Quick Take: The Marriage Ref, "Madonna, Ricky Gervais, Larry David" Even without Jerry Seinfeld, this show has (rubber) legs to it.
Review: The Marriage Ref, "Madonna, Ricky Gervais, Larry David" (S0103) I was seriously wondering this week if the lack of Jerry Seinfeld on the panel would put a damper on what had been a very entertaining show the first two weeks. Thankfully, Larry David zoomed in to take up the slack, and co-panelists Madonna (on curiosity factor alone) and comedic genius Ricky Gervais added solid commentary as well.
This week host Tom Papa skips the monologue completely and hops right into the first couple's story. And the first story is a great and bizarre one: the wife wants to tabulate cleaning tasks in return for… romantic favors. (Love that these guys are from my homeland of Long Island, by the way.)
Gervais also kills it from time to time. "This is the weirdest show," he exclaims at some point, adding, "It's weird enough that I'm with you two," pointing to David and Madonna.
Overall, I think Larry David absolutely owned this show, riffing at will and dropping hilarity throughout. If Seinfeld can't be there, make sure you have a Larry David-level guy (but is there an equal?) in his place.
More thoughts on this week's Marriage Ref:
Larry David's reactions (and grunts) to the couples' travails are worth the price of admission alone. Amazing that Larry David is almost exactly like his character/persona on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
"You should have done what I've done, Larry. I grew my own breasts." – Ricky Gervais
"I mean this is insane, what I just watched." – Larry David, always classic.
"Is the leg in a pickup game later?" – Pappa, in relation to the tube sock adorning a prosthetic leg.
Madonna gets increasingly and oddly combative throughout the hour, which creates some interesting and awkward tension of the sort that both David and Gervais surely love.
The couple with the wife that's deeply into her pet iguana is truly bizarre. "There's pet love and there's… weirdness," says Gervais.
Video: The Marriage Ref, "Madonna, Ricky Gervais, Larry David" Catch all the action from this week while you can via the Hulu:
Recap: The Marriage Ref, "Madonna, Ricky Gervais, Larry David" A wife who keeps her late husband's prosthetic leg on display, an overbearing mother-in-law, a husband jealous of his wife's iguana, a wife willing to trade affection for a clean house.
From Around the Web: The Marriage Ref, "Madonna, Ricky Gervais, Larry David"
Arts Beat: There hasn’t been much of a honeymoon period for “The Marriage Ref,” the new NBC comedy-reality series created by Jerry Seinfeld. Though the show, in which celebrities meddle in real-life marital fights, has gotten good notice from some critics (in The New York Times Alessandra Stanley wrote it was “funny, despite a cheesy game show premise”) and scored healthy ratings,other critics and online commenters would prefer to serve it with divorce papers. But at least the show still has the support of its celebrity panelists, right? Right?
A.V. Club: Last night, Larry David, a wooden lion mask from The Lion King that claimed to be Madonna, and Ricky Gervais were the big celebrity favors that Jerry Seinfeld called in for new show, Pile Of Forced Guffaws, The Ol' Ball and Chain, And A Sports Metaphor.
TV Squad: What this episode showed me was that, with the right panel, the show can be entertaining and the smugness level can be tolerable, especially if the celebrities spend as much time ripping on each other as they do the hapless couples on the show.
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Now that Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) made a brief but splashy and phenomenal return during last night's Mad Men episode, "Christmas Waltz," there remains only one significant advertising pro from the early seasons who has not made an appearance in the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce era.
