open/close all folders
Main Characters:
Larry David
Larry David
The unlucky, unpleasant "bald asshole".note
Played By: Larry David
Neurotic, sardonic, and candid to a fault, Larry's the main character of the series who always seems to have the worst luck in the world.
- Accidental Pervert: Several incidents involve him looking like he's sexually harassing women in public. The first of these moments happened in "The Pants Tent", when Nancy noticed his "pants boner" at the movie theater, and assumed he got it from her touching him.
- All Jews Are Cheapskates: Larry's net worth is close to one billion dollars, and yet he often can't spare a dime for other people. In "The End", Larry believes that he's adopted and when he finds out that his birth-parents were gentiles, he becomes uncharacteristically unconcerned about money.
- Author Avatar: The character of Larry David is a fictionalized version of his actor and his show's creator. Despite being a character version of Real Life-Larry, Series-Larry acts just about as real as it gets, working the same job, dealing with the same situations, and behaving in the same manner with just a touch of Adam Westing. The only major difference is that Larry in real life has two daughters while Larry in the show has no children.
- Brooklyn Rage: He's from Brooklyn and he gets angry a lot.
- Brutal Honesty: Larry is almost totally unable to censor himself or exhibit any tact when expressing his views and it's the cause of much of his trouble.
- Butt-Monkey: Everything always goes straight to hell for Larry, whether he deserves it or not.
- Character Catchphrase: "That's pretty, pretty, pretty good," and "Let me ask you something/a question." He also ends his famous intense stares to figure out if someone is lying by saying "okay" in a suspicious manner.
- The Chew Toy: At least half the time Larry gets kicked around due to his own fault. The other half of the time he's a victim of circumstance or other people's anger and misplaced hostility. Either way, every episode revels in Larry getting yelled at, hit, or otherwise ending up in some awkward or hostile situation.
- Chick Magnet: He has several relationships - serious and casual - throughout the series, all of which require little to no effort to obtain and often with beautiful women, including Lucy Lawless. Even when married to Cheryl he had a few ardent admirers.
- Composite Character: Curb Larry has elements of both Seinfeld Jerry and George Costanza. Somewhat deconstructed in that George was largely based on the real Larry David. As the “Seinfeld” reunion reveals, a couple of his past situations could also apply to Elaine and Kramer as well.
- Consummate Liar: Larry is a skilled liar who can barely go an episode without being dishonest about something. This and insensitive bluntness seem to be his only modes.
- Cosmic Plaything: The world seems to have it out for Larry; nothing ever goes right for him even if he's completely innocent or minding his own business. In nearly every episode, Larry's either being belittled, harassed, threatened, assaulted, or even being hunted down by Islamic fundamentalists.
- Deadpan Snarker: As you'd expect from a man who made his fortune writing comedy, Larry has a very sharp, self-depreciating wit.
- Death Glare: His trademark move when he thinks someone is lying is to stare at them intensely for an uncomfortably long time. He does tends to do it a lot.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Larry has an almost uncanny ability to make a problem much worse than it needs to be, either through his refusal to admit wrongdoing, his attempts at fixing the situation or simply his inability to just know when to shut up.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: He'll often end up walking into an uncomfortable situation inadvertently and end up making things much worse with his bad temper, blunt approach and general disinterest in trying to make nice or meet others halfway.
- Friend to All Children: Larry is much more patient with kids than he is with adults most of the time, even if he's often Mistaken for Pedophile.
- Grumpy Old Man: Gets angered easily and is usually in a bad mood about something.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: It takes very little to set Larry off. Many of the issues he faces arise from his inability to control his temper or let a minor issue go.
- Hidden Depths: In the finale of season eight, it is revealed he can speak fluent French
- Innocently Insensitive: Larry generally doesn't mean to offend others but his bluntness, bad temper and disinterest in social niceties often get him into trouble, especially when the consequences bring out his other glaring flaws.
- It's All About Me: He is pretty self-centered, rarely thinking about others or how his words and actions will be taken by them.
- Jerkass: Downplayed. Larry's not necessarily a terrible individual by any means, but he's certainly a sarcastic, short-tempered, and incredibly irritable prick who often gets screwed over for good reason.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: When Larry unintentionally pisses someone off, he inevitably becomes a victim of circumstance despite his many flaws. He is also capable of genuine kindness and sensitivity and will occasionally try to make up for mistakes and is also willing to go out of his way to help people on occasion, even total strangers.
- Kavorka Man: Fittingly since he invented the term to begin with, Larry is one, never having an issue attracting beautiful women after Cheryl leaves him. Though there is one good reason why attractive, younger women would date him - he is very rich. But even aside from that, Larry is established as having considerable charisma and charm, as well as a sharp wit owing to his years as a comedy writer and stand-up comedian. When circumstances and his own blunders don't do him in, he's quite successful with the ladies, even getting a date with Lucy Lawless who was genuinely taken with him just for his personality and a had a legitimately pleasant evening with him until Larry predictably said something stupid.
- Living Lie Detector: Thinks he's this but the results tend to be fairly mixed.
- Loser Protagonist: Larry fails at just about everything he puts his mind to. The fact that he manages to be this despite being extremely wealthy, respected by his peers for his achievements, if not his personality, and the creator of one of the most popular and acclaimed shows in history is almost impressive.
- Manchild: He's already well into middle-age at the start of the show and has the disposition of a child, refusing to filter his thoughts, engaging in selfish behavior, getting angry and throwing tantrums when things don't go his way and generally being incredibly immature.
- Never My Fault: Larry will almost never admit to being in the wrong about anything unless he absolutely has to. (He's often forced to apologize to people he offended, but does so insincerely.)
- Nice to the Waiter: For all his many flaws, Larry is often shown as being nice to people who work in restaurants and retail and avoids taking his frustration out on them, usually meeting them with simply frustrated sarcasm, and will occasionally even go out of his way to be nice to them. Tipping etiquette does tend to be the one thing he has trouble with.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Whenever Larry sincerely tries to do something nice for someone, it almost always ends with that person subsequently screwing him over, or with his kind gesture being misinterpreted as an insult or even a crime.
- No Indoor Voice: Try to find an episode (hell, a SCENE) in which Larry doesn't shout at some point.
- No Social Skills: Downplayed. It's less that Larry is confused by social standards. He just doesn't care about them and doesn't see why he should. This ends up being the cause of many problems for him and everyone around him.
- Obfuscating Disability: When Larry first met Michael (a blind man), he pretended he was also blind.
- Oh, Crap!: Winds up in these kinds of situations all the time.
- One-Hour Work Week: Larry's net worth means he doesn't really need to work and more screentime is dedicated to his social life than at work. Cheryl's displeasure with the resulting laziness contributes to their divorce and motivates him to produce the Seinfeld reunion to get her back.
- Only Sane Man: Deconstructed. Larry certainly thinks he's this, the only one willing to say what everyone else is too polite to. However, his refusal to filter his thoughts and his own serious flaws end up making things much worse than they need to be for himself and others.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Hoo boy. Larry seems incapable of speaking for any extended amount of time without doing this. It's to the point that such moments in general are now referred to as a "Larry David moment".
- Politically Incorrect Hero: Invoked in one episode, in which Larry decides to constantly wear a "Make America Great Again" cap purely to keep people away from him (he makes clear he doesn't gives a damn about politics) and starts to take joy in how effective it is, comparing it to pulling a cross on a vampire. As is typical of the show, however, this backfires big time when people start to become flat-out "beat you up" hostile and he nearly gets a sexual harassment lawsuit because of out-of-context quoting.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Larry is extremely wealthy due to his time running Seinfeld, although he'd come from a fairly working-class background prior, and has a lack of social graces and common sense that is absolutely staggering.
- Saying Too Much: Larry simply does not know when to shut up.
- The Scrooge: Larry is very wealthy but hates spending money he doesn't have to and is cheap with others.
- Showrunner: Larry is a fictionalized version of himself, a version that still acknowledges that he was the showrunner on Seinfeld. (Though this is hard to imagine, since the show's version of Larry is pretty much incapable of collaborating with anyone and ruins every project he comes into contact with.)
- Skewed Priorities: Larry tends to hyperfocus on minutiae to the detriment of any actual task he has to perform and ramble on for minutes on end with no consideration for whatever is obviously frustrating the people around him.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: The ugly guy to Cheryl's hot wife. He was also this for Loretta for a while.
- The Unapologetic: Has a bad habit of refusing to apologize unless he absolutely has to and even then, he can never hide how begrudging and insincere it is.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Is incredibly self-involved, he's very dishonest at some times and rudely honest at others, and he's so abrasive and annoying that few people can stand being around him.
- Although part of what does (sometimes) make Larry sympathetic is that he's more concerned with people's comfort and feelings than other people and is genuinely open-minded. Specific instances is when he tries to be nice to a new neighbor who happens to be a sex offender by inviting him to a Seder dinner in "The Seder" or when he is very friendly and accepting toward a Muslim woman who wears a full-body burqa and a group of car wash workers with intellectual disabilities in "The Blind Date".
- Verbal Backspace: Loses his privileges of these, since he keeps saying so much stupid stuff.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Larry is constantly stepping out of line and digging himself into deeper and deeper holes when he could just as easily keep his mouth shut and walk away.
- Younger Than They Look: At the start of Curb, Larry is 52 years old but looks at least a decade older. The strange thing is, in Season 10, over 20 years later, he looks exactly the same, save for his hair going a bit whiter.
Cheryl David
Cheryl David
The bald asshole's ex-wife
Played By: Cheryl Hines
Larry's ex-wife, a long-suffering Voice of Reason who often has to point out or rectify her ex-husband's ridiculous misdeeds.
- Age-Gap Romance: She is way too young of a woman to be married to Larry.
- Gold Digger: Turns out to have been one at the end of season 5 when Larry "dies".
- Rich Bitch: She can be one. Especially when she does stuff like try to fire a maid because she doesn’t wear a bra and Cheryl doesn’t want to ask her to wear one or just generally not being very helpful to Larry, even when it’s not warranted.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: The hot wife to Larry's ugly guy.
- Voice of Reason: When Larry starts flying off the grid, she is there to keep him on track. He never listens to her, though.
- Women Are Wiser: Played very straight, with Cheryl often being the voice of reason for Larry's perpetual schemes.
Jeff Greene
Jeff Greene
Larry's hapless, cunning manager.
Played By: Jeff Garlin
Larry's closest friend and manager, a fairly laid-back, yet unethical Kavorka Man who's married to Susie, who's a gargantuan bitch.
- Celebrity Resemblance: In season 10, he complains that he constantly gets mistaken for Harvey Weinstein (who by that time was exposed as a sexual predator).
- Henpecked Husband: Gets tormented by his wife frequently.Larry: You know what people say after you and Susie leave the room?
Jeff: What?
Larry: "That poor bastard..."! - Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jeff's adulterous, unscrupulous, and willing to go along with some fairly immoral deeds to help out Larry, but is fairly amiable and level-headed for the most part.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Even though he's a rather huge slob, Jeff's rarely dressed in anything except a suit and tie. He even refuses to do causal Fridays, claiming it's unprofessional.
Susie Greene
Susie Greene
The shrill, foul-mouthed thorn in Jeff and Larry's side
Played By: Susie Essman
Jeff's explosively temperamental wife who's fond of profanity-laced tirades and demeaning insults towards her husband and Larry.
- Brooklyn Rage: She's from the Bronx and has an explosive temper, with the accent to boot.
- The Dreaded: Larry and Jeff are both terrified of her and with good reason.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Usually combined with Cluster F-Bomb.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Susie's one of the most profane, irascible, and downright ear-splitting characters in the entire series. However, she can be polite and sociable when the situation calls for it and genuinely loves her daughter and her "fat fuck" of a husband.
- Leitmotif: Susie had one, "For Whom the Bell Tolls", though it didn't play every time she appeared, just the times when she was most pissed off. See: "The Doll" and "The Corpse-Sniffing Dog".
- Mama Bear: It's best not to insult or mess with Susie's daughter, Sammi, when she's around. In "The Hot Towel", Larry yells at Sammi to "shut the fuck up" while she's singing rather horrendously, which causes Susie to furiously kick him out of her house.
- Properly Paranoid: Downplayed; she defaults to assuming Larry and Jeff are lying to her face and is usually right, but tends to give them the benefit of the doubt regardless.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Even on a series where everyone swears casually, she is famous for her filthy language.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Susie and Larry are often at each other's throats, but they still manage to enjoy each other's company whether at a dinner party or out for an evening get-together.
Leon Black
Leon Black
The unwanted roommate who "brings the ruckus" to the ladies.
Played By: J.B. Smoove
The shameless, confrontational brother of Loretta Black, who currently resides at Larry's house, even though his family went back home.
- The Casanova: Leon gets around with the ladies, not caring whether they're married or not.
- Cool Uncle: For all of his faults, Leon's a very friendly, supportive uncle towards Loretta's kids.
- Expy: Is, in many ways, a black Kramer.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Becomes this with Larry over the years. He's one of the few people who can continually tolerate his quirks, although it helps that he's almost as eccentric as Larry is.
- Meaningful Name: A few jokes rely on the fact that his family's last name conveniently lines up with their ethnicity.
- Motor Mouth: Leon speaks incredibly fast.
- Odd Friendship: He and Larry eventually form one.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Arguably the second most foul-mouthed character in the series behind Susie.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: In season 6, when Larry and Cheryl temporarily take in his family members from New Orleans who were made homeless by Hurricane Edna, Leon moves in too, even though he was already living in LA and wasn't affected by the hurricane. In season 7, the rest of his family eventually moves out, but he stays.
- Undying Loyalty: As much as he can be a burden to Larry, Leon's very much one of his most loyal friends as well. In "The Lefty Call", he gives Larry advice on how to stand up to an aggressive "skinhead" after a confrontation at the doctor's office and attacks said skinhead even though it was the wrong person.
