He's irritating! Get it?

The most over-rated show on television (and possibly the most over-rated anything anywhere) is Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Everybody just loves it. You probably do too. Even Michael Kinsley (Michael Kinsley!) took time out recently from his usual smart lefty opinion journalism to write a gobbledy-gook piece in Slate calling Larry David the new Jane Austen. (What the hell did poor Jane Austen do to deserve all this? See below.)

Here's the truth, and everyone who pretends otherwise (You've all got to be pretending, because no one could really believe what you're all saying) is wrong: Seinfeld was a much better show than Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Seinfeld was tight, while CYE is slack. Seinfeld was sharp, while CYE is flabby and self-indulgent. Seinfeld was smart, while CYE is, yes, dumb. Seinfeld was honed, polished and professional, while CYE's slapdash, pseudo-improvisational feel just looks amateurish (David is no Christopher Guest or Ricky Gervais --comedy verite geniuses).

Most importantly, Seinfeld was consistently funny, while Curb Your Enthusiasm is just irritating. Not funny-irritating, either, like Arrested Development or pre-Lost in Translation Bill Murray. I mean that the point of the show seems to be to produce irritation by showing an irritating guy get irritated by things that, while admittedly irritating, are consistently less irritating than he is.