Curb Your Enthusiasm – Rescues an Innocent Man from Death Row

There is a very popular TV show on HBO called Curb Your Enthusiasm and it’s about the mega-famous Larry David who created Seinfeld. So, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is totally a satire; it’s a comedy, you know? Larry David plays himself in the show, but the version of Larry David in the show is a very exaggerated version of himself in real life.

The show is shot to look like it’s almost biographical, but it’s not; it’s totally comedy. Apparently, in real life, Larry is known for getting into kind of funny awkward situations, often that he brings on himself.

So, on the show, basically every episode, Larry David finds himself getting into totally absurd situations that just get worse and worse and worse because Larry just makes all the wrong decisions. It’s a really funny show.

However, there is one particular episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” that will go down as the single episode virtually everyone who has ever watched the show will remember. It’s not because it was funny; it’s because this particular episode had massive ripple effects that nobody, from Larry David to writers to producers – anybody involved with this production – could have predicted.

The episode in question is called “The Carpool Lane.” In this episode, Larry David, the character, is late to a baseball game at Dodgers Stadium, so he’s stuck in traffic and he’s totally upset.

Then he has this idea that if he picks up this prostitute who’s right outside his car, if she gets in the car with him, he’ll now have two passengers in the car and therefore will be eligible to use the carpool lane that nobody else was using in this traffic jam. That would allow him to get to Dodger Stadium faster.

So, he hires this prostitute, and she gets in the car. Larry kind of awkwardly explains his plan, and then he hops in the carpool lane. He makes his way to Dodger Stadium; the plan works great. When he gets there, he actually ends up bringing the prostitute with him into the game to just watch the game with him.

So, he goes up, they find their seats, and their seats are just so bad. But as they’re sitting there, and Larry’s totally upset about how bad his seats are, Larry happens to see one of his friends who’s also at this Dodgers game.

Larry can tell, you know, his friend has great seats. And so, the rest of the episode is basically Larry going down and trying to convince his friend to give up his seats for Larry and his prostitute to watch the game. And his friend just continuously says no.

So really, that’s the gist of the episode, and you can see how it kind of gets more and more ridiculous and it gets really funny. But I mean, it’s pretty typical writing for this show.

This was not like a special show in any way. It was just kind of par for the course “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” that is until a lawyer named Todd Melnik heard about it in the fall of 2003.

This lawyer, Todd Melnik, called HBO and said he needed to see the raw footage from the episode they shot called “The Carpool Lane.” A producer at HBO named Tim Gibbons is the one who answered this call, and his first reaction was, you know, “We can’t let you see this footage because this episode hasn’t even aired yet.

So, you’re going to have to wait a couple of months until this episode comes out if you want to see this footage.”

But Tim quickly noticed that Todd Melnik, the lawyer, was not about to give up this easily. He was adamant that he had to see this footage right now.

So eventually, Tim Gibbons actually would go and find Larry David, and he would ask Larry, “Hey, do you mind if this random lawyer comes and watches this footage from this unaired episode?” And Larry was like, “Okay.”

So, the next day, Todd Melnik showed up at HBO, and he was led into the small room with a TV. Tim, the producer, he spoke to, as well as Larry David and a few other people from the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” production, they filed into this room and all of them just sat down.

And then they began playing the footage, the raw footage from the “Carpool Lane” episode. And as they watched this footage, which was hours and hours and hours long, the lawyer Todd Melnik is watching the footage and just kind of slumping into his chair, just seeming like what he was watching was making him more and more unhappy.

That clearly, you know, he was looking for something, and he was not seeing it in this footage. But finally, when one of the producers put in the fifth and final tape of raw footage from this episode, Todd Melnik, as he’s sitting there watching the footage which looks basically like Larry walking up and down the steps at Dodger Stadium over and over again and him also walking in and out of his aisle, you know, they reshot the scene of him sitting down inside of his crappy seats, you know.

Todd’s watching this over and over again, and then suddenly he sits up and he points at the screen and goes right there.

It would turn out Todd Melnik was investigating a murder case. The murder happened on May 12th, 2003; a 16-year-old girl named Martha Puebla was standing in front of her house in a neighborhood in Los Angeles when she was shot by gang members. Because apparently a rumor had gotten out that Martha was snitching on gang members, and so she was killed.

The police actually had already made an arrest in this murder; they had arrested a guy named Juan Catalan. Juan’s brother Mario was on trial for a different murder, and just 2 weeks before Martha’s murder, Martha testified in Mario’s case. And who was in the audience listening to Martha’s damning testimony about Mario? Well, Mario’s brother, Juan.

So prosecutors believed this was the motive for Juan to kill Martha. Also, there was an eyewitness to Martha’s murderer, and the sketch artist who worked with this eyewitness came up with a composite sketch of Martha’s killer that looked exactly like Juan. So now Juan was potentially facing the death penalty if he was found guilty.

But Juan was adamant that he did not kill Martha, and on the night of her murder, he said he was at the Dodgers game where they were filming a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. But nobody believed him except for his lawyer, Todd Melnik, who called HBO, got access to all that unseen footage from the episode, and after watching for hours and hours and hours, finally that fifth tape goes in and sure enough.

Todd Melnik watched as his client Juan Catalan strolled right into frame and sat down with his daughter. It would turn out Juan was telling the truth the whole time; he did not kill Martha, and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” proved it. Shortly after this discovery, Juan would be released from prison, and he would receive a settlement of $320,000 from the city of Los Angeles and the police.

As for Martha, the police were able to eventually track down four people who were involved in her murder, and all four would be convicted and sent to jail for life.