Larry David is an Asshole

Curb Your Enthusiasm is a show about being an asshole. It's an examination of the theoretical and practical elements that combine to create an asshole in a given situation and at large.

Example:
Larry's male upbringing causes him to believe the proper response to an act of courtesy that he commits is a thank you. It's not monetary compensation, it's social currency. He mistakenly believes that he can amass explicit social currency but in doing so destroys both explicit and implicit social graces that could potentially be bequeathed to him.

It's a farce--a tragedy. Can you imagine man so ____ that he ____ ?

It's effectively a cartoon. He constantly loses friends. He SPOILER gets divorced. By Any standard he should be hopeless depressed. He's saved by the fact that he's so clueless as to his situation. His total lack of self-awareness acts as a shield, or levitation. He's like a cartoon cat that runs off a cliff and hovers in the air before looking down. Except he never looks down.

Combine this with the fact that his community is small and almost identically unstable, which gravitates people quickly back to him. Result: never ending comedy and frustration.