Poor Larry David: Not only has his real-life wife, Laurie, dumped him, but now his fantasy TV wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) has, too. (How doomed are we if our fantasy lives can’t even manage to end well?)

On Sunday’s episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry’s just slightly more pr!ckish than usual, ignoring his wife as she fearfully calls from a plane in turbulence, expecting to die, and interrupting her to ask some mundane questions about their TiVo service.

When she gets home, still rattled by the experience, she tells Larry she’s had it; she’s leaving. Larry, of course, is incredulous: He’s so thoughtful, he points out, that he “saved all your shows” on TiVo.

“People ask me all the time, ‘How do you stay with him?’” Cheryl responds. “I always tell them, ‘There’s another side you don’t see.’ But then I realized, there’s no other side.”

The rest of the episode is devoted to the fallout of that decision, as most of Larry’s friends opt to take Cheryl’s side. Naturally, this will be fodder for the show the remainder of the season.

David was cagey about this plot development at July’s TV Press Tour. Clips from the episode – including Larry blowing off Cheryl while she’s on her seemingly doomed plane ride – were shown. At one point, someone rather tackily asked:

“Larry, what are you worth, like
$10 billion now? Can you buy HBO at this point?”

To which David cheerfully responded, “Well, I've just been cut in half. I don't know if you're aware of that. My worth has just been cut in half. It's not that much anymore.”

Which inspired this question: “If you do come back for a 7th season since there is such a thin line between TV Larry and real Larry, would you and Cheryl have marital problems?

LARRY DAVID [Indicates Cheryl]: Too bad you're going to be off the show.

(Laughter.)

Oh, what a shame.

CHERYL HINES: What a way to find out.

LARRY DAVID: Good idea for a 7th season, by the way. That's a good idea.

Laurie, the environmentalist and one of the producers of the Oscar-winning Al Gore documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” may be getting out just in time. A recent New Yorker column revealed that a group therapist has used episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to help his patients:

“Roberts considers Larry David to be the perfect proxy for a schizophrenic person. ‘On his way into his dentist’s office, he holds the door open for a woman, and, as a result, she’s seen first,’ he said. ‘He stews, he fumes, he explodes. He’s breaking the social rules that folks with schizophrenia often break.’ He went on, ‘Or the one where Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen invite Larry and his wife to a concert: the night arrives, they don’t call, Larry assumes they don’t like him, then it turns out he got the date wrong. It’s a classic example of a major social cognitive error—jumping to conclusions—that schizophrenic patients are prone to.’ As the patients watched David flub situation after situation, they laughed, and they willingly discussed with Roberts how they might behave in the same circumstances. ‘That bald man made a mountain out of a molehill!’ one woman called out during a session.”

She had no idea: Larry’s turned life’s irksome molehills into mountains of cash, and just as the gossip mills have taken molehills of innuendo and transformed them into mountains of semi-scandal, Larry incorporated that into Sunday’s episode, as well. Cheryl’s already dating, and when Larry tries to date Lucy Lawless, well, you don’t need me to tell you it doesn’t end well.

So, ladies: Larry’s available! But before you say yes to that romantic first date, be sure to pay very close attention to his behavior on every episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” And then consider real-life Larry’s words:

“I can get away with that because there's a very fine line between TV Larry and me. Very close, very close. … I really love (my character). I love that guy because he says everything that I'm thinking and feeling and he doesn't have to behave in a way that society really wants everybody to behave, and I decided I love being that honest. I wish I could be that way in my life. It's easier for me now because of the show to actually -- I'm getting closer to him every day. Let's put it that way.”