Kill your own f*cking television! Vol. 2

LOUIE

One area where television is currently completely kicking the ass of the movie industry is comedy. Sure, there's still plenty of mediocre sitcoms polluting the air waves but in this post Seinfeld/The Office era there's also a more than usual amount of smart, unique and innovative shows to choose from. "Parks and Recreation", "Community", "Bored To Death", "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia", "Eastbound and Down" and the still funny "Curb Your Enthusiasm" are just a few of the titles out there at the moment. Towering above them all as clearly the best in a strong field is FX's "Louie"

Starring, written, directed and edited by comedian Louis C.K., "Louie" is one of the purest examples of auteurism in any current medium. If you're not familiar with his work, Louis C.K. is one of the most successful and respected stand up comedians working today. His style is honest, acerbic, self-effacing, observational and confrontational. With George Carlin he shares a love of both language and the puncturing of pomposity and self importance combined with an almost Cosby like conversational style. His humor encapsulates all subjects from the meaning of life and death to fart and dick jokes, all equally funny. In the industry he's universally respected as a "comic's comic".

Despite his mastery of the stand up form he's had little success in film or television. He has directed many short films but his feature debut as a writer/director was the notorious "Pootie Tang". Now, by all reports "Pootie Tang" was a much interfered with production and was more or less taken away from him and re-cut into the form it exists today so he's not entirely to blame. To his credit, however, C.K. has not disowned the film entirely and admits that even if his version had survived it wouldn't have been anything like a great film, or even a very good one. He just wishes he'd been given the chance to succeed or fail on his own merit.

His next major project was "Lucky Louie" for HBO, a not entirely successful experiment in deconstructing the traditional sitcom format. Shot multi-camera, with old fashioned video tape on cheap looking sets in front of a live audience, "Lucky Louie" looked and felt very much like an old fashioned network sitcom, but it's subject matter was deliberately shocking and profane, laced with cursing and even nudity. Both audiences and critics were confused and turned off by the show's ugly aesthetic and willful vulgarity and it only lasted one season. Which is too bad because, despite it's off putting elements, "Lucky Louie" was often laugh out loud funny. More than that, it was, like C.K.'s stand up, almost painfully honest in it's portrayal of the difficulties of being married with a small child and not enough money. Louis and his TV wife Pamela Adlon were a great team and a believable couple as well, and happily she has shown up on the new FX show. Although I cannot bring myself to recommend "Pootie Tang" (which is not without interest but still a god awful mess) I absolutely do recommend "Lucky Louie" at least if my description doesn't turn you off.

On second thought, maybe it's for the best that "Lucky Louie" didn't succeed because it freed it's creator to spend the next few years further refining his comedic voice and allowing him to produce some of the best stand up of his career. It's from this newer, stronger comic perspective that "Louie" his brilliant new show emerged. It is forever to their credit that despite his shaky record in the medium the FX network basically gave C.K. carte blanche to do whatever he wanted within the agreed upon budget. The form and content of the show was up to him and him alone. This is almost unprecedented and has left more than a few of his contemporaries scratching their heads in wonder (and privately seething with envy I imagine).

So what is "Louie" anyway? Basically, it's a series of short films (usually two an episode, sometimes just one) with only the barest strand of continuity. Louis plays a sad sack version of himself, a single comedian and divorced father of two young girls and this is the one real constant throughout. Stand up performances are sprinkled throughout the episodes, somewhat like early Seinfeld, often commenting on or enhancing the filmed stories. This loose format allows C.K. as a writer to wildly vary the the tone of the comedy. It is often arduously realistic but can turn on a dime into absurdism or surrealism, it can be subtle or wildly exaggerated, it can be extremely vulgar, even offensive, but also poignant and sensitive. What this format lacks in cohesiveness or consistency it more than makes up for in invention and unpredictability. Over the course of thirteen episodes Louis is able to create as full and rich a comic universe as I've ever seen. On top of this it's one of the best directed and most cinematic shows, comedy or otherwise, currently in production, often resembling a low budget seventies film, and if you know me at all, you know what a profound compliment that is.

Series highlights for me would include, a humiliating encounter with a bully that takes a genuinely surprising and moving direction, a fall-on-the-ground funny cameo by Ricky Gervais as an offensive doctor, a chilling scene of Catholic school children being terrorized by a realistic description of the crucifixion, Louis' narcissistic Mother (who's portrayal is completely different in a later episode) coming out of the closet, any scene between Louis and Pamela Adlon as a single mom he befriends, Louis eviscerating a female heckler and a great scene where Louis and his friend comedian Nick Dipaolo come to blows over politics only to immediately become friends again when one of them is injured. Anyway, I could go on because it's all good. I don't exaggerate, the entire first season is great, every last episode. Last week the second season started and I'm happy to report it looks to be as strong as the first. The first episode was very good overall and contains one the the best and least gratuitous fart jokes ever recorded. Ya gotta see it.

I've often said that I'm far more of a comedy snob than a music snob. I really don't care what kind of music people listen to but it frustrates and angers me when people laugh at lazy, unfunny bullshit. In this era where between TV and the Internet we have a greater choice of quality comedy than we've ever had before, it pains me that the number one comedy in North America is the abysmal "Two and a Half Men". As a cable show with fairly edgy content, I know that "Louie" will never be able to rival a show like that but I hope, at least, that it manages to carve enough of a niche for itself that it stays around for a few more seasons. Also, when it does finally end I hope Louis C.K. is allowed to take what he's learned on this show and use it to make films. If he's given half a chance I think he could one day stand beside Woody Allen and Albert Brooks as one of the great modern comedy auteurs.

Anyway, kill your own f*cking television. I need mine to watch "Louie".