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

That's a good question! There might be good reasons they felt uncomfortable

xp

dealing with the fallout of bringing it up = #1

Seasons 1-3 of Louie I thought were great, particularly the Late Night Show episodes of Season 3 which still feels like a pinnacle

#4 was when things started to go off the rails bad; still perversely funny at times but the character went from kind of a lovable loser to abusive and shitty, which I thought was kind of a brave thing to do, for surely LCK must know how distasteful and toxic his avatar had become (but then, maybe not??). Didn't make it any easier to watch, and I skipped Season 5 entirely

Season 5 was the nadir, just completely out of ideas, just felt exhausted. I was also impressed with s4 in terms of how awful he was willing to make the character but again I think it might well play very differently on rewatch (which other people will have to report back on, cause nah).

Never watched the show at all. I have laughed at some of his bits about parenting and technology and work and society generally. His thing about airplanes and cellphones (we're simultaneously ridiculously spoiled and horribly miserable) struck me as insightful at the time.

Not so much at the "lol men and women are different, amirite?" stuff, which is played out like my dad's 8-track. I don't much care for that material from ANY comedybroze.

Female comedians can go to that well more often, I feel (Eliza Schlesinger? Katherine Ryan?). But even they can go to that well a bit too often. And it can ring false because underneath all the frisson of "wow, she went there! real talk!", there is an undercurrent of "um, but isn't this reductive and heteronormative and very very very done?"

Season 6 that was just Omegles of him jerking off and crying was dubbed "an auteur's genius reflection of the american psyche" by [insert white man culture writer]

This is the problem with complaints about "virtue signaling" I guess - it assumes ppl are changing their stance on the sly or faking an opinion from the start. This can be useful to the extent that ppl being honest with themselves about their motives is healthy, but it often kind of tramples all over the ppl that never held the dominant opinion to begin with

many xps

Like Cosby (oddly), his standup material on parenting was often A+

mostly agree w frogbs about the show's general qualitative arc.

If this thread is successfully moving into judgments on his career, I will chime in to say 'Lucky Louie' was a far funnier and far more impressive show than 'Louie'

Huh I always heard that was shite

for me, the story on o&a about putting cream cheese on his dick for his dog to lick off

hard disagree but I also think Pootie Tang sucks, studio interference or no xxp

The big thing for me with his show was how it had the same unpredictability as short fiction, instead of being a sitcom or drama. Same as starting a Margaret Atwood or Updike or whoever story, you would know the overall sensibility behind it, but literally have no sense in advance what the form and tone would be. I loved that openness. And, at its best, it really did seem like he was not going easy on himself but putting "himself' in least comfortable scenarios - "Late Show" and "Miami" still being two of my favorites.

The one of him doing the benefit with Seinfeld in the Hamptons felt very much like the anxiety dream of a comedian who feared consequences of getting caught doing something terrible.

Never seen anything this guy has ever done, I didn't even know what he looked like so I think I'm excused from any possible accusations of hypocrisy.

i liked his stand up, couldn't get into the show (i can't get into curb your enthusiasm either, i get really stressed out generally by shows that have so much social awkwardness and tension). i generally thought he was an entertaining talk show guest.

but i think it's natural to reassess the art and content in relation to what happened, it would be bizarre not to.

I have never heard of Louis C.K. and I don't even own a t.v.

What's a t.v.?

Seriously though, a lot of American stuff never makes it across the Atlantic.

i liked his netflix stand up special from this year... he showed a lot more humanity than other aging male comics (chappelle, chris rock namely) who are his peers

Particularly comedy.

The big thing for me with his show was how it had the same unpredictability as short fiction, instead of being a sitcom or drama.

The fact that FX let him make a show with no oversight whatsoever led to some really interesting ideas. I wish more networks would let their stars get away with stuff like that. Only thing I can think of is Nathan Fielder, though I haven't seen stuff like Master of None (which wouldn't exist if not for Louie, right?)

i'm american and until a couple years ago i could never keep louis ck and lewis black straight in my head

lol tom no need to get defensive

i could as easily be asking why the 'i never liked him' people never felt comfortable saying so before now

I mean this is Diet "why are these women just coming forward now"

.... is it

yeah

no

I stand by all my posts in this thread fwiw, my opinion of his standup and the show has (perhaps unsurprisingly) not changed

xxp

I uh don't think unconnected people not saying "I never liked him" is in any way comparable to victims not coming forward

wins i am trying to read your past posts for context bc i am having trouble with the parallel you're presenting there

let's pretend some people don't post about shit they don't like. lex pretend some people don't like comedy in general.

I just wanted to pop in and proclaim that I never even heard of comedy. Pretty cool huh

lol sufjan

I'm connecting the impulse to wonder aloud why ppl wouldn't come forward about a powerful figure

with the impulse to wonder aloud why ppl (sometimes the same ppl) wouldn't have spoken up about the more toxic parts of the sainted figure's public persona

It's the diet version of the wonderer

LEWY LEWY LEWY LEWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

the show went downhill after he stopped using the song in the intro imo

I am unsure why people are having problems envisioning the parallel wins is making when this exchange occurred right before he made it:

a post like that really needs to be citing specific posters' "I never liked him" posts alongside those exact same posters' "he's a genius" posts to be anything other than worthless

― treeship: a year in the life (wins), Tuesday, November 14, 2017 12:59 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the hell it does, i could as easily be asking why the 'i never liked him' people never felt comfortable saying so before now

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, November 14, 2017 2:02 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for me, i felt comfortable but i didn't care enough to type out "i think louis ck is a pig to women" and then deal with the conversation that followed
would rather just move on w my life

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, November 14, 2017 2:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's a good question! There might be good reasons they felt uncomfortable

xp

― treeship: a year in the life (wins), Tuesday, November 14, 2017 2:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dealing with the fallout of bringing it up = #1

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, November 14, 2017 2:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't wanna say

There is clearly a difference of scale here (hence "diet") but... come on ppl

I feel like the Louis C.K. problem is so similar to the Cosby problem in so many ways, like they both meticulously crafted this public persona that worked to camouflage who they actually were. I guess I was credulous enough to believe that displays of bad behavior on his show or transgressive jokes in his stand-up were like these daring attempts at presenting off-putting scenarios without retreating behind the shield of a fictional character. And that credulity was probably exactly what he was trying to engender in dopes like me.

like they both meticulously crafted this public persona that worked to camouflage who they actually were

certainly with Cosby, but Louis' persona was not that far off, i mean the movie is only the most recent and blatant example of him showing who 'he really is' and getting away with it

Was there a Cosby Show episode where he attempted to sexually assault someone?

or trying to get away with it xp

Hurting or traumatizing other people in any way is unforgivable, but I'll admit to loving his stand up for the most part. I probably still do. I empathized and found cathartic his approach to shame, self-disgust, and disappointment (without sharing his particular hang-ups). I perceived some real emotional risk-taking in being confessional that way that struck me (at the time) as valuable. The "he was always telling us he was a creep" stuff is facile because that was the entire appeal of his act. Of course he was a creep! The real question is different: Is comedy a a useful (and safe) way to explore or perform these (creepy) feelings? Maybe maybe the moral is that he shouldn't have been on a stage but talking to a therapist, where the point isn't getting a laugh from the release of pressurized super-ego but pushing through to some form of self-understanding that can analyze those feelings, or find out where the desire to hurt/traumatize others comes from, etc.

Was there a Cosby Show episode where he attempted to sexually assault someone?

Someone with a better memory will have to track it down but when the allegations were blowing up, I remember someone posting at least one standup routine Cosby did around dating that involved roofies.

lol i am super prone to getting mad in this particular discussion so i'm sorry for the bad faith reading wins

Like I was clearly way too charitable about that horrible, uncomfortable assault scene with Pamela Adlon from his show, where the discomfort of the scene was so OTT uncomfortable that I assumed it was a very knowing critique of that type of male behavior with no attempt at valorizing it or making it seem okay. When in reality it was probably more like an unreflective documentary portrayal of something he did the weekend before.

xxp DJP - I remember that too. He did a Spanish Fly routine in the late '60s iirc

to be fair, that was one bit & he was most well known from the show, and his persona was not the same as Louis'

Hurting or traumatizing other people in any way is unforgivable inexcusable.

ftfy