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

I like how he just smiles when he delivers bits as opposed most of his contemporaries.

YES

at yr kitchen table

why is this (alt: 'your living room') always the place people are saying staggeringly offensive shit?

staggering offensive example pls

yeah what are you talking about?

also j. are we to understand that you do not enjoy the comedic stylings of Louis CK?

no he is awesome—i was referring to classic phrases in offensive-free-speech apologetics like 'if i wanna talk that way in the comfort of my own home', '…living room', '…kitchen table', etc. you just reminded me of them, talking about people doing louis c.k. bits around the kitchen table.

ah ok

I mean it's not that weird I guess? cuz like the kitchen and the living room is where ppl hang with other ppl in private!

i know, i guess—but the kitchen table is where the family meets and says things like 'please, not at the dinner table, we're eating'.

would totally eat terrible pizza dinner with louis c.k.

Kitchen table and dinner table are two different things to me. Kitchen table is when it's really late at night, you've had a few beers and people just sit down around the table and just start talking. Or after the breakfast dishes have been cleared away and maybe a mother and daughter just sort of have it out. It's the place where you can be real. Dinner table is like, mealtime. No one reveals much of anything over dinner. It's the times in between, at that table, where shit gets real. At least to me.

'shit got real in the kitchen last night'

I dunno. Some of the most intense conversations I've had have been at a kitchen table.

YOU CALL THIS POT ROAST? *BANG*

lol

kitchen table also = serious conversations about terrible family debt situations

indeed (serious face)

kitchen often seems to be a hub during a lot of gatherings. beers in the fridge and/or the door outside to smoke is nearby. course this is me talking about like the 3 places i hang out.

what other rooms of the house do people even talk in? "that's not how my family talks together in the privacy of the laundry room"

Conservatory discussions are always very lively

"You always ask to talk to us in the basement. Why?"
"Oh, no reason."

"Not here, Charles. Not in the guest room."
"Well WHERE then, if NOT the guest room? Hmm?"

someone stop me from making a 'clue joke'

you can't stop comedy gold, Jordan. DO IT

"mom" at "the kitchen table" talking about "your uncle's alcohol problem"

lolol

'Tarese' is my favorite story.

i am quite pleased at the turn this thread has taken but a little disappointed that no one has tried to make it as filthy and pessimistic as it could be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLvS1vH9Tk

shalalalaaaaaa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnDH-RXCptY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmban3Fio14

love love love the first scene of his old HBO show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh21R_6M7io

God, that scene is pure spun gold!

Man, that laugh track ...

it's not a laugh track! it was filmed in front of a live audience

so so great

and carrying over from the brief Louis conversation on the Patton Oswalt thread, Bag Of Dicks is my all time favorite CK bit.

Has he talked about the laughter? Wasn't that an issue? That sounded ... sweetened.

it was shot as a traditional old school sitcom w/ a live studio audience. it's possibly they sweetened it but it seems unlikely given the m.o. of the show.

Might as well have been a laugh track. When I heard the laughter, for some reason my brain coughed up this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8YSXSB8bOk

Josh I've lost track of the number of interviews where he's fumed that so many people thought the laughs weren't real on that show. He says he thinks it's because people just aren't used to hearing totally un-overdubbed laughter on TV shows any more.

I can believe it! Though in truth I'm not a laugh out loud guy, so it all sounds, well, funny to me.

I think it was the joke-laugh-joke-laugh rhythm, which seems artificial. Live and in his stand-up, Louis's joke escalate, and the response frequently does, too. Which may be why the unconventional rhythm (mechanical and tonal) of "Louis" works better for his brand of humor. He's just not a traditional sitcom type of guy, subversive or no.

Milo - I just watched the show with the two clips you posted and he is really good. Pretty sure I never ever want to have kids now though.

His ability to do all those jokes about his daughter without coming off as a horrible bastard is sort of amazing.

I think maybe he's mellowed out over the last few years, or at least softened the act a bit, because he'd do the same kind of jokes in some of his standup specials and came off much, much worse than he did in the show.

there's a very, very sweet dedication in the end credits to chewed-up, i think, to his daughters, that you read like ten minutes after hearing him exasperate about them for a half hour. it's real sweet. him and the kids eating at veselka at the end of louie was really sweet, too.

without getting too personal, there is something really satisfying about how real he seems to be getting on stage - i watched the last few stand up shows in quick succession and they all pretty brazenly accord with his marriage splitting up, like that thing about them having been married "for nine years, so we're almost done", and then the recent one with the thing about divorce.

anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95fNgx8aCS8

looking at these old hbo shows is illuminating; he's clearly been honing this material for a decade so it's easier to understand how he got it so sharp.

He's totally morphed into an extreme Bill Cosby, which is great. In fact, I'd suggest that no one has ever talked about the stresses and horrors of children as candidly as Louis C.K., especially knowing from interviews just how dedicated he is to his kids (I recall him admitting turning down a chance to audition for Alexander Payne's new film simply because he would have been away from his children for a month - in Hawaii, no less).

All his brilliant bits have begun to blur together for me, but I think it was in his stand-up set I saw last year that he described the discomfort of taking one of his daughters to a public bathroom and listening to the guy in the next stall over grunt with explosive diarrhea, just a foot or two away from his daughter's face, divided by a mere inch of metal. Man, I've been there ...