Having just insulted battered women in last week’s episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, Larry David now takes on the hot-button issue of Arab-Jew race relations. Oh dear.

In ‘Palestinian Chicken’, Larry and Jeff sneak off to an Arab restaurant to get away from their friends and families, because they know that they’ll be the only Jews in the place. All of their friends are opposed to the restaurant, and start a protest when a new one is set to open next door to the “sacred land” of a Jewish deli. Larry’s loyalties are divided. He likes the Palestinian chicken. And even more, he likes the hot waitress who has a thing for screaming anti-Semitic remarks during their wild sex.

Larry also takes on the role of “social assassin” among his friends. Realizing that Larry is never afraid to speak his mind and doesn’t care about hurting anyone’s feelings, one of his friends asks Larry to confront his wife about an annoying habit she has. Later, Jeff’s daughter blackmails Larry into similarly confronting Susie. As you’d imagine, neither of these incidents goes very well.

In a subplot that mirrors an old ‘Seinfeld’ episode, Marty converts to Judaism and is really obnoxious about acting too Jewish in front of the real Jews. This causes a big conflict when his rabbi tells him that he can’t golf on the Sabbath, and that’s when an important tournament is scheduled. In the roundabout way these things usually happen, all of the storylines eventually intersect when a huge fracas erupts on the golf course. The tournament is lost, marriages crumble, friendships are torn asunder, and it’s all Larry’s fault.

This episode has some howlingly funny lines, such as:

• “I’m going to fuck the Jew out of you.”
• “The penis does not care about race, creed or color.”
• “Screw me like Israel screwed my country!”
• “Yeah, they do not like the Jews.”

In other words, this is classic ‘Curb’.