Recap — Curb Your Enthusiasm — 7.01 "Funkhouser's Crazy Sister"

We’ve missed you, Larry David. We really have. It’s been almost two years since we last saw you talking about a tickle in your anus in front of everyone at your best friend’s daughter’s bat mitzvah. It’s been way too long. And now, you’re back for ten weeks, and then you’ll be gone again for God knows how long.

But where did we leave you last? Oh, yes. You were dancing with Loretta Black at the previously mentioned bat mitzvah. And then there was that montage of you and the blacks becoming one big happy, obnoxious family, with memories of Cheryl completely gone. Right?

Well, let’s not say that all is as well as it seems. We pick up this year with a somewhat browbeaten Larry waiting on his girlfriend hand and foot. She’s also taken control of the bedroom thermostat, making it too hot for Larry to comfortably cohabit. She and Leon argue that Larry’s preferred temperature is too cold.

Larry gives up. As he goes downstairs, Auntie Rae arrives home, warning Larry about neighborhood robberies, but also discussing the results of Loretta’s biopsy, which hasn’t come in yet. Auntie Rae spouts her thankfulness that Larry will be at Loretta’s side, though Larry is obviously much less enthusiastic.

Larry goes to talk to Jeff, and compares his plight confusingly to that of Cinderella’s, with Loretta being the evil stepmother. He states that couples should have breakup clauses, and Jeff agrees, perhaps having codewords like apricot to indicate a breakup, though Larry feels that apricots are rarely good, and are a low-percentage fruit.

Suzie comes out to the garage to invite Larry to a dinner party, but he wants to know who else will be attending. Suzie refuses to tell Larry, because that’s “just not done,” though Larry becomes ornery. However, Suzie refuses to tell Larry,and he is forced to agree to come, without having any idea of who else is coming. Jeff asks why the two even get started arguing, making a very good point indeed. He’s ignored, of course.

Larry returns home, to find Loretta’s doctor there. The doctor attempts to talk to Larry about Loretta, but Larry tries to change the subject and talk about fish. The doctor then turns, and gets some lemonade out of Larry’s refridgerator, which Larry objects to. Larry chastises the doctor, and the doctor angrily retorts, eventually leaving as Funkhouser walks in, telling Larry that liquids are okay to take from someone else’s fridge. Funkhouser updates Larry on the status of his sister Bam Bam, who was recently removed from the mental institution. Larry asks Funkhouser if there’s anything he can do, and Funkhouser takes him up on the empty gesture, much to Larry’s chagrin, and tells him to come and entertain Bam Bam later that day. Larry asks if Funkhouser is going to Jeff and Suzie’s dinner party, but Funkhouser wasn’t invited, and is hurt that Larry was tactless enough to ask without knowing if Funkhouser is coming.

Larry and Jeff go to meet Bam Bam (Catherine O’Hara), and the meeting is of course awkward. Larry leaves to go to the bathroom, eventually going into the kitchen and making a sandwich, leaving Jeff and Bam Bam alone. When he returns, he discovers that the two are in an upstairs bedroom, having sex. On the ride home, Larry admonishes Jeff for having sex with a mental patient, though Jeff argues that she’s not a mental patient.

Larry later arrives at Jeff and Suzie’s party, where Jeff tells Larry that Funkhouser called, angry about not being invited, and Suzie was forced to invite Funkhouser and Bam Bam. Larry, meanwhile, goes to talk to Loretta’s doctor, who is at the party, and is surprised to find that the doctor is gay, though he callously expresses this surprise and offends the doctor and his partner.

Funkhouser approaches Larry and Jeff soon after, and thanks them, saying that the visit put Bam Bam into good spirits. He makes them promise to do it again, which they reluctantly do in order to get to go eat.

At the dinner table, Bam Bam and Jeff flirt rather obviously, though Jeff is careful to hide this from Suzie. Bam Bam begins revealing that Larry ate from their fridge, causing the doctor to call Larry a hypocrite, and then reveals that she slept with Jeff. Suzie is at first outraged, but they are able to convince her that Bam Bam is crazy. Funkhouser apologizes for his sister and says that she is being sent back to the institution.

Larry gets a call reminding him to pick up Loretta’s prescription. He goes to a restaurant to get some food on the way, and runs into Cheryl and Wanda Sykes, who booked a reservation under his name. Cheryl and the no-fly underwear guy are no longer seeing each other, Cheryl reveals. Larry and Cheryl go outside for better light to read their menus buy, and Cheryl tells Larry that she liked him when he wasn’t at home a lot. He promises to change, but gets a call from Auntie Ray telling him that the doctor is on his way to the house with the biopsy results.

Frantic to get home so that he can break up with Loretta before he finds out she has cancer, Larry abruptly leaves Cheryl and speeds home, but is stopped by Bam Bam, and together they witness a car being stolen. As the cops pull up and begin to question Larry, the doctor beats Larry to his own house. Larry follows him in sometime later, and discovers that Loretta indeed has cancer. The episode closes with Larry discovering that he is to spend the next four years caring for Loretta constantly, and he forlornly looks ahead into space.