into the history books.
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