Mel Brooks is Max Bialystock

Last night, while watching the credits for Episode 9 of Season Four of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," I noticed for the first time (incredibly) that there was a "story by" credit. It was by Larry David. And just a little while ago, at the end of Episode 10 (the seasons' final episode), there it was again, "Story by Larry David." I went back to Episodes 6 and 7 to confirm that their stories, too, were by Larry David. I didn't bother to check Episode 8. They all had to be by Larry David, and I suppose that all of the stories of all of the seasons (whose DVDs I've returned to the library) were by Larry David. I feel even more emphatically now that the EO (ExtraOrdinary) rating I've given Seasons Three and Four was deserved. Extraordinary story writing indeed and extraordinarily satisfying to this viewer's taste (and his wife's, who has also seen more than half of the first four seasons' forty episodes).

The final episode of Season Four, which we watched after lunch today, revealed the major premise for the whole. In Episode one, none other than Mel Brooks hears Larry sing to Karaoke at a club and in Episode Two approaches him about taking over the role of Max Bialystock in "The Producers" on Broadway, to play opposite Ben Stiller as Leo Bloom. It takes only a few episodes for Ben Stiller to become so irritated by Larry that he tells Mel, "It's either him or me." It barely occurred to me to wonder why Mel didn't hesitate a second to tell Stiller good-bye and start looking for a replacement...David Schwimmer. Larry and David's relationship is similarly rocky, but at last (in Episode 10) we're on Broadway for opening night.

And here's where that major premise was revealed and took my breath away: Mel, viewing the opening from the back of the auditorium, doesn't look as though he's enjoying what he's seeing. In fact, he looks as though he thinks the spectacle is putrid. Both my wife and I felt puzzled about this. "What's going on?" I actually said outloud. Then Larry David forgets a line and draws such a blank that the show seems to stop dead. Some members of the audience (including Jerry Seinfeld) get up and move toward the exits. Mel leaves for the bar and meets Anne Bancroft (his wife of 41 years, before her death in June 2005), whom he tells he was right, Larry David is terrible. "I knew when I first saw him he was a disaster, and everything he touches is a disaster...At last, we're going to kill off this show and be done with it!" In other words, Mel Brooks is trying to pull a Max Bialystock: put on a show that is sure to flop.

In the meantime, back on stage, Larry (and most everyone else in the audience) hears an altercation in the middle of the theater between a turbaned sikh and the man sitting behind him whose view is blocked. Larry knows both men. He has given them tickets to the show: the sikh handyman who has adjusted his hotel room thermostat and his cousin Andy. Larry smoothly seques into a monologue about his cousin and soon has the audience in stitches. The people who were heading toward the exits start to return to their seats. And eventually Larry remembers the line he missed and the show recommences.

Of course, the show's a big hit, just the way Bialystock's "Springtime for Hitler" is in Mel Brooks's original movie, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder (and in its remake and original Broadway production, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick). Larry David places the capstone of his premise, and Mel Brooks's identity with Max Bialystock is complete!