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The Black Swan is the seventh episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7. It is the sixty-seventh episode overall.

Description[]

On a visit to his mother's grave, Larry finds the tombstone says "past away" instead of "passed away" because his father wanted to save $100 by using two fewer letters. Larry calls the stone mason, Ed, to have it fixed.

At the golf club restaurant, Larry converses with a vacationing friend, but refuses to introduce him to his golfing companions, arguing that it is pointless since he is from New York, making it highly improbable that they will ever see him again. Marty Funkhouser counters that even when pointless, introductions are an indispensable part of etiquette, but Larry disagrees. Larry's cousin Andy David orders crispy onions with breakfast, which take a long time to prepare, so they end up having to golf behind Norm, a golfer who is notoriously slow. Larry has angered the golf club owner Mr. Takahashi by repeatedly using his phone in violation of club rules. The bill comes with an 18% gratuity included; though Larry normally tips 20% or more, he decides not to put in any additional gratuity because he finds it too difficult to calculate and add on 2% of a charge.

On the course, the team lose patience when Norm spends over 15 minutes looking for a lost ball. Larry shouts at Norm for holding up the course, and he and his companions head back to the changing rooms and agree they will play tomorrow instead. Norm dies of a heart attack, and Larry's shouting is blamed. He offers Andy to pay for his daughter's college education, and Andy takes advantage of this and asks Larry to pay for his wife's education too.

The next day, while golfing on the same hole where Norm had his heart attack, Larry is attacked by Takahashi's pet black swan and kills it with his golf club in self-defense. Larry insists that no one say a word about it. However, they were one of only two groups on the course that day out of deference to Norm, so Takahashi interrogates, threatens, and bribes them in a failed effort to get them to give away the swan killer.

At a memorial for Norm at the club, Larry reasons to Norm's relatives that Norm's heart attack was most likely caused by the black swan, pointing out that he had the heart attack after Larry returned to the club house and at the same hole where the aggressive swan later attacked Larry. Larry complains to Marty regarding a comment Ed made about one of Larry's favorite baseball players. Ed is standing beside Marty and is offended; Larry had never met Ed face-to-face, and Marty did not introduce him to Larry because of Larry's rejection of introductions. During the service Larry's phone rings; to avoid being kicked out of the club for his repeated phone violations, he tosses it to another part of the congregation. A waiter returns it to him, comments on how its scroll wheel can navigate through e-mails (in which the golf team have been discussing the swan killing), and later pointedly draws attention to the gratuity section of their bill. Thinking it to be blackmail, Larry puts in $500 additional tip, but the waiter reacts to the added tip with astonishment.

As revenge for Larry's remarks at the memorial, the stone mason writes that Larry is a "swan killer" on his mother's tombstone so that Mr. Takahashi can see.

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