Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12 Has A Surprisingly Sweet Payoff To A Classic Richard Lewis Running Gag

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12, episode 8.

Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12, episode 8, “The Colostomy Bag,” delivers a surprisingly heartwarming payoff to one of Richard Lewis’ best running gags from the show’s 24-year history. Richard gets one of his biggest storylines in the season to date in “The Colostomy Bag,” as he recruits Larry’s nose – since Richard lost his sense of smell due to long COVID – to detect an “old car smell” in a vintage Mercedes he’s thinking of buying. Larry detects a smell, but gets guilt-tripped into buying the car anyway when he falsely assumes the seller has a colostomy bag (hence the episode’s title).

Richard takes center stage at the end of the episode as he arrives to pick up a date. When she gets in his car, she’s horrified to smell the rotting cheese that Larry unwittingly left in the backseat, which Richard failed to notice due to his lost sense of smell. Not only does this ending provide a hilarious punchline for the episode; it also pays off one of Richard’s best running gags from the series in a surprisingly beautiful way.

Richard Lewis Thinking All His Girlfriends Are “The One” Is One Of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Best Running Gags

Over the years, Curb Your Enthusiasm has gotten a ton of laughs out of Richard claiming that every woman he dates is “the one.” This running gag can be seen in some of Richard’s best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes, from season 3, episode 2, “The Benadryl Brownie,” to season 7, episode 2, “Vehicular Fellatio.” Even in the very first episode – season 1, episode 1, “The Pants Tent” – Richard believes he’s in love with his current girlfriend (who, of course, has a huge fight with Larry).

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12, Episode 8 Pays Off Lewis’ Series-Long Running Gag Beautifully

Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12, episode 8 has a surprisingly sweet payoff for this running gag. As Richard is driving to meet his date, he calls Larry to tell him, once again, that he believes he’s met “the one.” Larry mocks Richard for continuing to use terms like “the one” at his “advanced age” before Richard pulls up at the woman’s house. The comedic payoff in this scene is the cheese that Larry left in the backseat, but there’s another kind of payoff, too.

When Richard’s date gets in the car, it turns out she’s played by Lewis’ wife, Joyce Lapinsky, his real-life “the one.” This sneaky casting trick pays off Richard’s hopelessly romantic running gag on a really beautiful note. Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t the kind of show to indulge in sentimentality – in fact, it usually avoids sentimentality at all costs – but this was a heartwarming culmination of Lewis’ legendary tenure on the show.