Larry David sizes up Obama’s tan suit: “prettay good… prettay… prettay… prettay… prettay good”

Barack Obama has narrated the oceans, hosted the podcasts and lent his baritone to every worthy cause on offer. What he had never done, until he turned up on Larry David’s HBO sketch series, was hold still and let America’s most dedicated complainer size him up.

The bit is an origin story for the tan suit. David plays a White House aide who spills a drink down the president’s navy jacket and then talks him into wearing the lighter one to a press conference. When Obama tries it on, David reaches for the appraisal that has been his whole comic register for a quarter of a century — a verdict “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” hands its guest and that Variety transcribed from the set:

“prettay good… prettay… prettay… prettay… prettay good.”

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The line is not new, and that is the joke. It is David’s signature shrug from “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, the sound of a man who submits every trivial thing to forensic inspection and grants nothing his full enthusiasm. It is the smallest verdict in American comedy, and here it lands on the smallest scandal the presidency ever produced.

The tan suit was never an event. A president wore a lighter jacket to a briefing and a slow news cycle spent days pretending it meant something. David’s catchphrase is, for once, the correctly sized reaction to a fake-sized crisis: a shrug wearing the costume of a judgment. The target of the sketch is not the wardrobe but the reflex that turned a wardrobe into a story.

What the cameo really measures is how completely the post-presidency has become content. Obama produces, narrates and now performs; the Higher Ground operation he built with Michelle has spent years converting the afterglow of the office into streaming inventory. Playing straight man to Larry David is the logical next rung — the former president as a bookable guest, at ease being appraised rather than deferred to. He is not in on a joke about power. He is in on a joke about ketchup, gamely ranting that no adult should be caught with the stuff.

Showrunner Jeff Schaffer, who directed the finale, handed his guest the actor’s compliment. He told the trade press that the sharpest ad-lib belonged entirely to the president: Obama’s complaint that David’s “old lips” had contaminated a drink. “’Old lips’ is 100 percent pure Barack Obama,” Schaffer said. It flatters the guest, and it flatters the network: a finale that doubles as proof HBO can still book the biggest room in the culture and hand it a punchline.

The tan suit outlived the outrage. Now it has outlived the presidency too, exhumed as a bit a comedian can weigh with four prettays and a shrug. Prettay good, all things considered.

Tags: HBO, Barack obama, Larry David, Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness

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