Louie (Louis C.K.'s show on FX)

It was the same actress...

huh for some reason I thought someone else played her in that episode where he went to Miami

didn't enjoy being lectured by a fat chick

i think several women have played his ex-wife (over the course of the whole show) but the same woman has been playing her for a while.

naw

"didn't enjoy being lectured by a fat chick"

Am I missing out on something here? or are you just a pathetic little prick?

The former

I thought both were really good

I like that he's comfortable pairing two discrete ideas into a single episode, it's like an Animaniacs cartoon or something

otoh it seemed to go on forever.

This was definitely by design - the single take, the floating camera really situates you in Louie's discomfiture

Also when she nearly breaks the fourth wall, when she goes "imagine somebody over there saw us two right now" and points at the camera

I loved that during the whole thing a constant stream of a hundred joggers is passing by.

Yes both in the scene by the water and in the subway I was very conscious of the other people around and the camera, which seemed to pan nimbly at moments when the extras could have been in the sh. I guess those were extras? Or the general public?

He's a good director, the subway scene was actually very tense.

Yeah also losing your child in public is I think every parents nightmare but I don't know if it's treated a lot in media

Like the only comparison I have is minority report

heavy rain

Yeah also losing your child in public is I think every parents nightmare but I don't know if it's treated a lot in media

this reminded me of the scene in that Jeff Bridges country-singer movie where he stops into a bar for a drink and his granddaughter (?) wanders away.

did appreciate the disembodied hand on her shoulder/voice asking her if she's lost

Yeah also losing your child in public is I think every parents nightmare but I don't know if it's treated a lot in media

Like the only comparison I have is minority report

― 龜, Thursday, May 15, 2014 8:39 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this scene made me so anxious, yikes

and i don't even have a kid

heavy rain

― Mordy, Friday, May 16, 2014 2:06 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Plot device was very effectively deployed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0uCWjQ6Og

wtf is that

Here's the scene Mordy was talking about fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfSGyiqis1c

creepy as f

i don't understand; is some gamer "playing" that character?

i haven't played a video game in 15 years, I have no idea what is happening there.

what does it mean when the ghosts are blinking

Man, didn't know Michael Haneke made video games.

i don't understand; is some gamer "playing" that character?

a point of some contention

it's all greek to me

amateurist: http://www.wired.com/2010/02/review-heavy-rain/

also: http://www.gamecritics.com/richard-naik/heavy-rain-review

anyone know of a good "contemporary gaming for dummies"-type article or book. for someone who, as far as games are concerned, has been basically sleeping under a rock since the late 1980s?

ok read that review, sounds more like a choose-your-own-adventure thing than anything truly ludic

i guess this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra_Lives:_Why_Video_Games_Matter

heavy rain sucked unfortunately

good first line of a novel

i like the ambiguity: did it "suck, unfortunately" or "suck unfortunately"?

both

Thing about this show is that sometimes it's just not that funny and yet that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it's a good episode, like he just has the bravery to not be funny for long periods of time. He's so good at hitting a particular emotional register and then holding you there for way longer than TV ever usually does. Last couple of episodes have been so great.

That said I pretty much cried laughing at the bin men scene in the opening episode.

I wish a hell of a lot more comedy was less concerned with trying to be funny.

Why? Like, why make/watch "comedy" that isn't interested in being funny?

Because it does other things, like make you think about shit you otherwise don't? Or because you empathise with or care about the characters?

I have dramas for that

I dunno I think this show's rly dull and pretentious anyway

Why cant I think about interesting shit and laugh as well? Cant good comedy do both?

Imo this idea of comedy being 'brave' for purposely not attempting to be funny is played out. Be brave, be interesting, be funny....but the latter should be the last to go

i feel like an asshole trying to be swashbuckling & defensive of this show's ~bravery~ but it feels appropriate when people specifically call it pretentious, with all that implies of it having ideas above its station & pissing all over the common man. just enjoy the thing for the thing. are people mad because they turn on the tv at eleven thirty & see something they enjoy but note it digressed from the tv-listings-colour-category for Comedy? I was promised Comedy, sir. who cares. who is sitting in front of the tv enumerating their chuckles like prisoners carving finished days into the wall. everybody feels this because it is funny, whether by being bracketed by stand-up or because of the just preverbal satisfaction of seeing anxious malfunctioning louis ck's dismayed face reacting to something, but a really big part of what it does is play with tone, & be surprising & oscillate ~~like life~~ between funny & sobering & engrossing. it is cluttered with good performances & with these accurate or else surreal blow-ups of things that aren't on television elsewhere. it has this amazing kind of panoramic rabbithole thing where premises, Kids In Public, The Dangers Of Indulging Kids Logic, are just exploded & inhabited. it's really dynamic & fresh & beautifully put together. its structure makes it interesting to watch because by now you are reassured that it won't have a kind of tried-&-true, pat, redemptive episode ending, like say community or whatever always would. I HAVE DRAMAS FOR THAT feels this insane emotional outsourcing, you have a mood chart on your wall, a line is drawn between soap operas & Emotional Involvement. i think i have been to see films i liked by directors whose work i'd already seen, & sometimes been thrown for awhile, expecting funny when now the guy was making a sad film or whatever. I liked your earlier, funny films. but you are holding something to this invented platonic ideal that you have concocted standards for, "Can't good comedy-" when instead you are getting an auteurist product that is interested in its own mix of things. louie is really funny! it's funnier than anything else i think? & for a bunch of reasons, it's situationally funny. but then also it's not. i remember straight up gasping when he hit the woman in episode two. it feels really good to see something that i didn't anticipate or want.

I've watched less than half of all the episodes but I find it pleasing because his format just seems logical and I'd be amazed if other shows didn't start using that mixture. I've seen so many comedy shows or any type of series exhaust their own formula and its really sad.
Louie probably isn't the first to do this, I really love it when a creator has a regular space to do whatever they want (the Love And Rockets comic book is the only thing that springs to mind but even comics people are slow to pick up on how well that works), it helps avoid stagnation.

Plus, I think pretty much everything in the show is supposed to be funny on some level. Laugh-a-minute is fantastic when you can get it but it's agony to watch comedians constantly aim for that and fail. When you see a stand-up talk about something fascinating for a while you forget you aren't laughing.

Yeah, that garbage men scene was hilarious.

But this was one of many comedy shows I was highly sceptical of at first.

the "fat girl" ep really rubbed me wrong. one of my best friends is a big girl who was (before she got tired of the pretension, infighting and general frustration) a talking head for the fat activist movement and the "being a fat girl sucks" narrative that louis is ventriloquising through sarah baker is bullshit. my clinically obese pal had a crazy active hetero dating and sex life for as long as I've known her and has since been in a ten year relationship through most of her grown up life. lotsa people dig heavy girls and it's a nonsense presumption that the majority of poor fat girls suffer quietly... and given how cute and smart and funny and successful baker's character is, it's batty to think she's wallowing in this variety of woe is me self pity.
i can't believe i'm linking to a fucking THOUGHT CATALOG article but, separate of tone, this is mostly dead on:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jamie-varon/2014/05/13-incorrect-assumptions-louis-ck-made-about-fat-girls/
and yeah, i get that it's manipulation on baker's character's part to bag louis. it's still inane.

generally enjoyable thus far though

Because Louie is a comedian with a TV show and even frames the episode within his standup routine (just like Seinfeld), you expect the narrative to start cranking out jokes from the get-go. I think what's happening here instead is that you're waiting for the setup or comedic framework of the episode the whole time, and this doesn't reveal itself until in retrospect after the last scene plays out.

Who ws the joke REALLY on

I can second the fact that for big girls, the demand is pretty high