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

i loathe this show

loathe!

he's such a great comic and such a mediocre star and storyteller. the Matthew Broderick thing pissed me off so much because it was like "I hate acting and I know I'm not good at it! isn't it refreshing that I admitted that right in the middle of hours of televised fiction where the camera is on me at all times!?"

its like the king and queen of wrongness had a baby and it was some dude!

I love that all of his payoffs are at his own expense. The speech that girl he followed home gave him was so worth the supreme creepiness of following her. And Stephen Root's dentist was <3

Yeah, I'm at a loss as to how anyone could "loathe" this.

he's such a great comic and such a mediocre star and storyteller.

His mediocrity as a star is part of what I like about the show. His inability to really act (or his pretended inability to act) gives so many of the interactions in the show a strange, blank, dreamlike quality that it seems like he just drifts through life with people and things bumping off him without much reaction, and then you see him being more natural with his friends or get (what seems like) genuinely angry with his mother and he seems more like a real person.

He's also building up a view of the world where almost every interaction with another person seems combative at worst or uncaring at best, so I suppose it's not surprising that he just drifts through it with a blank expression on his face most of the time.

Oh man, catholic school.
Oh how much I hated those assholes.

I swear I had that same exact conversation with my mother.

Tom Noonan!

I can't depend on much in life, but one thing I can depend on is that some asshole or another on ILX hates each and every thing I love.

If you loved the catholic school you went to, that's cool! Mine was an evil place where a bunch of sanctimonious sadists abused the living shit out of our young psyches.

The catholic school bit was horrendous, in every great way it could be. I loved that the nun was completely oblivious to what he was actually doing and just talked about it as vandalism!

I like that they have no impulse to be consistent or have continuity other than the fact he is a guy in his early 40s named Louie who is a comedian. The mother in this one was sympathetic, but the hilarious old mom from the other episode sure wasn't!

The mother episode was extra great for the moment when his mom's wife walks in and she's a younger woman who's hotter than any woman Louie or his brother would date. Their reaction was priceless.

yeah CK talks about the discrepancy in the AV Club comments on this episode

the mother in this one is the woman who he was dating a few episodes again! The kid who was louie was a totally different kid from the last time there was a kid louie!
I love the utter disdain for continuity. It's the old Donald Duck principle: each comic, Donald starts out fresh as a dogwalker or a garbageman or whatever and then he ends up fucking everything up and the whole town is on his ass chasing him... and then next issue, he's a world class butterfly hunter. Who gives a fuck about canon when the insight is so pointed? Leave that shit to Lost nerds.

though the donuts line was hysterical with the echoes through time schtick...

aaaaaaaand reading the onion comments now, i appear to have said exactly what Louis said. go figure.
Man, the AV club comments on that show are awesome!

here's the AV club comment so you don't have to search:
Louis CK

31 Aug. 2010 | 11:40 PM CDT

The "Mom" episode was a character idea. a parent that is completely narcisistic. My mother is the opposite. But this show is not entirely autobiographical. Often it's not that at all. I just wanted to try this mom character and it worked well with the brother character I had developed. I also don't have a brother. I threw a couple of scenes at Robert Kelly and there was something so endearingly pathetic about him that I brought him back. When I started screwing around with this idea of having this awful mother, Robert's character fit into it perfectly.
I had written the God script before we started shooting and I shelved it. I just didn't think I could pull it off in the best possible way and did not want to do a shitty version of it. So I wrote it and then put it away. Several weeks later I wrote and shot Mom. A few weeks after that, I revisited the GOD script. I had more confidence in how we were producing the show and photographing it and I wanted to take it on. So I dusted off the script. Gayle Keller, the casting director, told me her idea of Tom Noonan, who I love and that just made me have to do it. Amy Silver the designer, made a great Jesus. So we put it into the mill.
Before it was shelved, Gayle had put a few people on tape, auditioning for "God". Amy Landecker had read for the mom. I hadn't seen it. She subsequently got the part for Bully, which we shot pretty early in the season. (sorry I know the timeline is a mess here) Anyway I watched her audition for God and she just nailed it (sorry) . No one else came close. So I decided I don't care that she was in this other thing. This show doesn't really function as a series. I don't think of it that way. I use what I need to tell each story. Also this is a flashback. It's in the past so it's a rememberance. There is something about a flashback, it feels like it exists on a hazier plane of reality than a present day story. It felt right to me to do that. Also at the end of her audition she said "You wanna go get some donuts?" which had this weird chilly time-travelly feeling to it because our Bully scene was so donut-centric.
As far as the mom character... Yeah, the mom in GOD is really my mom. We're even in a Pinto just like hers. She was a working mom and always wore a trench coat. The Mom in MOM was a total crazy character having to do with nothing in my life. The kid playing me in God was vastly different in look and character than the kid who plays me in Divorce and Bully. Every episode is tacking a different thing. Some people will be confused. That's okay. I think it's worth it. If it irks you to watch it because of that, I understand. But I still want to make the show this way. And they're letting me.
By the way my daughter, Jane, is played by two different girls through the season. I don't think it matters. Thanks for watching.

I should add Amy Landecker to the ws thread

i had a good laugh when i realized that i had seen her before in A Serious Man

xp ha, that's great! i totally thought the casting was on purpose. didn't even catch the donut thing. also, Tom Noonan is always entertaining

yeah the donuts thing is brilliant!

this has kind of become one of my favorite shows of all time. i like that some episodes, like the last one, are like 80% dark, sad, uncomfortably real shit. the guy creates some amazingly gripping scenarios.

http://twitter.com/louisck

great twitter night for LCK

Anyone notice that his drunk tweets seem to coincide with flying? Wonder if he's ascared o' flying...

But I love him. I want to give him hugs.

@SarahPalinUSA kudos to your dirty hole, you fucking jackoff cunt-face jazzy wondergirl.
5:06 PM Sep 1st via web in reply to SarahPalinUSA

That "God" episode was note perfect in every way. Louis is on POINT. Wow.

Really like the Onion interview esp. this section:

AVC: On the show you play a divorced father named Louie C.K. On what level are you playing yourself?

LCK: Well I’m playing me, but I’m not depicting my real life. I’m not reenacting moments that I’ve lived, but I’m playing myself. I’m projecting myself into these situations that I write for the show. That’s the best way to describe it, I think. Also, I do let myself make mistakes on the show that are mistakes I wouldn’t make, because it’s just more interesting.

AVC: Like what?

LCK: There’s an episode I have with Nick DiPaolo where we have this political argument. He’s very conservative. I’m somewhat liberal. To make that a more interesting argument to have, I called him a Nazi. So he’s Himmler, and he hates minorities. I don’t believe anything I said. As a liberal, I think that flawed liberals are more funny, so that’s what I’m being on the show. On the other side of it, there’s a gay father on the show, a gay guy who has a kid in my class, and I shot a scene the other day where I’m trying to relate to him, and I’m not doing it well, because I’m uncomfortable. So I’m trying too hard to get along with this gay guy, and it’s not working because I’m trying too hard. I’m having trouble relating to a gay guy. That doesn’t exist at all in my life. There’s a lot of gay fathers at my kids’ school, and they’re friends of mine. I don’t think of gay people as a separate category of persons. I don’t go, “Oh my God, it’s a gay guy. What do I say?” But to me it’s a funny thought, a guy that would do that. And I could understand somebody feeling that way, so it’s an interesting thing to reveal. That awkwardness, even with the willingness to be one with everybody, that if people are new to you, it makes you feel awkward and makes you feel stupid when you try. Instead of just walking up to somebody and saying, “Hi” because they’re a person, thinking, “Oh it’s a gay guy, better say the right thing.” That’s a very stupid thing, and I wouldn’t do it, but I’m willing to do it as myself on television, because it’s a worthwhile thing to explore.
I think I do that a lot onstage during my stand-up too. I’ll take points of view and positions and stuff and stories about myself that aren’t true, but they’re worth revealing, and I’d rather reveal them as myself than criticize other people. I’d rather take on the stupid behavior to reveal it, even though it’s in other people I’ve seen it in. Because for one thing, you’re kind of infallible when you’re using yourself. You’re not attacking anybody. And also, it helps me relate to it better. Rather than depicting somebody like “There’s that character over there being a piece of shit.” These straw-dog moments like in West Wing, where they make conservatives just stand there and get pummeled. [Laughs.] It’s almost more interesting for me to play the guy I’m putting down—not putting down, but revealing, because I don’t think any of these behaviors come from a bad place. I think they just come from confusion. I think most homophobia and racism is just from fear and cultural pollution and lack of experience—and selfishness and stuff. A lot of the stuff I do onstage lately, I talk about what a piece of shit I am. I’m better than the guy I’m talking about, but I think it’s a valid way to reveal these things.

Amazing finale, loved the last bit of stand-up and the final shot.

And his conversation w/ Pamela Adlon, and the airport bathroom bit, and the Gervais appearance...

That was all just brilliant. I watched it w/my dad (a retired minister whose brother has just converted to Catholicism) and he was like "hoooo boy"

<3 the comparison of the Old Testament God to a shitty girlfriend

Gervais is really horrible on this show, but I have so little patience for him period.
Last two eps were good, lotta fun, but not high points.
We should maybe poll? But I'm pretty sure that the donut shop high school threat episode is as good as it got.

Yeah, no doubt - that was the most unique and consistently great episode. Even the shows with really good bits were usually middled with a crappy short or dud stand-up section.

Gervais really grated on me at first, but for some reason his second appearance being even more over the top kinda worked for me? I'm not sure why, maybe it was one of those "so bad, but it just wouldn't end so it turned the other way" kind of things.

i love gervais on this

I'm sick of Ricky Gervais in general, but I really like him on this because the show does kind of explore how wearing it would be to have someone like that as a friend.

Last two eps were good, lotta fun, but not high points.

I really loved the ending, because it's the first time I've seen him take advantage in this show of the fact that he isn't like a regular dad. He doesn't have to get up at a certain time of the day and commute to work, so if his kids really want to go and get pancakes at 5am and then (presumably) go back to bed and sleep all day, that's fine with him because it doesn't really throw his day out. It was also the first time that the lack of contact with other people in the city worked in his favour. Nobody cares that he has his kids out in their pyjamas at that hour of the day, so they can just have their breakfast in peace. I thought there was something really touching about that scene.

I just realized I'm a couple of eps behind, awesome

Xp. He was smiling, for once...

So so so great. I just love how he scratches right down to what's real, in a way that just seems effortless.

a fave moment is when he's happily singing a jingle in the bodega that goes "oh i'm shittin on hitler's face and pissin' in his mouth..."
also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-55wC5dEnc

am listening to a bootleg mp3 of his new standup set and... hahahahahaha omg. he actually gets a couple of kinison-level rants going in places, it's pretty impressive. the best thing is just his eye for tiny details though. tiny, tiny details that somehow spin out into, i dunno, the pros and cons of cow-fucking.

o man is the season over already?

;_;

enjoy your Mad Men, lolmerica

seeing him on sunday, can't wait

wish he was coming to Portland. I saw him about 2 years ago and it was great. He did material I've never heard him do before or since. I think he really tries out a ton of new material all the time, so every show is unique.

i just watched this whole show in one evening. :o so good. my fav comedy show since arrested development. wonderfully unique.

i'm actually going to watch it all again right away

im going to see him stand up in november, p psyched

am listening to a bootleg mp3 of his new standup set and... hahahahahaha omg. he actually gets a couple of kinison-level rants going in places, it's pretty impressive. the best thing is just his eye for tiny details though. tiny, tiny details that somehow spin out into, i dunno, the pros and cons of cow-fucking.

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, September 15, 2010 2:16 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

ysi/leo?

^^