In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Susie Greene is framed as something of an antagonist. She causes nothing but problems for her husband Jeff and his best friend Larry. But from Susie’s perspective, it’s easy to see why they bother her. Jeff constantly cheats on her, while Larry takes it upon himself to challenge social etiquette in his interactions with her.
In any other show, Susie would be a pitiful character. In Curb, she’s the angriest, sweariest character, hurling insults left and right and flying off the handle at the slightest suggestion of disagreement. Here are Susie’s 5 Funniest Larry Insults (And 5 Funniest Jeff Insults).
Jeff: “You hear that, Jeff? Celery.”
Near the beginning of the season 8 episode “Palestinian Chicken,” Larry, Jeff, and Susie are at a dinner party in anticipation of a golf tournament that would be torn apart by Funkhouser’s newfound faith, a litany of infidelities among the team, and Larry’s new career as a “social assassin.”
They’re talking to a friend who recently lost a lot of weight and asking her about her diet. She says that she went on a lot of long walks and ate a lot of celery. Then Susie says, “You hear that, Jeff? Celery.” Jeff, feeling crushed and defeated, simply replies, “Yeah, I heard celery.”
Larry: “Get the f*** out of my house, Larry!”
Susie Greene kicks Larry David out of her house so often that you have to wonder why she keeps inviting him back in. Whether he’s turning down Susie’s offer to give him a tour of her new house or causing a scene at a dinner party or simply telling Jeff that Cheryl has banned him from their house, Susie revels in expelling Larry from her home.
She itches for the trigger with the power to kick Larry out of her house from the second he walks through the front door. She’s just waiting for an excuse to cast him out, and he usually provides her with one.
Jeff: “You fat piece of s***!”
When Susie Essman was shooting the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, she had a hard time making fun of Jeff Garlin’s weight for fear of hurting his feelings, but both Garlin and Larry David assured her that he really didn’t mind.
And it’s fair to say, based on the fact that Susie seems to mock Jeff’s weight more and more as each season goes by, Essman gets more and more comfortable using phrases like “fat f***” and “fat piece of s***” in arguments with Jeff. She’s used this line a thousand times and it never fails to get a big laugh.
Larry: “This one would stick out like a sore f***in’ thumb, this Jew-face over here.”
In the season 4 episode “The 5-Wood,” Larry gets himself, Jeff, Susie, and Cheryl kicked out of their country club when he suspects Leo Funkhouser is being buried with his favorite golf club and conspires with Jeff to swap it out in the coffin with one of Jeff’s cheaper clubs during the funeral.
However, during the service, Leo’s nephew notices the club and finds a cashew nut, incriminating Larry. When Cheryl suggests signing up to a club with predominantly gentile members, Susie says that Larry would give them away as Jewish immediately, while Larry protests that it would be her instead.
Jeff: “I’m taking your balls and I’m thumbtacking them to the wall!”
In the season 8 premiere “The Divorce,” when Larry and Cheryl’s divorce is being finalized, Jeff tries to amicably tell Susie, “You and I ever split up – let me tell you something – we get a divorce, you take whatever 50% you want. I’ll take what’s left. No arguing, no negativity.”
But then Susie ruthlessly says, “What, are you fing kidding me? You think we’re gonna have a nice divorce if we ever get divorced? No fing way! I’m taking you for everything you have, mister. I’m taking your balls and I’m thumbtacking them to the wall! You’re gonna get nothing out of it. You mention the D-word once in your f***ing life, you’ll rue the day you ever met me.”
Larry: “You sick f***, Larry David.”
In season 3’s “The Corpse Sniffing Dog,” Larry tries to get Jeff’s daughter Sammi to give up her dog so that Jeff can return him (his allergies don’t allow him to be near the dog). He accidentally gives her wine and she ends up giving the dog away in a drunken stupor that Larry fails to notice.
So, he takes the dog and gives it away to his friends. In the meantime, Susie returns home to find that, ostensibly, to her horror, Larry has gotten her daughter drunk and stolen their dog. When Larry gets home, Susie is waiting in his driveway with a vengeful look in her eye.
Jeff: “Get up off your fat a** and let’s take a walk! It’ll be romantic!”
Even when Susie’s in a romantic mood, she gets angry and starts yelling. In the season 7 episode “Denise Handicapped,” Larry is left in charge of Sammi while Susie and Jeff go for a walk on the beach. When Sammi starts drowning, Larry is too preoccupied with making sure his BlackBerry will be safely out of view to save her.
Susie is so mad about this that she throws Larry’s BlackBerry in the ocean, thus losing all of his contacts, including his new girlfriend, who he listed in his contacts as “Denise Handicapped.” While searching for her, he would end up replacing her with “Wendy Wheelchair.”
Larry: “Freak of f****n’ nature.”
Susie calls Larry a “freak of f****n’ nature” in the season 3 episode “Krazee Eyez Killa” when he refuses her offer for a tour of her new house. There’s a running joke in Curb that the characters move house all the time, and there’s a fun behind-the-scenes reason for this.
Since the show involves so much yelling and arguing and fighting, the neighbors of whatever house they’re filming in for any particular season tend to file noise complaints. So, the production team has to keep moving around Los Angeles to different neighborhoods to bother different residents each season. But sometimes, this leads to a great gag like this.
Jeff: “You fat f***!”
This one is the timeless classic. No matter how many times Susie yells this in Jeff’s face – and it happens a lot – it’ll never not be hilarious. It’s applicable in any situation.
Whether Susie is angry at Jeff for stealing a doll from Sammi’s collection for what she thinks is “some voodoo s***” or for trying to hide from her at a screening they both attended while they were briefly separated, the line “You fat f***!” will always work. It particularly worked during the latter situation, because she called him out for trying to hide from her: “Fat f***, trying to hide, like you’re Mr. Inconspicuous.”
Larry: “You four-eyed f***!”
Larry David cracks up all the time during the shooting of Curb Your Enthusiasm, particularly whenever Susie Essman is yelling at him. There are more bloopers from Curb than most shows, because David can’t keep it together.
You can’t really blame him, because her impassioned delivery of insults like “four-eyed f***” – which, based on its repeated use, is clearly one of her favorites – is hilarious. The Susie character has connected with such a wide audience that Essman says that people come up to her on the street “all the time” and ask her to yell swear words in their face.
