Louie

[Fiscal]

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HL95nMH2_2A/0.jpg


Louis C.K has been a favorite comedian of mine for several years now, I watch most of his standup routines religiously. Louis had a brief tv show air titled Lucky Louie, which overall was a failure. When I found out about his new show, Louie, airing on FX, I was a bit skeptical.

Louie draws similarities from CYE such as honesty and crudeness, but Louie differs in execution. The show usually begins with Louis performing comedy in a small comedy club or bar, then fades to a sketch that is similar in tone as the previous comedy club scene. I had to feel out the first couple episodes, but the show evolves into a fresh take on a sitcom and I absolutely love it. Louis C.K himself does most of the creative work, and it definitely shines -- this show mirrors the feel of his stand up, and it is great to see his material take form. Louie has been renewed for a second season.

5/5

EDIT: video link fixed. And please note that the following clip contains offensive language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNRNCk3YwqE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD3yrKQGAWQ&feature=related

[Yoda]

I started listening to his stuff something like a year and a half ago, maybe, and I must've wasted literally hours and hours on YouTube tracking down all of it, before buying the only album he has available on iTunes.

When I heard he was getting another chance to launch a show, I was quite excited. And I was bummed when they moved the premiere back a few months.

That said, I'm fairly underwhelmed by Louie so far. The highs are plenty high, but I've never been a big fan of the idea of awkwardness as comedy, and obviously that makes up about half of each week's episode here. The best parts are almost invariably from the standup sprinkled throughout, with a few exceptions.

And, to be honest, clips like the one above are, to my mind, the worst aspect of the guy's comedy. They're what people who don't take the time to listen to his stuff probably think he's like all the time. It's the vulgarity and the spite without the wit.

I'll keep watching, but at this point I'm just waiting for the concert film he's got coming out. I'm glad to see some comedians realizing that you have to turn your schtick into a show that compliments it, rather than just throwing together some random sitcom, but I still feel like Louis hasn't quite figured out what this show should be, or how to make the two halves of it feel like more of a whole. I hope he does, because when he's on the top of his game, there are very few human beings who are funnier.

[Fiscal]

I'll keep watching, but at this point I'm just waiting for the concert film he's got coming out.

I can't wait for Hilarious!

He is performing in my city, but I won't be here that month. I will see him next year though! I really like that he scraps all of his material at the end of the year, and writes completey new stuff.

[planet news]

Dude those videos were incredible. The Heckler one... oh my god that was funny.

[wintertriangles]

Any heckler video is usually amazing

[Fiscal]

This one was written, obviously - but still hilarious!

[planet news]

The beautiful thing is how I sorta didn't know if it was written or not, because of how they usually keep the standup bits as separate from the rest of the narrative. The two worlds never really collide, and now they have. Kind of a cool reversal of the show's "setup". Notice that still, not transition is shown between the standup and the "show". I like how Louis explained that getting on stage means so much to him, which add credence to the idea that it is an alternate world for him.

[Fiscal]

Just found out that full episodes of Louie stream on Hulu for those of you that live in the states and want to check it out.

[planet news]

I am one of those statelivers. DO WANT NAO.

[Powderfinger]

I just watched the funniest episode ever. It was the Christmas and News Years eve and the holidays.

I'm sure Louie is mentally disturbed writing that, I'm sure of it :D

I cracked up laughing for 30 minutes. The Christmas presents for his kids, he had to use a drill, hack saw, and some painting :D

I girl he use to have sex with died and then he went to China...Lol! Even though his sister booked a ticket to spend family time in Mexico Lol!

[Yoda]

This show is now what you'd get if you put Chester Cheetah in a Woody Allen film.

[Skepsis93]

And - dare I say it - better than 90% of everything Allen has done. And that's speaking as a huge fan of the man, but C. K. is knocking it out of the park this season.

[Yoda]

Eh, I guess. I appreciate the show on a certain level, but it's hardly ever funny now. And I think it has zero rewatchability. It's often insightful and perceptive (best moment of the season was him yelling at Jane on the train platform, IMO), but not particularly funny or clever.

I was saying this awhile back, but it feels even more applicable now: I think this show is more interesting and influential than just straight-up good. I think its playing with form, recasting, and Tetris-style story arcs is going to be its legacy more than the actual enjoyment that comes from watching it.

[Skepsis93]

Eh, I guess. I appreciate the show on a certain level, but it's hardly ever funny now. And I think it has zero rewatchability. It's often insightful and perceptive (best moment of the season was him yelling at Jane on the train platform, IMO), but not particularly funny or clever.

I was saying this awhile back, but it feels even more applicable now: I think this show is more interesting and influential than just straight-up good. I think its playing with form, recasting, and Tetris-style story arcs is going to be its legacy more than the actual enjoyment that comes from watching it.

I don't see this as a bad thing. There are plenty of shows you can sit and enjoy, but Louie is doing something, I think, that's brand new and unique to T.V. and it's an absolute pleasure to watch. I'll gladly sacrifice a few laughs or a bit of entertainment value for the visual and narrative invention, emotional range and insight approaching the profound that he's consistently putting on our screens.

It's all about expectations, obviously, and I think if you're expecting something to make you bust a gut laughing then you're bound to be disappointed. Louie has transcended the "comedy" label, for me. The best I can do is comedy-drama with emphasis on the latter and that's totally inadequate. I can't quite describe it.

And that's not to say I think this season's been dour. He's blending black comedy and drama as well as anybody and the show still makes me laugh, a lot. I thought the short stand-up scene at the end of Elevator 1 is one of the funniest of its type in the whole run of the show.

[Yoda]

Oh, I love it when comedies trade a few laughs for poignancy--which is why I love Scrubs and Parks and Recreation and Community. But all of those shows have plenty of laughs to spare for those purposes and try to achieve a balance. I think there's a pretty big difference between deciding to be less funny to make room for something else, and deciding to pretty much abandon comedy altogether. Which is only a slight exaggeration.

At this point it's just a meditation on the angst of dealing with other people. I struggle to figure out how anyone could find that genuinely "enjoyable" (enjoyment being a little baser than appreciation, if you follow), but to each their own.

I'll probably keep watching. But the whole time I'll be hoping it gets back to trying to find some kind of balance between the two. I don't think it will, though--the comedy's always felt pretty shoehorned in, and I think this is the show he really wants to make.

[Skepsis93]

Scrubs and Community and the like are situated firmly in the comedy genre and, often elegantly in the case of those two examples, weave in moments of drama and, as you rightly say, poignancy. But if Louie was ever tied down to a genre, this season and the previous one certainly aren't. Its identity is constantly changing. One episode it's a straight comedy, the next a straight drama, the next a surreal postmodern homage to Lynch. As a huge fan of C. K. and his worldview I can let him take me wherever he wants, and so far, for me, the results have been almost universally good. But I can certainly see why someone would become frustrated with the unapologetic lack of consistency or balance.

[Captain Spaulding]

Well, I'm "enjoying" this season of Louie more than I ever have before. Maybe it's because of the long hiatus, or maybe it's because there's been more continuity this season than ever before, but I've loved almost every episode. The fat girl episode was great; this recent "Elevator" stretch of episodes has been fantastic. I may not laugh out loud as much as I used to when watching the show, but I've stopped expecting a pure comedy. Louie is an impossible show to label, and I love it for that. So far, this has been the most consistent season.

[ScarletLion]

I love this show. Totally agree with skepsis93....... It's not purely a comedy show. I find a range of emotions when I watch it.

His stand up is completely different, but also brilliant.

[Yoda]

I dunno where this talk about "pure" comedy is coming from. That wasn't the basis of the disagreement, and I don't think anyone said it was (or should be) pure comedy.

The issue was the exact opposite: whether or not it's really a comedy at all. And by that, I don't mean merely that I don't find it funny (lots of comedies aren't funny). I mean that there are long stretches where it's clearly not even attempting to be.

[earlsmoviepicks]

I find the show sort of like a depressed Seinfeld

[bluedeed]

I came into this season a bit skeptical. I'm growing tired of the show being nearly entirely about Louie's relationships with women. I enjoyed "Model" and "So Did the Fat Lady," though the latter episode's climactic rant went from being insightful and frightening to preachy and average by the end. The first few episodes of the Elevator arc were mediocre compared to the show's regular, and I was getting really annoyed at that point, finding the show's sincere treatment of Louie and Amia's relationship offensive when positioned directly after "So Did the Fat Lady." My favorite part of the first three episodes of that arc was an opening scene that showed Louie romantically shopping followed by awkwardly delivering his creation to Amia's aunt.

It wasn't until Part 4 that i think Louie made its return. From the therapy scene through the elegiac flashback, it exemplified what Louie does best, which is finding social and personal truth through humor (something I was first moved by in the "Heckler" half episode). This episode was in many ways the defining and turning point of the arc. The opening scene instantly brought legitimacy to his relationship with Amia as well as set up hurricane Jasmine-Forsyth as, among other things, the impending emotional reality of Louie's current life. By tying this whole scene together in a single, modest take, he spatially, and thereby emotionally, ties Amia to his daily life and we remember that this scene begins at the TV. This brief scene felt like a revelation and was a key guiding point in the arc.

The show has since been brilliant, from the smaller comedy of Todd Barry's minutely hilarious and depressing daily life, to the hilarious yet also emotionally stark "reality" (I wonder about Hertz's involvement in one of Louie's most expensive scenes) of the hurricane hitting New York. With the most recent episode, Louie has cemented himself as America's historian of the present. The gender politics that now clearly have been the season's focus are continuously real, fascinating and terrifying. Tonight's episode is one 90-minute show, and for the first week, I'm not at all skeptical of the show's continued abilities.

[Cobpyth]

A few weeks ago I started watching Louie, because so many members here love it. I just finished it (that is the four seasons that are already available) a few hours ago and I really liked it!

I can definitely see why so many of you call him the modern day Woody Allen, but I love how he is at the same time also pretty different at times.
In a sense, he plays it much less self-aware than Allen does in most of his films. He lets situations develop and the character(s) and the audience learn "lessons" or can derive meaning from those developments. Of course there's an inspiring piece of dialogue from time to time (I particularly think the doctor with his three-legged dog in season four is pretty great), but the show's strength comes from the way something is told visually (I love the few surreal sketches that he sometimes randomly puts in an episode) or how a certain story develops in interesting, unexpected ways. It's all very Allenesque, but Louis C.K. still kind of succeeds at making it feel original. I'm very curious to see what the fifth season will have in store!

Now it's time to start watching Twin peaks.

[bluedeed]

Anybody watching the 5th season currently? I thought it struggled for footing a lot in the first two episodes but regained form in a big way in the third.

[matt72582]

I thought the first 2 seasons were great, then he took that long break, and I haven't been loving the latest stuff. He shouldn't have taken out the standup.

His standup is so much better than the show now, but it was just as good before.

[bluedeed]

And you see, I feel the opposite. The standup have always been a crutch to fall back on in the show and I think the show has generally been better when he isn't using it. I laugh more during his standup than I do during his show, but I think his show is fundamentally funnier than his standup and has more lasting humor. Louie sort of discusses and mocks this concept in episode 2 of the 5th season. A young comic is a huge failure when he's telling his depressing stories while straight faced, but when he makes a silly voice during it everyone laughs. The joke is also about Louie's standup, always meant for laughs, clear in tone, and his show, which is often very ambiguous about what the audience should feel.

[matt72582]

I saw all the episodes - and I think that new comedian's success is attributed to comedy and showbiz being fickle. His standup was pretty short before anyway. I think he's stuck between being a comedy show and a serious show now.

[bluedeed]

I saw all the episodes - and I think that new comedian's success is attributed to comedy and showbiz being fickle. His standup was pretty short before anyway. I think he's stuck between being a comedy show and a serious show now.

I think the comedian's success is parody of both the comedy business and a self-criticism. I don't know exactly what you mean by stuck between. I'd more likely say situated because I think the combination of comedy and drama, and not knowing what's what is exactly where Louie wants to be. The third episode was great and the fourth one might've been even better, both were very precisely structured shot to shot. The fourth episode is definitely one of the weirder episodes in the series as a whole and all the better for it. The only thing that's disappointed me about the 4th and 5th seasons is a stepping back from the earlier seasons' disregard for continuity. Before, the disparate parts of Louie were connected by an emotional continuity, whereas now they're connected by a basic narrative continuity.

[matt72582]

I will probably watch the new episode today. We'll see.

I'd love to see him perform standup. Last time he came around here tickets were sold out so quickly.

[Cobpyth]

That last episode was my kind of weird and it was absolutely HILARIOUS!

[Cobpyth]

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcUKDIfwAQ4

Brilliant.

[matt72582]

It's crazy, because I had a dream the day before the Louie episode, where I saw my legs detached from my body. When I woke up I thought of "Wild Strawberries" and what people say about seeing yourself in a dream. Then Louie (you saw Clockwork Orange!) is having bad dreams, and I knew I would as well, and had a dream I was pregnant! Had a weird one yesterday and didn't wake up til 10am, very odd for me.

Good episode.