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

<3 <3 <3 the special, hope he made a shit ton of money

yeah both of these articles are real good.
also - there is a part at the end of the RS article that is like "nice to read", in a very "our personal endearment to LCK" kinda way, that reminded me of a piece on the awl last week that i didn't read but which was about how we were living in the Louis CK bubble, acknowledging that he is great & how the author is a fan & all but how we have reached a point of sorta blind DFW-esque mania and personal appreciation. i really hate articles like that because they're just sorta acknowledgement of context without necessarily being commentary, appointing the writer to the position of arbiter & overseer, i guess i should read it to see if there is some kind of illuminating perspective but it, it existing, bugged me generally

was the sex bit at the end of the special deliberately clueless / offensive?

appointing the writer to the position of arbiter & overseer,

yea it's weird, stuff like this is v distasteful & DFW praise is a good parallel. is it just a blog-influenced, modern young-er journo thing? can you think of any examples from idk 15+ yrs ago?

the whole guys are bad at it bit?, i can't remember if there was anything else to it. i was pretty into that?, i feel like a lot of his gender-difference stuff is a good example of his 'comedy takes you to places where you're uncomfortable' thing, not because of a sex-is-taboo element but because to get that general is awkward & i think i'd reflexively push against it in like a 'serious conversation' or w/e. what didn't you like about it?

i guess there was the guys-have-gross-thoughts girls-don't thing, hm

yeh wouldn't have gone down well on ruffalo thread, y'know

yea it's weird, stuff like this is v distasteful & DFW praise is a good parallel. is it just a blog-influenced, modern young-er journo thing?

like i think so. actually re: DFW, there was an interesting N+1 (online) piece a couple of months back by a guy who was a student of his, who's gone on to be a writer for some places, & wrote this two part piece on wallace. the first part was totally of the kind oral-history-of-david-wallace-the-guy genre (which i am totally fond of & unashamedly love & find interesting), stories about what he was like as a loving and demanding & influential teacher, etc etc etc. & part two was a not-review but reflection on the pale king, talking through & spinning a thread from some of its theological concerns. & what was weird about the piece was that the first part is so obviously, firstly, honey, for the fans, really interesting, personal stuff, which the guy was in a (not the right word) 'privileged' position to know, like had access to sparse, interesting, first-hand experience of, but which could also be perceived as somewhat prurient, or certainly as a kind of writing in the tradition of 'behind the scenes' rather than being concerned with the literature, etc. & you kinda felt like the second part was this fierce attempt to counterbalance the oversharing with an attempt to engage, to be a peer, as a writer, and talk to a former tutor's work on his level. i think blogging is a good reference point, because it's self-appointed, & like i should really read this awl article before bitching about it, but i just don't know what it was other than that kind of kneejerk acknowledgement of a moment, as inevitable as the eventual turn in the tides of opinion over a new starlet or critical darling. the context of copious opinion-blogging (/trendpieces, i guess) probably adds a race (as in spoon race, not as in race) element to this, in which it's great to be the first to be able to very neatly place a trend in its societal context

yeh wouldn't have gone down well on ruffalo thread, y'know

― Crackle Box, Thursday, 5 January 2012 14:55 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sure, yeah. i am going to be an apologist itt but i do sorta think that it was more as a counterpoint to his self-loathing at guyish one-track-mindedness, more about men than it was women, but yeah i guess we are on dubious ground

I'm sure they don't have a premiere date for Season 3, but does anyone know, will it be this fall?

i think i heard july but tbh that might have been filming it idk

Yeah the last couple of years it's been mid-late summer.

OK thanks

sure, yeah. i am going to be an apologist itt but i do sorta think that it was more as a counterpoint to his self-loathing at guyish one-track-mindedness, more about men than it was women, but yeah i guess we are on dubious ground

― quick brown fox triangle (schlump), Thursday, January 5, 2012 10:01 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

finally saw the beacon special, and yeah, i think this is true. it seems pretty much always true when he covers sex/gender?

the louie episode where he just will not shut up about how digusting men's sexual fantasies are bothers me more on a gender ideology level than his bit about women being better at sex in the beacon schedule. i guess that might be in part about what a total straw character the christian anti-masturbation activist woman is.

i finally watched some of this show. its p good, but not as good as i was expecting. does anyone else think the way he writes the louie character often feels self-serving?

schedule? i meant special. also the thing that made me laugh the hardest for some reason was "louis recounts incredibly stupid thoughts he has had," the whole dog-phone thing.

i think there might be some discussion of that upthread, ade? i wondered if the beacon show might have been in part addressing that criticism. he goes out of his way to talk about how he has all these beliefs but he doesn't necessarily live by them, etc.

i think it is an interesting argument, that you can kinda undercut criticism with some degree of manageable self-deprecation, that still leaves you a basically relatable, decent guy. BUT tbh i think it's more that it just works, & a lot of the show & what the guy's concerned with is how to be good, is what you're doing okay, etc, conceits that involve having a sorta morally neutral/uncontroversial/malleable figure at the centre. a friend was talking about the point where louie's sister comes over and talks trash about his ex-wife, & that's obviously a loaded construct - it's louis ck who's written it, in a setup autobiographically analogous to his own life, incorporating another character mouthing criticism of basically a real person, which he gets to good-naturedly defuse - but tbh i'm happier with the idea that most of that stuff is just 'true enough', eg lazily grafted from real feelings into his fictional show, rather than being part of an artistic persona.

i also think there's some of that baseline, seinfeld-esque premise about it all; there's a moment where they realised that it was okay for jerry to 'do okay' on the show - not be the putz, not screw up, to make money occasionally, be successful. part of the show is that louie isn't terrible & is trying & failing. there's a degree to which that's self-aggrandising but i also think it's modest enough, & 'everyman'-ish to be a fair starting off point.

i'm still really mad that the bit about his kids getting eaten by bears was excised from the special since someone posted about it, itt or in the sandbox

the louie episode where he just will not shut up about how digusting men's sexual fantasies

If this is the episode I'm thinking of it contained what was for me the most cringe-inducing moment of any of his shows.

Also while I thought the Beacon show was good I didn't like it as much as some of his earlier shows though I'd have to watch it again to pinpoint exactly why.

what was this cringe inducing moment

I'm not even sure if it's that episode and can't remember the exact circumstances (been a while since I saw it) but it's the one where the ep ends with him jerking off in his living room. It was really uncomfortable to watch. Is that the fantasy one?

For some reason I think that it was.

I have been watching s1 w/ the gf and there are def maybe too many cringe moments (esp for her)

so wait, are people objecting to CK's characterizing of male fantasies as exceptionally gross, or his own depicted fantasies on Louie *being* too gross?

I don't think he should even attempt to write dialogue for female characters

E, yeah, that's the episode.

I don't think he should even attempt to write dialogue for female characters

― iatee, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 1:34 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

definitely felt this way from time to time when watching the show. pamela adlon is so great, though, she brings a lot to her role. i don't want to spoil you with specifics!

x-post - See, I remember other parts of that ep really clearly but not exactly what happens in that final scene. I do remember, however, feeling really uncomfortable and gross after watching it and just thinking "Man, I really didn't need to see that".

so far the most awkward thing has been the 'create dumb woman who talks during his standup show, make fun of her, then give himself ten more minutes to explain why she is a horrible person'

and then end it with 'oh but he coulda slept with her too'

characters who aren't "Louie" are generally there for him to react to, be they male or female.

I actually agree w/ the heckler thing being over-the-top and a little unpleasant, but other than that I don't object to much on the show in general. (although it's not meant to be "oh but he could have slept with her," it's, "yeah, she really ticked me off, but who am I kidding, I'd still go for it given the chance.")

I thought the jerking off in the living room was great. Doesn't he have NPR playing at the time?

I don't think he should even attempt to write dialogue for female characters

― iatee, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 1:34 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i also think this is an epiphenomenon to some extent of the show's approach. like even though it thematizes Louie's intermittent desire to sympathetically inhabit others' POV it's ultimately about unflinchingly confronting his own failings/thought processes/whatever. it's not even trying to breathe life to other characters most of the time, because Louie experiences other people as opaque. and it makes no bones about it. sometimes that doesn't bother me at all but in the christian lady episode and the beautiful young black woman fantasy object episode from the first season it does. those are also episodes where the show resorts to some fairly broad stereotyping.

oh Simon H just said that more succinctly

black grocery store teller bit was the weakest segment of s1, but I think the exchanges w/ the xtian anti-masturbator were way better handled.

it's ultimately about unflinchingly confronting his own failings/thought processes/whatever. it's not even trying to breathe life to other characters most of the time, because Louie experiences other people as opaque.

OTM.

x-post - Yeah, I think so but there was something else, something bizarre about the circumstances that I can't remember, that made it almost unbearable for me. I'll watch it again and report back.

the exchanges w/ the xtian anti-masturbator were way better handled.

― Simon H., Wednesday, January 25, 2012 1:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe. because she seems so outside Louie's social frame of reference it feels kind of like a cheat that she turns out to be such a flat character.

also his standup bit in that episode is so puritanical! this is unrelated to the representation of female characters question; it just bothers me. one of the few times watching the show where i was like, ugh, enough with the self-loathing, it has gone too far!

Few times? I feel that way a lot while watching it.

I mean I still love it but he I feel like I want to slap him and tell him to snap out of it (w/ love, of course) at least once an ep!

the exchanges w/ the xtian anti-masturbator were way better handled.

― Simon H., Wednesday, January 25, 2012 1:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe. because she seems so outside Louie's social frame of reference it feels kind of like a cheat that she turns out to be such a flat character.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 1:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also it seems to perform that thing i've sort of guiltily laughed at in other louis ck standup bits i've seen, where because a woman is very conventionally attractive, he imagines that that's what her interior life is all about, eliciting attraction in men.

xp i just mean, self-loathing is his whole thing and i love louis ck so mostly i'm all in. that episode though is like, why do you keep insisting sex is gross, dude!

The self-loathing aspect really doesn't bother me at all, maybe because it's so contrary (or at least distinct) to basically every other protagonist on TV; I'll be curious to see how s3 handles his increased exposure / success level since he's recently admitted he'd be a jerk not to acknowledge it (whether or not it extends to the show).

all that being said, s2 focusing more on the kids + career as opposed to sex was a welcome move.

x-post - I know you did. I just meant that his self-loathing is so OTT all the time that that didn't stand out for me as any more so than usual. I feel like the sex is gross thing comes up a lot. It's been a couple months since I've watched these though so I might not be remembering them well.

clearly the "sex is gross" stuff is a direct outgrowth of the self-loathing.

just to clarify i like and often identify with the general pattern of self loathing both in louis ck's standup and the show louie (i will never tire of his bits about eating, for example, even though for his sake i hope he is exaggerating the degree of psychic pain it causes him.) i suppose those bits suggest a point of view about the pleasure of eating that is not inconsistent with the point of view about the pleasure of sex that emerges from the masturbation episode, but it bothers me a lot more in the latter. maybe because it seems to dragoon women into playing a fixed role in his self-loathing.

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