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

the stuff on the blog about the shows is great; that he was warned to keep it clean but was getting such a response from just kinda freewheeling on stage that he kept trucking & it ended up being gross. there's a funny anecdote about someone telling him that he could get away with doing those shows provided he apologised before doing the next.

i read the thing hoos posted & mainly just dug that last graf excerpted above, but yeah this does feel really intelligent & interesting still; a lot of this ep was straightforward enough to be predictable or mundane in other contexts but the few angles it was coming from coalesce to make it more than the sum of its parts - as a restrained, open travelogue; as comedy; as eye into that world etc. great looking & sounding ep, too.

last week being kind of a throwaway makes sense now, sandwiched between two total emotional powerhouse episodes. it's just breathing room. with fart jokes.

you know, i don't quite know what to make of this last episode. Like it was well meaning? but felt sort of lost? The bit at the end where he's like "no man i don't need a vest, brotherhood of man" was really kinda whaaaaaaa? to me.

though now i'm reading those blog entries and it's casting this all in a different light.

i sorta feel the same - like i think saying that it comes from a few different angles is maybe a way to generously address it being lighter, in each respect, than a lot of other eps. so yeah eg the vest thing or the simplicity of the pratfall/cross-cultural-tension-breaking thing. but i feel okay about being generous!, bc in the context of the series it feels like it's adding a pretty valuable dimension to the overall picture, just this free roaming various-aspects-of-louie's-life thing. i remember finding brokeback mountain kinda problematic in some respects but understanding that it was already, probably, ambitious enough just in terms of its premise and managing to get made. and i feel like the very fact of this being out in afghanistan was pretty adventurous terrain even if some of its content was a little more pat.

I have to say for all the cute duckling stuff, I thought the highlight was the performance of "Circle on the Cross."

in what sense?

(just more remembered things: the daughters are such good actors, cf the bedtime scene)

yeah, that's all pretty well put schlump
i love the way the daughters mouth doesn't move when she says "can we keep just onnnnnnne duckling"

i also like that he called the soldier heckler dickface and then ripped into the dude from buffalo

schlump otm; i can see why people would find this episode less sharp than some of the rest of the series but it still kind of wrecked me. thank god he called that dude dickface i needed a laugh.

I have to say for all the cute duckling stuff, I thought the highlight was the performance of "Circle on the Cross."

― Simon H., Friday, August 26, 2011 1:58 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah that was amazing, also the point in the episode where i could tell it was going to mess with me

no comment on the buffalo stuff >:[

except to say that no buffalonian would respond affirmatively to "anyone here from new york?"

read the blog!, based on a for-real incident that i won't ruin, buffalo was representin

all right maybe if you've been in afghanistan for a year you'd start to hear "new york" as "new york state" because you missed home that much

okay i feel like an idiot but which blog are we talking about?

linked upthreax

Man, that was somethin else.

Where can I buy a duck.

yea that was awesome. whole segment @ camp timothy was so fuckin great, theres no drama or story arc 2 it but it was incredibly intimate & real. its the goddamn tree of life of sitcoms

Wait so the duckling was his fear I get it.

They're all good, ffs

― the tuomas clown affair (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 20 August 2011 03:15 (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^

its the goddamn tree of life of sitcoms

lol

ok i just caught up and yes, they are all brilliant

Wait so the duckling was his fear I get it.
http://28.media.tumblr.com/Ii3YbXKTvkssk8umVGwknZy2o1_500.jpg

i love this guy a lot
http://feeds.feedburner.com/louisckvideopodcast

Why isn't this a world where I can watch pootie tang before the storm comes to eat me?
http://www.avclub.com/articles/pootie-tang,30745/

how is this shit not on netflix i ask you

always thought chris rock had the best moments in pooty tang

the duck episode was really haunting. can't stop thinking about it.

it was really good!

s2 enters all-time tv list for me, like w Simpsons and Roseanne in realness

p much

This is always the show we put on last because it's so reliably excellent that we know we will never be let down.

i just rewatched the last ep of season one, not having watched the rest, i think keenly because i remembered the last scene well. it's so great, and kinda an exemplar for what's great about the show - the real variety in scenes, & the interesting things that happen in them (there's this great silent-comedy scene, but set against the overloading music of the club he's taken to, in which he creeps up on a girl trying to cop a guy's moves); the dynamics between him & a few of the other characters, like the hysterical babysitter, the guys he goes out with, his dirtbag friends, etc; and the emotional reach in the last part. it's so good.

re: the criticism upthread that there's a part of this that's trying to project too hard that he's a great guy: i don't disagree with this, necessarily, but don't find it such a troublesome premise. i think it's accepted with the same sort of reflection as that he's a frequent masturbator or that he's pretty solitary. & i don't so much think it's that he's 'a great guy', always doing the best thing & stepping back to allow others to go forward, so much as that he's trying & has a certain set of priorities, like his kids, etc. there's some seinfeld thing that they realised some way through that it wasn't problematic for jerry to be successful - like they didn't have to revert to the traditional klutzy thing of everything blowing up in the lead's face for comic sake. & that there's a basic mode for louie in which he's doing okay & is pretty moral (though obviously with weird behavioural extensions to that - he's not excising the 'sure i would date a 19 year old' bits, etc) seems like a v reasonable starting place for him to be at in the show.

like, not having rewatched the rest, rather

yeah i don't mind his "i'm a pretty decent guy" schtick at all. and, as you say, it's not like he isn't aware of the fact that he might think too highly of himself. cf the standup bit in the ep a couple weeks ago where he talks about how ppl like him think they're so great for not staring at ppl with disabilities (or something to that effect).

kinda wondering when the louis ck backlash begins. i love the dude but he's getting so much hype right now, so many people saying "OMG BEST COMEDIAN/SHOW EVER."

still feel like i don't really get the show but i'm glad he's doing it and people like it a lot

like bill simmons is praising him on grantland for no reason

don't know why i started posting again, sorry

basically, dude got the "funniest guy in america" mantle for a little while; I agree that he's bound to slip at some point but I'm really just enjoying him being at the top right now.

"i don't really get _______ but i'm glad ______'s doing it and people like it a lot" has such potential as a really irritating, condescending turn of phrase with high levels of plausible deniability. like i absolutely don't mean that i read it this way here, but when all you have is a shitty personality everything looks like a way to bother friends' boyfriends who like party down too much

i guess it could read that way if you're naturally cynical about people's motives/opinions. i'm ok with people liking stuff i don't like without having to feel that it's "lesser." it's just not for me.

for me it is. if i don't get something i figure it must not be very good.

kinda wondering when the louis ck backlash begins. i love the dude but he's getting so much hype right now, so many people saying "OMG BEST COMEDIAN/SHOW EVER."

yeah i've been bracing for this.

yeah its kinda approaching the point where even if you kinda like him and think hes 'just ok' the monstrous overpraise starts to grate but then i remember that like hardly anyone even watches his show im just friends with all of them on the internet

haha, true.

I still love the show, but it is getting more and more cuddly. I didn't like the USO episode, maybe because I'm an asshole? Like, do you really have to show country music guy singing his ENTIRE song!? I hit fast forward for a lot of that, but iirc they showed dude singing TWO entire songs - just intolerable. Not to mention the entirely non-critical gaze on the military. You don't need to show them randomly shooting civilians or anything, but this was like straight-up soft focus propaganda.

I don't buy that, and I'm no fan of the military.

I thought the episode was great and in a way important for just that reason; that it showed a side of the military that perhaps the Louie demographic doesn't consider very often in discussion. I'd recommend reading the travel blogs C.K. posted from his real USO experience that the episode was written about (http://www.louisck.net/2009/03/uso-tour-weblog-kuwait-iraq-af.html), he says that it was just overwhelming to see these people who he previously had a very narrow opinion of going about their lives in pretty much the way he depicts in the show; super professional, efficient, but also genuinely nice and appreciative of everything in a way that is beyond what we as civilians can really understand.

How much more critical do we really need to be of 20-somethings who are essentially sent out to dangerous regions of the world to fend for each other or die? It's kind of refreshing to see a somewhat positive portrayal of the troops from a non-Republican/etc. source. No?

I recognize that shooting with real people who have real lives, like the (real, actual) soldiers, Keni Thomas, even the cheerleader, puts you into this position where you can't really be critical of them, or even give them a gentle ribbing, really.

How much more critical do we really need to be of 20-somethings who are essentially sent out to dangerous regions of the world to fend for each other or die?
This thread isn't the place for it, but seriously? I'm not really willing to look at people in the business of killing other people with anything but a critical eye, and I'm never going to be willing to romanticize them, personally.