KILL YOUR ENTHUSIASM (7)

By: Jack Silbert
October 20, 2022

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite killed-off TV characters. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

MARTY FUNKHOUSER | CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM

Curb Your Enthusiasm has shown a delightfully comedic disrespect for death ever since the first-season episode “Beloved Aunt.” (Oh, that typo.) So I wondered how Larry David’s show would deal with the real-life 2019 death of Bob Einstein, who’d played pal/foil Marty Funkhouser in seasons 4 through 9.

Ah comedy and tragedy, they meet again. Certainly David, the man responsible for Seinfeld’s “No Hugging, No Learning” philosophy, was not going to do a Very Special Episode on the Death of Funkhouser, with Richard Lewis and Leon sobbing uncontrollably in each other’s arms. Einstein himself would never have wanted it that way. He’d been a comedy iconoclast since his early days writing and performing on the Smothers Brothers show, through his extremely deadpan Super Dave years, later on Curb and in life. (I don’t have room to give his entire biography here, but if you like to laugh and haven’t yet watched the HBO Max documentary The Super Bob Einstein Movie, I urge you to.)

Einstein was too ill to participate in Curb’s Season 10 when it began production. Hoping he’d recover — or not accepting that he wouldn’t — the show goofily explained that Marty Funkhouser was “in China.” When Einstein died midway through the season’s filming, they simply left Funkhouser in the People’s Republic. It might’ve been a trickier decision with one of the characters who play themselves (who I will not jinx by listing them here). But even if Einstein was dead, Marty could live on.

Certainly, the Funkhouser name carried on in Season 10, as ultimate family man Marty would’ve insisted. We met half-brother Freddy Funkhouser played by Vince Vaughn, bringing yet another comedic rhythm to the show. Later, we’re reintroduced to Marty’s transgender son Joey Funkhouser, now played by Chaz Bono. (As Jodi Funkhouser in earlier seasons, the role was portrayed by a pre-Jeopardy! Mayim Bialik, the queen of the Very Special Episode as TV’s Blossom.)

Then, in Season 11’s opening episode, Larry David gave Bob Einstein a fairly subtle tip of the cap and, I don’t know about you, but it got me all verklempt. For he had cast Einstein’s real-life brother, the terrific Albert Brooks, to play himself. (Yes, in one of the all-time great pieces of entertainment trivia, Albert Brooks’ real name is Albert Einstein.) And because real people can die, and show biz folks are even more vain than us regular people, Brooks wished to have a funeral while he was still alive, to hear friends such as Larry David and Jon Hamm give lovely tributes. The episode had no mention of Marty Funkhouser, and there was no post-credits In Memory Of screen, but we fans knew what was happening. I think Bob Einstein would’ve found it — in Curb parlance — pretty, pretty, pretty good.

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KILL YOUR ENTHUSIASM (7)

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