The comedy world lost one of its most unique voices with the passing of Garry Shandling in March of this year. While that might sound like the kind of hyperbole that’s often espoused in the wake of a celebrity death, particularly a surprising one, the fact is that television comedy—and perhaps even TV itself—might not be the same today if it weren’t for Shandling and, more specifically, The Larry Sanders Show.
Making its debut in 1992, The Larry Sanders Show seemed like a natural progression for Shandling, who had spent the latter part of the 1980s working on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which he co-created with Alan Zweibel for Showtime. That show, which starred Shandling as himself, but a showbiz version of himself, was unique for the sometimes-confusing line it drew between real life and Hollywood (or real-life Shandling and Hollywood Shandling). Similarly, The Larry Sanders Show starred Shandling—a frequent late-night TV talk show guest host—as the host of a late-night TV talk show. (Shandling actually turned down a $5 million-per-year offer to take David Letterman’s vacated Late Night chair back in the early 1990s.)
Like any real-life late-night host, Sanders is surrounded by the various people who make a production like that run, including take-no-prisoners producer Artie (Rip Torn), desperate-for-more sidekick Hank Kingsley (Jeffrey Tambor), dutiful assistant Beverly (Penny Johnson Jerald), beleaguered talent booker Paula (Janeane Garofalo), troublemaking writers Jerry and Phil (Jeremy Piven and Wallace Langham), obnoxious agent-to-the-stars Stevie (Bob Odenkirk), and Sid the cue card guy (Sid Newman). There’s also a group of constantly hovering network execs who always have "ideas" on how to make the show better. And each episode features a few celebrity appearances, with said celebrities and musicians playing themselves as guests of The Larry Sanders Show.
As much as it allowed Shandling to poke fun at the seemingly insane inner-workings of the entertainment industry—a system in which he was firmly entrenched—The Larry Sanders Show ultimately serves as a sort of love letter to Hollywood. Despite the roller coaster ride it can take you on, with impossible highs and unthinkable lows sometimes occurring within minutes of each other, once you get a taste, you never want to leave it. Cringe-worthy moments and all. Here’s how to binge-watch all of it.
Number of Seasons: 6 (89 episodes)
Time Requirements: The Larry Sanders Show is a half-hour comedy, and it’s a breezy half-hour comedy—which is the perfect kind of show to binge-watch. While you might find yourself just letting the series run, if you commit to two episodes per night during the week and three to four episodes per weekend evening, you’ll be done in one month. No flipping.
Where to Get Your Fix: Amazon, iTunes (reportedly coming soon to HBO Go and HBO Now)
Best Character to Follow: It may be Larry Sanders’ show, but it’s sidekick Hank Kingsley who’ll keep you watching. A former cruise director, Hank is the kind of guy who would happily whore his mother out if it meant a couple of dollars in his pocket or a few minutes more of airtime. While it would have been easy to paint Hank as a one-dimensional character—be it the dimwitted, fame-hungry, or unappreciative sidekick—he’s all of those things and more. Including a vindictive jerk. More than the kind of character you love to hate, Hank’s the kind of character you love to see fail. Which he does. Repeatedly. And very publicly. But like Hank’s Lookaround Café, Hank just keeps moving.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zUwSaO2SnHQ
Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip: Given that the series ran for six seasons, one might think that there was a time, or season, where The Larry Sanders Show hit a creative low point. But one would be wrong. In the same way that a late-night show changes up its set from time to time to keep things fresh, this series used a constant stream of cast and crew changes to avoid getting stagnant. In fact, if you patched together just the talk show portions of the series, and did the same for all of Jay Leno or David Letterman’s shows during that same time period, you probably wouldn’t see much of a difference. Which isn’t to say that each episode of the series is equally brilliant—but there’s enough happening in each 30-minute segment that it never drags on. And is probably one of the few long-running shows where watching every episode is highly recommended.
Seasons/Episodes You Can’t Skip:
Season 1: Episode 1, "What Have You Done for Me Lately?" Though, in a broad sort of way, Larry and Hank are actually quite similar character types—both are driven by stardom, hate to lose, and suffer from crippling self-consciousness—they come at life with completely different philosophies, and the pilot episode (which is often referred to as "The Garden Weasel") sets that up perfectly. To keep his sponsors happy, Larry is getting pressure from the network to deliver live commercials during each episode. While he’s prepared to piss off every advertiser they’ve got, Hank turns out to be the voice of reason and show Larry how he can balance the needs of the network with his own desire to not sell out.
Season 1: Episode 3, "The Spider Episode" Larry's excitement over having longtime hero Carol Burnett as a guest on the show is dampened when he learns he has to do a segment with a spider. Which is only slightly worse than a wardrobe malfunction that puts Burnett face to face with Larry’s nether regions.
Season 1: Episode 7, "Hank's Contract" Hank's contract with the show is about to expire, and he thinks he’s in a position to play hardball with the network. He isn’t.
Season 1: Episode 10, "Party" What is meant to be a quiet dinner at Larry’s house turns into an all-out office party where the worlds of television Larry and real-life Larry collide. The staff bears witness to a terrible fight between Larry and his wife, which ends with her locking herself in their bedroom ... where everyone's coats (some with car keys) have been carefully placed.
Season 1: Episode 13, "The Hey Now Episode" Larry and Hank’s growing tension comes to a head in the Season 1 finale, when Hank—exhausted from spending every moment of his free time promoting any company that's willing to pay him—falls asleep on the sofa. Larry also decides that it’s time for Hank to lose his "Hey now!" catchphrase.
Season 2: Episode 5, "Larry’s Agent" Before he was Saul Goodman, or Jimmy McGill, Bob Odenkirk perfected his small-screen loudmouth playing Stevie Grant, a hotshot agent who Larry can’t stand—until he gets him a ton of money.
Season 2: Episode 6, "The Hankerciser 200" In Hank’s ongoing quest to have his name emblazoned on any product willing to let him serve as its spokesperson, he launches a new exercise tool, the Hankerciser 200, which nearly kills all who use it. Including Larry’s ex-wife/new girlfriend, who also happens to be a reporter.
Season 2: Episode 7, "Life Behind Larry" Echoing the late-night wars written about in The Late Shift, Larry is asked to help choose a host for a new show that will follow his. More pressingly, Hank is trying to find out who turned his fan newsletter into an X-rated prank.
Season 2: Episode 16, "Off Camera" Everything that can go wrong does over the course of a day, leading up to showtime, when Gene Siskel and John Ritter come to blows over the film critic’s review of Skin Deep.
Season 3: Episode 2, "You’re Having My Baby" After quitting the show, and faking a drug dependency, Larry is back behind the desk when a possibly insane woman claims that she is pregnant with his child.
Season 3: Episode 6, "Hank’s Night in the Sun" Larry’s bout with food poisoning turns out to be the best thing to ever happen to Hank when, with no other choice, Artie asks him to host the show.
Season 3: Episode 15, "Next Stop Bottom" Reeling from a recent whirlwind marriage that (unsurprisingly to everyone) ended in divorce, Hank—whose normal resting place is rock bottom—manages to fall even further, and attempts to seduce every woman he comes into contact with in the process.
Season 4: Episode 3, "Arthur After Hours" As much as Artie is one of the show’s three main characters, we don’t get to see him out of his producer character very often. That makes this third season episode, which is about as close to a bottle episode as The Larry Sanders Show ever got, particularly memorable. Fed up with his job, Artie spends the night at the studio, getting drunk, befriending the janitor, and eventually calling Larry to tell him what he really thinks.
Season 4: Episode 7, "Hank's Sex Tape" Hank’s most embarrassing episodes are some of the series’ most enjoyable episodes, as evidenced by this one, in which writer Phil finds a sex tape and makes it public.
Season 4: Episode 10, "Conflict of Interest" Larry’s agent starts dating the show’s booker—in what Larry believes is an attempt to get his other clients some air time.
Season 5: Episode 1, "Everybody Loves Larry" This is the episode in which David Duchovny professes his man crush on Larry, and a brilliant recurring joke begins.
Season 5: Episode 8, “Artie, Angie, Hank and Hercules” Among the many surprises we discover about Artie as the show moves along is that he once had a torrid affair with Angie Dickinson, and clearly the flame is still there. Artie’s lust for Angie overtakes his love of the showbiz game.
Season 6: Episode 2, "The Beginning of the End" As the title indicates, this is where the series starts to build toward its conclusion when a fresh-faced network exec comes in with all sorts of new ideas, none of which Larry is on board with.
Season 6: Episode 5, "The Interview" Booker Mary Lou crashes Hank’s car but can’t find the right time to tell him. So she starts sleeping with him.
Season 6: Episode 6, "Episode Hankler" While Larry’s on vacation, soon-to-be host Jon Stewart guests hosts, and pisses off the network with his choice of musical guest, Wu-Tang Clan. The suits are also not pleased with Hank’s proposed Adolph Hitler sketch.
Season 6: Episode 6, "Flip" The series finale, in which the viewers within and outside of the show are finally able to "flip," is a brilliant mix of the biting comedy that is the show’s hallmark with a few moments of genuine sadness.
Why You Should Binge:
Not every television comedy works in large doses. Whether it’s a matter of subject, pacing, or something else altogether, some shows are more easily digested with a few days (or even a week) between viewings. The Larry Sanders Show is not one of those shows. Though its storylines don’t usually carry from one episode to the next (with the exception of the overall character beats), there’s something about the series’ quick pace that makes it hard to press the Pause button once you start going. From a cultural perspective, it's also fascinating to witness how much of what we think of as "standard" in today’s comedy world originated here. Not only did the series help to launch HBO as more than a movie channel, but it also gave a start to a handful of would-be stars, both in front of the camera and behind it. Bob Odenkirk, Jeremy Piven, and Janeane Garofalo all had major roles on the series, and Judd Apatow was a writer, producer, and director. The Larry Sanders Show paved the way for even more innovation in comedy, like the kind we see in The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Best Scene—"David Duchovny Loves Larry":
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SgQXNXu89gk
The show’s best celebrity appearances were the ones that allowed an actor to step outside his or her own Hollywood persona a bit, and David Duchovny certainly did that. At the peak of The X-Files' popularity, between 1995 and 1998, Duchovny made three appearances on The Larry Sanders Show, as himself, but as a version of himself that, while not gay, finds himself attracted to Larry.
The Takeaway:
It’s been nearly a quarter-century since The Larry Sanders Show made its debut, yet it has lost none of its impact. Sure, it might be difficult to remember a time when Mimi Rogers might be considered a movie star, but in that way, the series also serves as a wonderful time capsule of the 1990s at large. More importantly, it’s the work that Shandling will always be best remembered for, and deservedly so.
If You Like The Larry Sanders Show, You’ll Love: Just three years after Larry Sanders signed off, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant paid masterful tribute to Shandling’s brand of awkward comedy with The Office, a mockumentary-style series that follows the mostly mundane lives of a paper company in Slough, England.
In 2005, Gervais and Merchant built on that style—this time with a Hollywood setting—with Extras, a BBC/HBO co-production that featured Gervais as Andy Millman, a struggling actor who makes the rent by working as a background actor (aka extra). But Millman dreams of bigger things and eventually finds them when a workplace comedy he wrote, When the Whistle Blows, gets picked up by the BBC (and transformed into something Millman wants no part of, but that’s a story for another time).
With 30 Rock, Tina Fey too blurred the lines between real life and Hollywood, pulling plot points from her days as *Saturday Night Live'*s head writer—then exaggerating them—to create a show about a female head writer of a late-night television sketch show.
