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

to be fair, i enjoy his off-stage moments in the show far more than his on-stage moments. part of that is that this show really presents conversation well (not shtick or banter or quips or over-emoting, but real conversation).

the on-stage stuff in the show is definitely not him at his best (which he usually saves for his actual stand-up)

scenes with him on dates or interacting with women are compelling. the one where he was on a first-date with a younger woman, where everything went wrong, was heartbreaking. the one where he was just talking with the single-mother, while their kids had a play-date, was heartwarming. and the one where he had to humiliate himself to avoid the high-school bully, in front of his date, which had been going well up to that point, was especially sad to me.

I don't know what era of his stand up you saw, either. I've been familiar with his stand up for a little over a decade and, while I liked his old stuff fine, his newer stuff is on fire. My body hurt from laughing at his last special. His stage/talk show work and his show are both great for somewhat different reasons.

its interesting and true to life to me how verbally fumbly the louie character is in like all of his interactions w/ ppl he doesn't know well. like how hard it is to really express what you want to say if you even can pin down what youre feeling in a moment. esp in contrast to, you know, his job as a stand up comedian being abt communicating ideas. like, its prob been running thru a lot of this show, but the first time I remember it is the Miami ep and his convo @ the bar @ the end, wanting to get across that hes not gay, but hes had a good time hanging out w/ that dude etc etc - its a brilliant scene; I think it's increased this season, maybe culminating in this relationship arc where you and your partner literally cannot understand each other, idk its all interesting to think abt imo

My body hurt from laughing at his last special

― Surprise, It's My Butt (Old Lunch), Thursday, June 5, 2014

which one is that? netflix seems to have at least a few of them.

Pretty sure it was Oh My God.

was this the first time that Louie really did something totally unsympathetic/indefensible?

in ref to the last ep

There was the episode where he followed a grocery cashier all the way back to her apartment via the subway, despite her being obviously completely uninterested. Then he had sex with a fat black woman, which was played for laughs. That was my least favorite episode.

well ok but having sex w a big black lady is not the same as sexually assaulting someone, that's more of a portrayal issue. I don't remember the grocer thing tho...

Yeah, my problem with that sex scene is a problem with IRL Louie, not the character Louie. The stalking that preceded it is my real answer to your Q.

https://medium.com/@jonahweiner/you-should-be-left-with-a-fucking-mess-of-unanswered-questions-94dd8352395c
jesus this is long

thanks for that, forks, i really dug it

dr. bigelow

tonight is the whole 'in the woods', seemingly ~1h30

then next week is 'pamela 2+3' and thats it for the season

Yep, it's movie-length tonight.

not really into this episode where he assaults pamela

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2014/06/07/the-darkness-and-light-louie/Rs61ELt7crps5IL4pIyOKO/story.html

Louie has not been Tony Soprano; he has been a likable, hangdog kind of guy with a lot of flaws. What will happen now? As is typical with “Louie,” I have no idea.

This has an interesting spoiler about the angle of tonight's episode, in the quoted paragraph.

that was fucking exceptional.

Yeah, that was tremendous. I wonder if Hoffman was supposed to play the science teacher. The guy that did played it beautifully, though.

the science teacher was named Mr Hoffman so I'm assuming that was the plan.

i remember, from a past interview, this being a roughly actual situation louie went through as a kid?
renner was great as a boston wastoid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjEnC9LOuuY

I wasn't expecting that tbh. Skipp Sudduth is brilliant and so are the kids, brilliant episodes.

OHHHH that's the guy from Ronin!

He seemed so familiar but I couldn't place him.

Loved the Charles Cookies tin in the background of Hoffman's kitchen.

kinda curious how his day @ that fest wouldve went had he not seen his daughter

That was McCarren pool, yes? And sex mob? Or Balkan beatbox?

Golem!

http://golemrocks.com/

featuring Aaron Diskin, who used to be in Challenge of the Future, Nick Zinner's pre-Yeah Yeah Yeahs band.

Ah, golem! Yeah, i've worked with them too; fun times!

well shit, that was one of the better hours of tv i've ever seen.

The whole scene at the outdoor concert thing was so weird I half-expected it to be a dream sequence. It really made no sense for Louie (or Todd Barry) to be there, and it also didn't make much sense for Louie's 12(?)-year-old daughter to be there unsupervised, either. Very strange pretext for him to catch her smoking weed. They didn't even really get any jokes out of it, unlike other scenes of Louie being around obnoxious young people.

yeah barry's insistence on answering louie's questions with questions ("these girls look like they're 15, how old are they?" "how old are we?" there's a couple variants on that) had me thinking we were in some kind of dreamspace.

Renner? The dealer...overlooked his part. I felt like he was in Hollywood blockbuster acting mode. He had none of the lighthearted method the rest of the cast displayed. Watching him makes me uncomfortable.

Overcooked

love that naive anti-naturalistic writing mode where everybody just addresses young louie increasingly directly as the episode goes on.

will there ever be joeks on this show again

It's still interesting to watch (altho man it is NOT paced for television and ads) but I'm not sure what the point was of stretching a funny standup bit into an unfunny extended flashback

I just can't watch it anymore... it's gotten too bleak for me and, yeah -- the jokes are few and far between. Still love his stand-up. The end to Season 3 was just great but S4 is like, soul-crushing.

at this point the show seems to be about promising that anything can happen, which draws you in, and then delivering ... nothing. (THAT'S THE JOKE)

I agree. It's 'excellent' but it's not a lot of fun.

honestly the biggest lol this ep was noticing they didn't have the money to pay for Zep's "No Quarter"

I miss the opening credits :(

Micah | Daba | Jenny | Lenny | Jacky

Not just No Quarter...the whole thing was filled with fake versions of well known songs. I definitely think I made out fake Blue Oyster Cult and fake The Cars. I found it kind of charming.

what do we think of that most recent episode with pamela? is this a good direction for the show?

Him sort of assaulting Pamela every episode? No, that would be a bad direction for the show.

there's two more episodes in the pamela storyline so i'm withholding judgement but that scene was pretty rough & gross obv