Banana Scoop

I’ve finally caught up with FX’s Louie to season 3 and there are a lot of feelings.  Louie is not your traditional comedy.  It doesn’t play by the rules of other sitcoms.  The lead character is probably on the bottom of the tv totem poll of lead characters in terms of looks or glamour.  There is no useless eye candy of a character to buy in its viewers.  The jokes aren’t as obvious.  And the it’s definitely one of the harder shows to watch on regular programming.  But while these things are often used as a means to berate any given show, these are actually Louie’s strengths.

Louis C.K. the creator and star of the show says that this show of his is set around 5 years before he claims to ‘have made it big’, when he was a semi-struggling comic tasked with raising his kids from a joint custody divorce.  He’s overweight, balding, and is awkward in social situations.  His life has its ups and downs [mostly downs], but Louie seems to have a certain…’code’ he lives to.  And when the absurdities of society humanity try to warp and influence his code, he’s put in a fixed position: conform or defy.  Much of the optimism in a relatively dark show is displayed through these moments when Louis stays true to himself, but one of the show’s [few] problems is that it takes so long to get there, it’s difficult to stay along for the ride to wait for the punchline [which is ironically no punchline in some cases].  All in all, Louie boils down to many hard truths that are difficult to hear, but resonate with profound meaning…all while making us laugh at some of the situations he’s put into.  Check out my review and some of the highlights of what is definitely one of the smarter TV shows on air right now.

The Messages within Messages

What this scene means: “The two represent a married couple riding through life together. Boredom can seep into any marriage. She is bored with the way Louie looks exactly the same similar to how a wife may become bored with her husband looks. She is dissatisfied but there is nothing Louie can do. He can’t stop smiling in the same way because that’s the way he looks.”

When I watched the pilot of the series, I thought to myself, “wtf is this show, there’s no consistency, it’s completely random, and it seems like horrific comedic timing”.  Turns out I was just taking it like every other television show out there for face value, when the true message are inbetween the lines.  I stumbled upon this analysis of the pilot that literally breaks the entire episode scene for scene and discusses what the real messages are.  Yes, there are a couple of awkward moments and semi-funny lines, but the real value is what’s underneath it all.  Certain scenes resonate with how marriage works or how women will treat men, or how parenting is like driving a bus.  Reading that site changed my approach to how this show runs and I knew immediately after that this is definitely one of the smarter shows on television.

A Different Brand of Humor

Being a comedian, Louis CK knows what comedy is.  He’s dabbled with an HBO comedy, and then even quit when the show was trying to construct him to be mainstream.  Louie has a very distinct sense of comedy.  A lot of it is awkward situations and dark humor.  Even more of it is hard to watch, but you’re [usually] grinning the whole time, wondering how he’s going to get himself out of one situation to the next.  The dark humor holds a lot of shock value when the unexpected or the unwanted occurs.  A lot of sad things happen on this show and we as an audience are automatically tuned to feel empathy or pity, but when it comes down to it, it’s very hilarious in hindsight, even if it is hard to talk about.  For example, one of his monologues compared getting a new dog as, ‘bringing home this little ball of sadness’, when referring to how eventually owning the dog will emotionally destroy the family down the road, because it is likely to die before the family does.  Most of the viewers shocked at when he said this, and Louis CK himself said he likes to talk about things people don’t like talking about.  In truth, even I was offended, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued at the humor he found in it.  Which is what I think the message he was trying to send the whole time.

Harsh Truths Regarding Humanity

After watching the first episode, I was already turned off by the weird and off-beat premise.  The second episode didn’t really help.  At least, it didn’t really help in terms of making Louie into one of the ‘best comedies out there’, as I would never call it that because it simply isn’t.  Parks and Recreation, It’s Always Sunny, and even New Girl has better jokes than Louie.  But I definitely stand by saying that Louie is one of the best television shows out there, especially with what I saw in episode 2.  I’ve included the scene above that changed my outlook on this show, because I don’t think I grasped this show’s intentions until then.  A 7 minute sketch, shown above, has a table of comedians sitting at a table playing poker.  The conversation gets serious when a gay comedian talks about how other comedians use the word ‘faggot’.  When the scene was over, I paused the video and took a step back.  I had never seen anything like that, at least not in a television show.  It was a profound feeling, not something I can easily describe.  And that was the beginning of me learning a lot about social structure, norms, and how people behave through this show.  Louie is that exact kind of show, where Louis CK’s character is constantly berated by society’s obnoxious habits and norms, and he points out how idiotic they are.  I guarantee you if you watch this show with an open mind, you’ll definitely learn a thing or two, even if the ride to get there isn’t easy to hear.

The Afghanistan Episode was One of the Best Episodes I’ve Ever Seen on a Sitcom

When the Afghanistan episode started playing, I tried to figure out if he was actually in Afghanistan or on some desert in California.  It didn’t take me long to realize which one it was.  Already I was more in tuned with this episode than probably any other television show I’d ever seen.  The premise was Louis CK himself went to Afghanistan to cheer up some of the soldiers in the front line.  There were sprinkles of scripted comedy here and there, but I don’t think that was the focus of the show.  The episode played out very much like a documentary where when he visited the soldiers, there were looks of genuine emotion on their faces.  And being so close to 4th of July when I watched this episode, I couldn’t help but feel more patriotic than any fireworks display ever did for me.  It wasn’t his stand up  or even the adorable side duckling story [but it truly was adorable] that made the episode so awesome.  Here is a man, not a soldier, veteran, family of a soldier, or someone getting paid, who decided to actually flyover to Afghanistan on his own to cheer up some soldiers who really needed it.  What he used for his show wasn’t exploitative nor was it trying to send any other message besides the truth: our men and women are serving on the other side of the world, with little to no luxury, and they deserve a little comedy.  This episode drove that point in so well, that I had sat still after watching it because I was so absorbed by what I had just seen.  So good.  Just…amazing.

Louis C.K. Truly Owns this Show

I read in an Entertainment Weekly that he runs his show on a tight budget.  $200,000 an episode.  Most sitcoms these days work on $1 million dollar an episode budgets.  When Louie started getting some attention, the FX representatives offered to up his budget to $300,000 an episode.  Louis declined.  Simply because he felt that the more the network gave him, the more say they would have in his show.  Louis CK himself writes, directs, and even edits the episodes himself.  I’d imagine he gets this mentality from when he had a stint with HBO with a show called Lucky Louie.  When the studio started getting upset with him for his…unorthodox approach to the show, he quit.  Talk about a guy who sticks with his morals.  I think it’s absolutely amazing that Louis does everything himself.  He doesn’t even do everything himself to get all the credit.  Louis CK in the past has been more than generous with his revenue.  After self-releasing a show for $5 with the tagline, ‘I can’t stop you guys from torrenting’, he made nearly a million dollars which he used 3/4 of it for production costs and bonuses to his employees.  Talk about a nice guy.

Overall Louie is an absolute treasure.  Without a doubt one of the smartest and bravest shows to air, I’ll definitely continue to watch this one.  And if you think you have an open mind, I recommend you do so to.