We celebrate “Seinfeld” for having stripped the sitcom of resolutions and lessons, for suspending its characters in a moral void through which laughter could travel, unencumbered by gravity or dark matter. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” does the same thing, only built around Larry David, a moral black hole sucking everyone around him into a turbulent nothing. In both shows, every episode wends its way back to the beginning, coincidence and crossed wires adding up to zero. “Eastbound & Down,” the doggedly mancentric HBO sitcom that returned for its third season on Sunday, also has an agent of chaos — defeated baseball star Kenny Powers — at its center. But he violates the Sienfeldian model, oozing pathos as much as anarchy. Neither, though, is he one of those oh-so-complex cable heroes. Kenny Powers is unique to TV: He is a caricature that you’re asked to care about. And believe it or not, you should.

Writing about “Downton Abbey” yesterday, Vulture’s Willa Paskin described what sets that show apart from most cable fare:

On Downton, there are no sociopath mobsters you care about despite yourself, or adulterous, lying ladies' men you are attracted to, or admirable but murderous drug dealers, or increasingly psychotic and pathetic chemistry teachers, or any other sort of semi-good but maybe really bad person with deep-seated psychological issues. It is about lovely people with lovable flaws who are trying to do the best they can most of the time.

The ironically-named Powers isn’t amoral like Larry David or evil underneath it all, like Tony Soprano et al. He is, in fact, lovable — a charming buffoon in the great tradition. His flaws, however, are not. In the first season, limping from pro sports into teaching phys-ed, he obsessively pursued his old sweetheart, April (the excellent Katy Mixon), who had become engaged. In season two, he lived his fantasy of the ugly American in Mexico. At the start of season three, he’s dodging responsibility for the baby he made with April. And all along, he has womanized and done tons of booze and blow. None of this, as Rolling Stone’s new profile of the show’s creator and star Danny McBride notes, has had any consequences: “Unlike most American TV characters, Kenny never pays a price for his racism, or his cocaine consumption. McBride says, ‘The beauty of it is having a character this fucked up, but not using him to teach anyone any lessons.’” In the new season’s opener, Kenny draws April into a day-long bender that results, among other things, in her attacking a mother during a round of mini-golf. (The slow-motion sequence of them sprinting away through the course is one of the finest few minutes of television so far this year.) But when they return to his house, where they have entrusted care of the infant to Kenny’s latest sidekick, Shane (Jason Sudeikis — perfect), the baby is just fine, babbling contentedly in another room while Shane drinks beer and looks at porn. 

And yet, not everything feels fine. Kenny is playing ball again, in the minor leagues, but he’s still the same fuckup, prone as ever to a bender, still after the same woman. Every episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” starts fresh, with an intricate new bow to be tied. In “Eastbound & Down,” the tangle just builds. The thing about Kenny being a caricature is that real people can be caricatures, too; no lessons and no growth might be a maxim to build a show around, but it can also be a way of life. (Reality TV is proof, if you need any.) The world changes around him, and he is perpetually left behind. That tension has never been more pronounced or more affecting than in this last episode, when we see April — up until now a responsible human being whose lovable flaw seems to be her attraction to Kenny — fall prey to the very same unlovable impulses as the man himself. The show ends with her leaving the baby behind with Kenny (who, poetically, wakes up with a condom stuck to his face). The main implication is that we’ll now watch Kenny struggle with the baby. The other, no less important implication, is that April has given up doing that herself.