Last year, or whenever it was, I went into viewing The Boondocks on [adult swim] with the preconceived notion that it was going to be a platform for Aaron McGruder to spout off about whitey and such on TV the way he does in the “funny” pages. Turns out the first season of the cartoon version of the comic strip was brilliant.

Sadly, after a long delay, the second season is shaping up to be nowhere nearly as good as the first. Granted, I’ve only seen the first two episodes (with one waiting in the queue on my shitty DirecTV DVR), but nothing in the first two half hours have generated anything nearly as thought-provoking as the first five minutes of the first episode of the first season. Although I do like the return of A Pimped Named Slickback.

On the other hand, Curb Your Enthusiasm for me is the old stalwart that I keep watching out of habit more than anything else. It’s in its 40th or 45th season or something and I get it now like I did 20 or 30 years ago: Larry David as a character (at least) is the King of All Assholes.

While that show has had giggles throughout this season, nothing has really struck me the way the first couple seasons did. Until last night, which is when I caught up with the latest episode on my shitty DirecTV DVR. The whole thing about his wife leaving him for being more concerned with the TiVO repairman than her fearful mid-flight phone call and having all their friends choose to remain friends with her after the split was fucking uproarious and gave the whole show a new angle and new life.

But maybe that’s just because I see a little bit of myself in the episode’s parting shot of Larry missing out on the last seconds of a recorded show because of a TiVO glitch with ice on his balls and his world crumbling around him.