“Larry’s Partner” (season 2, episode 10; originally aired 7/28/93)
Behind every person who has “made it”—particularly in comedy, it seems—seethes a friend or acquaintance who resents that success. (And that person’s name is Marc Maron. Zing!) Mix in some guilt and manipulation, and powerful, famous people can become surprisingly easy to push around.
Larry’s already a wimp, so when his caustic former comedy partner, Stan Paxton (Eric Bogosian), shows up out of the blue one day—they haven’t seen each other since Larry broke up the duo for indeterminate reasons 15 years prior—it understandably trips Artie’s alarm. His old bouncer instinct kicks in to politely give Stan the bum’s rush. “That’s the way I started in showbiz. Sometimes I revert, okay?”
Stan has ostensibly appeared to catch up and repay $127 he stole from Larry in 1978 (he used it to buy coke and bang the hotel maid), but from the beginning, the way he alludes to his hard times makes it obvious he wants some kind of handout. Larry has Artie there to protect him from this kind of thing, and he does his best, constantly referring to an imminent Chrysler meeting. (“Who are we trying to avoid?” Hank cluelessly asks.) These types of “old friends” are the bane of managers and agents everywhere, because those pre-fame connections have a way of sneaking past their defenses. In Larry’s case, he can’t see Stan for what he is because he feels guilty for leaving him behind.
That’s how an awkward conversation at the office leads to an excruciating dinner at Larry’s house, then to a full-time staff writing job for Stan on the show, then an actual appearance on the show. Larry’s bad ideas have a way of snowballing. “What do you say to a guy who just said you ruined his life?” Larry tells an exasperated Francine after dinner when Stan goes to the bathroom. “Why’d you invite him here to dinner?” “Because I ruined his life!” Francine tells him he can’t feel guilty, and Larry says he doesn’t—then immediately adds, “I feel so fucking guilty!” Cue Stan walking in remarking how Larry has “a big house… a big house,” and suddenly Larry gives him a job. The look on Larry’s face says he realizes it’s a terrible idea, and the look on Francine’s face says “What the hell are you doing?” Stan just says “What would it pay?”
Stan may be grateful, but mostly he feels entitled, as if Larry is only doing what he owes him. He’s immediately a prick to the staff, pissed that Larry skips one of his jokes or doesn’t tell one of them just right, asks for special treatment, and perhaps worst of all, drinks. Stan’s appearance to repay an old debt looks like he’s on step nine of a 12-step program—making amends—but he never says he’s in treatment. Artie sniffs out some “cheap, domestic, plain-wrapped vodka” in Stan’s coffee—“I won’t tolerate alcohol in my office!” “You have alcohol in your office.” “That’s for weekends.”—and the next thing you know, he’s taking down several cans of beer while Hank proudly shows him the model of the Lookaround Café.
“You’ve just stepped in a huge pile of shit named Stan Paxton, and you’re tracking all over my office!” Artie yells when he hears Larry gave Stan a job, and he couldn’t be more right. Because not only does Larry give him a job, but he quickly acquiesces to special treatment—letting Stan take his jokes to him directly, instead of pitching them with the writers. “You don’t help alcoholics by giving them everything that they want!” Francine tells him, and that’s when we learn that Stan’s drinking killed their old partnership. (Stan tells the Phil and Jerry it was because Larry was jealous that he was “ballin’ the chicks everywhere we went.”) Why didn’t Larry say something to him?