Ted Danson is the only member of the main cast of Curb Your Enthusiasm besides Larry David himself (and Richard Lewis) who plays a fictionalized version of themselves. Cast members like Jeff Garlin, J.B. Smoove, and Susie Essman play fictional characters, while the actors who play themselves tend to be making guest appearances.
But the distinction is that, where Larry and Richard are long-time friends, Larry and Ted don’t really get along. They’re friends who hang out on a regular basis, but they always seem to get into arguments and don’t even really seem to like each other. Here are the 10 most hilarious Ted Danson quotes.
“You’re making me look like an a*****e.”
This season 7 encounter was the last time Larry and Ted spoke for a full two seasons. Their disagreement over the pie was so heated and earth-shattering that it almost tore apart their friendship. And yet, it starts off with such a simple setup. Ted buys Larry a piece of pie and the waiter brings it over to their table.
Larry tries to tell the waiter he doesn’t want it, but then Ted comes over and insists that he try it. Soon, the pleasantries devolve into a yelling match, with Danson grabbing the waiter’s arm and saying, “Put that f****n’ pie down!”
“How about I give you a gift, and you have to pick it up in Seattle? That’s a problem, not a gift!”
In the season 3 premiere “Chet’s Shirt,” Larry gives Ted a shirt as a gift, but the shirt turns out to have a hole in it. Then they get into a whole to-do about which one of them is responsible for getting it fixed or replaced.
As far as Larry is concerned, he’s given Ted a gift, the shirt no longer belongs to him, and any issues with the shirt are Ted’s problem now. But from Ted’s perspective, a gift that needs to be taken into a store to be repaired isn’t really a gift at all, but rather a problem.
“That’s why I kept my name off, because it’s the exhibit. It’s about the issue, not me.”
In the season 6 episode “The Anonymous Donor,” Larry donates a wing dedicated in his name to the new NRDC building, while Ted donates one anonymously. Larry gets a small amount of praise and applause from the charity’s patrons, but Ted gets a much more uproarious response from well-wishers.
This irks Larry, because even though the wing donated by Ted is attributed to “Anonymous,” everybody knows that it’s Ted, because he told a few friends who each told a few friends until it might as well have just had his name on it after all. Larry sums it up perfectly: “What is this b******t?”
“I won’t taste your stupid sandwich!”
In the season 5 premiere episode “The Larry David Sandwich,” Larry’s favorite deli names a sandwich after him. The only problem is that it includes whitefish, sable, capers, cream cheese, and onions, and Larry hates it. So, he comes to the set of Ted Danson’s new sitcom and asks him to switch with him.
Danson’s sandwich sounds much nicer – turkey, coleslaw, and Russian dressing – so he’s a little reluctant to switch. He explains, “People are used to my sandwich. All of a sudden, they show up there and they’re eating the ‘Ted Danson’ sandwich, you know, all of a sudden has herring and lox.”
“Take your filthy friend and your freak book and get the hell outta here!”
In the season 6 episode “The Freak Book,” Larry buys a book filled with photographs of “freaks” for Ted’s birthday, thinking it’ll be a great present. When Ted opens it and isn’t impressed by it, Larry takes it out of his hands to show some of his favorite freaks to Jeff.
And then, the chauffeur that Larry invited into the party gets really drunk and gropes Mary, causing Ted to angrily kick Larry out of his house, demanding that he get his chauffeur and the freak book he didn’t want and leave promptly. His anger at Larry is very justified in this scenario.
“What a day, huh? Heaven, just heaven.”
The season 1 episode “Ted and Mary” was the one that introduced real-life married couple Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as friends of Larry and Cheryl in the first place. Larry finds himself preferring Mary to Ted, because Ted describes everything as “heaven.” He says, “Everything’s heaven with him. The piece of gum he had, ‘Oh, this is heaven.’ Had to taste a chocolate bar. ‘I’m in heaven.’ The parking space is ‘heaven.’ It’s all ‘heaven.’”
And then later, when they’re walking out to Ted’s car, Ted proves Larry’s point when he tells him, “What a day, huh? Heaven, just heaven.”
“I’m here for the party!”
In the season 6 premiere episode “Meet the Blacks,” Larry’s technique for getting out of attending parties – showing up the following night and pretending you got the wrong date – lets him down on a few consecutive nights. When he tries it out on Funkhouser, he misses Ted’s party, the one he wanted to go to.
When he tries it on Ted, it makes him late to the airport to pick up the family displaced by the hurricane that he and Cheryl are taking in. Then, at the end of the episode, the night after Larry’s own party, Ted Danson shows up with a bottle of wine.
“Take your 150 bucks and go buy yourself some f****n’ pants!”
When Larry bought Ted Danson a $300 gift certificate to a hot new restaurant, he was expecting Ted to take him out for dinner with it. But then, one night when he happened to be in the restaurant on a date, he saw Ted and Mary having dinner with Jeff and Susie Greene on his coin.
After confronting Ted about it in his workout clothes – including a pair of shorts that Ted described as “disgusting” – Ted gave him his half of the $300 gift certificate, $150, in cash, and angrily told him to buy some pants with it. This pays off an earlier scene in which Larry complains about an airline passenger wearing shorts who was sitting next to him.
“Every time we get together, we push and pull like this.”
The great thing about Larry David and Ted Danson’s chemistry is that they’re basically polar opposites, making them a fantastic duo. Ted has a laid-back West Coast vibe, while Larry has a neurotic East Coast attitude. Whenever they’re in the same room together, even if they start off having a nice, normal, amicable conversation, sooner or later, they’ll begin to argue.
And in the season 3 premiere episode “Chet’s Shirt,” Ted points that out to Larry, saying that they “push and pull” every time they hang out together. It’s true, but it’s also what makes their dynamic such a joy.
“What do you mean, ‘Eh?’ You know something, you walked in with this attitude!”
The season 3 story arc revolves around Larry and a few of his friends, including Ted and Jeff, investing in a new restaurant. Larry’s indecisiveness over choosing the head chef makes him unpopular with the other investors, who are panicking about whether or not they’ll be ready in time for the grand opening while Larry is lackadaisically firing all of their staff. When they all eat a meal prepared by Danson’s top choice for the chef, Larry has the most Larry David response to the food: “Eh.”
This sends Ted in a furious rage, because he believes Larry came into the meal with no intention of enjoying it, just so he could reject Ted’s choice. Larry, of course, contests this theory.