'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Season 8, Episode 8 Recap - 'Car Periscope'

What we learned from this week's episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm":

1. Everybody "upstreams"

Larry, in trying to hail a cab, gets pre-empted by another pedestrian who walks "upstream" a ways and steals Larry's cab. "You can't upstream me!" he protests. But this is New York, Larry...everybody upstreams.

2. Ugly wife = integrity

Larry and Jeff meet with an inventor to see if they want to invest in his idea: the car periscope. They're a little iffy on the idea at first (Larry suspects an elaborate con as in "The Sting," which leads to a pretty hilarious conversation about Jeff having seen "The Sting 2" but not the original), but when the two see the inventor's wife, they change their tune. Why? She's not very attractive, and that means the guy has integrity.

Conversely, Larry fires his business manager for having a hot wife. No integrity.

3. Beware of one-armed men

Larry gets in trouble at a party for sitting down to Scrabble with Henry's father, Judge Horn (who turns out to be quite the racist), taking the spot over from a man with one arm. When Henry comes in and sees the score--namely, how badly his dementia-suffering father was being beaten--Larry gets blamed, and finds that it's difficult to convince people that a one-armed man was there.

4. Car periscopes can be useful

As Jeff and Larry test-drive the car periscope, its usefulness becomes apparent: not only do they circumvent a garbage truck traffic jam, but they manage to very briefly track down the mysterious one-armed man. That, along with the inventor's "integrity," convinces the two to invest in the idea wholeheartedly. But when Larry insults the inventor's wife by not letting her hold his popcorn, he pisses them off enough to get booted out as an investor...and the wife makes him sprain his shoulder.

5. Trainers can be awkward

Larry was having a great time with his personal trainer, played by Cheyenne Jackson (who is everywhere right now!), who was getting Larry into shape and fixing up his bad shoulder (later sprained). But when the trainer cancels on Larry and Larry catches him in the park the next day with Wanda Sykes, it's as if he caught his lover with another man. Awkward.

Bring it all together!

Larry, with his sprained arm, picks up a new business manager...because he has an ugly wife. When trying to catch his cab home, Larry spots the one-armed man and confronts him. We never get to find out exactly why the one-armed man was at Henry's party, because as the two try to upstream each other, the one-armed man bumps into Henry's father and knocks him to the ground...then takes off. At that point, Henry runs out and sees Larry standing over his father, and asks him, "Who did this to you?" "A one-armed man!" yells Judge Horn, looking at Larry, whose arm is in a cast. Nice.