Good show- creators!

One of the things I actually loved about the show was how it constantly teased potential cliches and then avoided them. I kept thinking a scene was being setup for an awkward Curb Your Enthusiasm payoff, and then the characters would behave like actual humans who sometimes have kindness/understanding/a desire to avoid an uncomfortable conflict, and it would play out without everything that could go wrong going wrong.

An example is the date with Bertie (I think that's her name, the Aussie roommate), where the waiter seems to take a jab at Gus's order by giving his drink to Bertie. It felt like the start of a classic scene where the "good guy" (Gus) keeps getting passive agressively pushed around but he's the only one who catches it and takes offense, so everyone else (which would just be Bertie here) thinks he's acting crazy. If he was Larry David, that meal would have ended in a terrible scenario for Gus, where he ends up being carried out by security for yelling at the waiter, who was steadily subtly egging him on. But instead the waiter turns out to be a pretty solid fellow, who reacts as you'd think a semi-nice guy would act when presented the situation, and it develops into something completely different.

Or like when the actress asks Gus for advice about her lines getting cut, and he tells her to do something crazy. I assumed she'd essentially do what she did, then get fired, and she'd blame it 100% on Gus. Instead it actually worked out, which sure, that might be a bit unrealistic, but it wasn't as cliche as the alternative.

The writer who's pretty dickish throughout the whole series (but sometimes does actually hint at having some human-like qualities), could have just claimed Gus's script idea as his own. I thought that was for sure going to happen, because I feel like that story line is always used, obviously with different details (the script could be a song in another movie/show). But here he simply admits, reluctantly, that the idea he has that the boss likes came from Gus's script.

I liked the season a lot because of this quality in the writing. Maybe I just watch too many shows like Curb and The Office.