If you saw Garry Shandling on The Late Show with David Letterman this past Monday, October 12^th, you probably noticed that his face seems, well, not the same.  Don’t worry, you aren’t the only one.  Letterman, too, seemed to have been wondering about Shandling’s looks as well.

Shandling dropped by the show to talk about his DVD release of The Garry Shandling Show: The Complete Series collection on October 20 (a multi-Emmy-award-winning show that was the foreshadowing of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.  Letterman and Shandling talk about the classic show at first, of course (standard talk show banter and product-plugging), until Letterman brings up something that may have been a big concern for Shandling:   time.

The Gary Shandling Show first aired a little over 20 years ago.  You can see very clearly that, like the show, Shandling has aged considerably.  Letterman takes every opportunity available to bring up the subject of Shandling’s health and looks throughout the interview.  Shandling (known for his super-sensitivity and comedy routines about his unfortunate, homely looks) deflects Letterman’s brutal questions with jokes about cops and rescue workers, prescription medicine commercials, Swine Flu, his last appearance on the Late Show, and (of all things) Kayne West.  These jokes elicit laughs from the audience, but that didn’t dissuade Letterman from asking about the matter at hand:  Shandling’s face.

You see, these days, there’s Gary Shandling the man and Gary Shandling’s Face (two separate personalities with lives of their own).  There’s a debate happening online at this very moment as to what exactly happened to Gary Shandling’s face.  Is it an odd, but natural, aging process or did he succumb to plastic surgery?

A Google search of “Gary Shandling plastic surgery” will turn up a bevy of blog posts and news articles on the curious (and some say frightening) morphing of his features from a man with average looks to a man who has had one too many run-ins with the plastic surgery scalpel.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with Shandling’s comedy shtick (the Jewish, awkward, perpetually self-conscious ugly duckling who is as likely to ask you “how do I look?” as he is to ask you “how are you?”). Whatever is going on with his face (and face it, there’s something going on there), Letterman seems to be in on it and having fun ripping Shandling (like a big brother who knows just the right buttons to push to cause you anxiety over that big pimple on your face).  Shandling, is awkward as ever in his reactions.  It makes you wonder exactly what happened once the cameras were turned off.

Honestly, though, are we crazy or does Shandling look different?