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

He never bought the house. He just repainted the one he was renting with his now ex-wife.

Also this doesn't matter because the show just makes thing up as it goes along anyway.

i sorta have the impression fictional louie is about as successful as real louis?

doubt real louis would need to grovel to Dane Cook to get Gaga tickets.

Iago no no me too! I guess I never twigged that he lived in the Village. I certainly don't have any friends with brownstones there.

My impression of Louie is that he's about as successful as the real Louis, pre-TV show.

i get that it's just a plot device, but why would it be so hard to get lady gaga tickets? he can afford scalper prices.

He seems like he's lacing the shows with this subtle I'm such a great guy thing

I've noticed this too. It's kind funny that my other favorite show, Curb, has the lead character basically doing the exact opposite.

After reading that comment I'm now watching the new episode and the whole first skit is about how he won't compromise his principles, which is another theme that always pops up here, and one I don't really find all that interesting.

anyway, here's what i liked about last night's episode.

the self-inflicted failure of the sitcom was a nice setup for a few things:
-that he *can't* say whatever he wants is a lead-in to him stopping short of outright accusing dane cook of stealing the bits, plus he has a family and he realizes that being a "comedian's comedian" is not going to bring much comfort/stability for his daughters or himself
-that his daughters really do mean a lot, because post-divorce, they're all he has in his non-comedy life
-that he feels he's a loser for blowing the gig, and making his girls happy (to the point of having to approach dane cook) is his way of dealing with that and apologizing for that

After reading that comment I'm now watching the new episode and the whole first skit is about how he won't compromise his principles, which is another theme that always pops up here, and one I don't really find all that interesting.

but another theme of the show is him grappling with eventually *having* to compromise his principles -- see the joan rivers episode, or the realization post failed sitcom that certain outpourings of artistic integrity can really piss people off who are depending on you.

comparing real Louis to fictional Louie is a non-starter. he's admitted he's basically taking emotions he's felt on a microbial level and then amplifying them for comedy. the price of the apt doesn't matter, just that Louis probably wanted thought about buying a new apartment at some point

and i'm interested in his thoughts on what it means to "steal" in comedy -- he seems to be saying that whatever isn't direct plagiarism is a lot murkier than that, that people can just absorb things by osmosis without saying "i'm going to take this thing that isn't mine."

I think Kurt Cobain once said he absorbed Mudhoney's "Sweet Young Thing Aint Sweet No More" for the line "daddy's little girl aint a girl no more" on Bleach and didn't realize it until after they recorded it. it happens!

do you guys think dane cook & louis ck are getting married irl? there's no way they could've acted that scene

cryptomnesia innit

lmfao j0rdan

lol

hahaha.

i dunno, i just thought that the episode was narratively well-played. good mechanics of storytelling.

fwiw i don't think there is really overwhelming evidence that dane cook stole from louis

right and i think calling the kind of unconscious idea transfer louis was talking about "stealing" is a little silly

the whole first skit is about how he won't compromise his principles

Yeah, but I think there was more to it than that, and it wasn't just the first bit but the theme of the whole episode. the punchline being the last bit, with Saget (someone we all know is a filthy stand-up who has made a career playing likable dudes on family shows) happily stepping in for the role. It wasn't Louie saying: "if you don't sell out, some other hack will happily step up and take the cash", as it was, "the replacement who was sitting backstage reading a newspaper while waiting for the stubborn and difficult Louie to quit or get fired from the show, was the right guy for that job all along". I took it as much of his own version of a "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong" skit, with the fallout being having his agent scold him for not playing more shows, and his grim acceptance of his diminished status by having to ask Dane Cook, of all people, for a favor.

right

i mean even dane cook's defense is pretty understandable -- they've both traversed the same topics three times in the span of... two decades? seem innocuous if not inevitable, seeing as their style of comedy is pretty similar

xp

Have you listened to the bits? They're like exactly exactly the same

what are the bits in question?

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/08/louis-ck-dane-cook-louie.html

yeah the scene w/ dane was pretty awesome

my gf was grimacing and being like "oh god i hate this guy" at the beginning of the dance cook scene, and i was like "well hold on, he's willing to take one for the team here, give him some room" and by the end she was like "dane cook isn't so bad!" but then she felt bad about it because she figured that was what dance cook was going for, some kind of comedy indie-cred thing, by doing louis' show. she ended up with very confused feelings about dane cook is my point.

lol "dance cook"

Hah I ended up today watching a Dane Cook special on youtube, I'd never seen his comedy before. Yeah, pretty lowest-common-denominator, but not really worthy of frothing hatred he seems to attract.

a shitty comic is just a shitty comic until he becomes the most successful comic in the country

anyone else disproportionately happy when the gift-wrapped box was an actual gift-wrapped box to be torn open and not just a box with a removable lid to facilitate multiple takes?

^ yes i mentioned this when it happened! so rare

haha dammit

Cook was definitely a good sport to be in it, and I guess kinda gratifying for him to be able to be able to speak as himself pretty much. I mean, I don't love his comedy, but I like his willingness to talk about how he's perceived. From the WTF interview it's obvious he has felt on the outer for a long time, so it would be easy for him to be the complete ass that people think he is. I like that he's kind of an okay guy.

Maybe Louis needed GaGa tickets for his daughter and this was the way to get them from Dane Cook.

Like, in life.

do you think louis and his actress daughter will get married irl

tbh i did for a bit wonder if those were his kids irl

don't think anyone has been that mean to their kids since like

Ozzie & Harriet

oh I guess reality TV is a thing but as far as acting goes

haha ive just assumed they were his actual daughters for some reason

i think i sorta believe that the show is actually a documentary

nah yeah on some level part of me assumes this is all just lightly decorated irl

well i guess the latest episode basically makes this point but he seems p committed to such a level of emotional truthfulness that its p easy to extend that to the factual parts of the show, like 'this really happened' or w/e

a shitty comic is just a shitty comic until he becomes the most successful comic in the country

― Gukbe, Friday, August 5, 2011 9:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

dude is a viking in terms of marketing and self-promotion

w/ the comedy, not so much

dance cook

thats when i'm a viking

are we viking or are we dance cook

i have never really seen his comedy, i assumed he got famous for making creepy bros feel good about walking around saying 'THE SHOCKER!!'

Season 3 confirmed. Not that it's a shock.

everybody dance cook

I did the math the other day and worked out that an entire season of Louie (roughly 200k-250k an episode going by the pilot's budget) is cheaper than (or at least roughly equivalent to the cost of) one episode of Breaking Bad ($3.2 million) - and recently their ratings have been pretty similar. So yeah, kind of a no-brainer.