Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9 episode 5 review: War reenactments and 'social reset buttons'

Episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm must come in well under-budget most of the time given how quotidian the setups often are, so the show decided to have some fun this week by staging a Revolutionary War reenactment, with 'Lieutenant Larry David' running through a field peppered with explosions.

Of course, he wasn't there by choice, his daily schedule mostly revolving around events he has to go to by way of apology, and he ends up triggering a real-life soldier's PTSD and causing him to charge at a group of valets who appear to him to be Red Coats. It was a typically absurd Curb farce, but not among the funniest elements of the episode, which always lies with the microscopic social observations.

Larry debuted the ingenious tactic of deciding whether to ask for special requests with regards to a menu based on how much of a face the chef makes, sent up 'save the dates', tried and failed to introduce the "social reset button", bemoaned how going on dates requires "preparing witticisms" beforehand, and asserted that: "All men are like that; we don't care what [women] do, we care about what they look like - women are just the opposite." The trope of Larry dating ridiculously out of his league (a couple of weeks ago it was Elizabeth Banks) continued, taking his beautiful young mail carrier out to the cinema, where the pair hilariously argued whether salty and sweet popcorn are "incompatible" or "in cahoots".

There was not enough Leon (JB Smoove) this week (who 100% should have been at the Civil War reenactment) and no guest stars, but we did see the return of Mr. Takahashi, who you'll remember from "swan killer" episode, 'The Black Swan'. Special mention to Richard Lewis, who has been so good this season at keeping you guessing as to whether he's genuinely pissed at Larry or just indulging the perception that's he always pissy.

There has been a lot of very fussy, apoplectic think pieces about the return Curb season (including this Guardian review which genuinely claims it's like a "fourth-rate Benny Hill") and how it doesn't work in this new era of heightened political correctness, but, as CBS prepares to launch The Big Bang Theory spin-off Young Sheldon, can we not just step away from the keyboard for half an hour and enjoy a light-hearted but daring, idiosyncratic and consistently funny comedy?