Louie (season 4)

[Milky Joe]

Oh, Louie, how I missed ye sad disgruntled HD face.

[Henry Gale]

Somehow knowing that "Elevator" was the first of six(!) parts going into it was less startling than after seeing actually seeing the first episode play out. Very curious as to where it goes from here, since I can only imagine it involves a continued relationship of sorts with Ellen Burstyn and her niece, but have no clue otherwise.

I've really liked all the episodes so far, particularly the Yvonne Strahovski one. Adding an even more entertaining levels to it is how he's since talked about how much of it was based on a real experience he had years ago. You'd assume stuff like her being an astronaut's daughter would be part of the made up bits, but you'd be wrong.

The very first episode of the season almost felt like it was the most rushed and slight, but definitely still funny and heavy on the sort of oddball depiction of otherwise straightforward relatability only Louis can seem to conjure with the elastic world of the series. Also completely happy with it unofficially becoming an hour-long show with a seven-week run instead of the typical scheduling. The more of this can be injected into my week, the better.

[ledfloyd]

How did we survive for a year without this show?

[Milky Joe]

I've really liked all the episodes so far, particularly the Yvonne Strahovski one. Adding an even more entertaining levels to it is how he's since talked about how much of it was based on a real experience he had years ago. You'd assume stuff like her being an astronaut's daughter would be part of the made up bits, but you'd be wrong.

Could you point me in the direction of where he talks about this?

[Henry Gale]

Could you point me in the direction of where he talks about this?

Here it is. Obviously, like everything in the show, embellishment is a major factor (especially with it having happened to him decades ago), but I love how even Louis' fantastical version of it has to end the way it does for him.

Also, maybe it was because the scene was already so raw and involving (and maybe why the censors didn't catch it), but I didn't even notice that the show managed completely let Sarah Baker's character say "fucked" un-bleeped in her big monologue until others mentioned it.

[Henry Gale]

Maaan, this show's the best. This week's Parts 2 and 3 have been beautifully buzzing in my head since I watched them Monday night.

I forget who said it (either a critic, someone here, someone on Twitter) last season about Louis making the best current American films for 20 minutes once a week, but it's like he heard that and both took it to heart and to its logical conclusion considering how "Elevator" might just actually shape up to be as amazing as any recently released two-hour feature once it's done its six parts. Just stunningly lovely stuff.

[Milky Joe]

Totally. Louis has quietly turned himself into one of America's finest filmmakers. His attention to detail is outstanding. He even looks in great shape now—a recent interview in GQ said he's in the best shape of his life. I'm assuming that's why he took out the old intro: he's just stopped eating so much NYC pizza.

[Qrazy]

[ThePlashyBubbler]

I like this show, but no way is Louie one of America's best filmmakers.

Think the show being notably less formulaic than other TV works to its perceptional favor. Not to say the current arc wouldn't make a good movie, just don't think it'd be received as rhapsodically. Just my opinion.

[Irish]

CK was on Charlie Rose the other night, in case you missed it.

Link to embedded Hulu vid: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/...ore_video.html

30 minutes, 1:1 conversation

[Milky Joe]

Louis C.K. is closer to Stanley Kubrick than Christopher Nolan will ever be.

[ledfloyd]

I agree that Louis is close to becoming a great american filmmaker, but it wouldn't occur to me to compare him to Stanley Kubrick. I think Linklater, Jarmusch, and, naturally, Woody Allen are much better touchstones.

[Milky Joe]

Tonight's bit with Todd Barry felt like a response to Barry's thing on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, but I don't know if they filmed this before or after that. It was hilarious nonetheless.

[Qrazy]

Okay I can't hold my tongue any longer. The filmmaking is complete shit in this and the drama is still poor what the fuck are you people talking about.

[Henry Gale]

what the fuck are you people talking about.

Oh, this show we really like and are taken by on a weekly basis called "Louie" on FX. It's really beautifully crafted and even though it might not be the most perfectly acted or formally stellar show on television, it's entire its own, fascinating, weirdly surreal, whimsical and guttingly funny thing.

Highly recommended!

[Qrazy]

Oh, this show we really like and are taken by on a weekly basis called "Louie" on FX. It's really beautifully crafted and even though it might not be the most perfectly acted or formally stellar show on television, it's entire its own, fascinating, weirdly surreal, whimsical and guttingly funny thing.

Highly recommended!

Sorry, very drunk right now. I actually like the show a great deal just kind of ranting incoherently currently. Don't mind me.

[slqrick]

Sorry, very drunk right now. I actually like the show a great deal just kind of ranting incoherently currently. Don't mind me.

Hilarious!

I think this might be the best season so far, an improvement from the sorta kinda inconsistent third season.

[ledfloyd]

I thought this was one of the weaker weeks this season. The bit with the younger Louie in the hotel room didn't work. Both episodes felt a bit disjointed, which is strange in the midst of a six-parter.

[Henry Gale]

Loved the ending to the "Elevator" mini-series / movie within the series, and at first I wished the ending had a little more time to take a minute to emotionally resolve and breathe a bit considering how fast the credits came. But then the next episode started and I remembered, "Oh right, this is a series" as it continued with echoes of the storyline without Amia.

Then of course, there's the second episode, which I feel like people are bringing way too much dark, taboo subtext into the scene of Pamela trying to leave Louis' apartment, not just because TV rape scenes and internet editorials about them are an oddly in vogue thing right now, but because it's talked about in a way that makes me wonder if they've ever really looked at the show before. The entire scene, and the most complete, all-encompassing trait of him as a character in this show and how his storylines function, is how goofily, lunkishly sad and desperate he is, and the world of the show is always entirely predicated on getting the most basic, primal point across (often in surreal ways) and not really having a reality with the same weight or rules as our own to feel like truly bad things can ever happen. I mean, the episodes before it have newscasters declaring all of Manhattan dead from a hurricane within four hours. The next episode has everyone fine with snow on the ground. We're seemingly always seeing Louie's fears as the events on screen.

Pamela comes off as more of a realist than most people in the series, and even about the whole climactic situation. She basically sums up the general tone of the scene and her own all-encompassing disappointment of him in one line: "This would be rape if you weren't so stupid."

Louis is broken in a cinematically heightened way from having cared so deeply for Amia and clinging to Pamela's prospect of a relationship with him that he let pass by him (mainly to prove he was in more control and content with his circumstances than he was). Pamela mirrors Amia with different geographical and chronological circumstances, but even within her home country and some reclaimed form of happiness with her key emotionally connection with Louis, she can't figure her own way to commit in the same way that he is in a desperate and absolute mode of reaching out to, even if it's not with the person he may really want. And there's nothing to say she needs to be with him and can't just walk away, but the point is that she seems to so clearly cares for him, even if it's in the form of consistent disappointment. They're both in their own states of denial, it's just unfortunate that in that last scene between them it visually it has to be our big, oafish (but still physically intimidating) protagonist as the one that's trying to coax her (but mostly himself) through it, but especially in the horrible way it looks.

And I'm not sure C.K. would want to write, direct, shoot and edit it any other way. I mean, wouldn't it be worse if it felt more vague and watered down without even bringing up the "R" word or tagging his own awful moment of victory at the end if it found a way to find the same thematic implications?

The show has always been about fucking up upwards, makes sense for it to find this as a new peak / low.

[Derek]

Okay I can't hold my tongue any longer. The filmmaking is complete shit in this and the drama is still poor what the fuck are you people talking about.

The Long Takes of Louie, The Most Cinematic Show on Television AKA The Author Compares Louie to Goodfellas, Boogie Nights and Touch of Evil and Qrazy's Head Explodes

[EyesWideOpen]

That religion comedy club bit in the middle of the last episode makes him sound like a moron and went on for way too long but otherwise two great episodes.

[Milky Joe]

That religion comedy club bit in the middle of the last episode makes him sound like a moron and went on for way too long but otherwise two great episodes.

uh, nah. that was brilliant. one of the absolute best bits I've ever seen from anyone.

[ledfloyd]

I think how that Pamela scene is viewed is going to depend on a great degree to her next scene on the show.

[Henry Gale]

I think how that Pamela scene is viewed is going to depend on a great degree to her next scene on the show.

Next week (June 9th) is a two-part, 90-minute episode that has nothing to do with Pamela.

The June 16th finale consists of "Pamela"'s second and third parts.

EDIT: So basically, people are still going to have carry over whatever feelings they have about it through all of next week and then project all the weight of it to the finale, potentially casting a shadow over everything that came before it as people talk about the season retrospectively. It'll especially depend on just how much of the already loopy reality of the series reflects back on it.

I really hope it doesn't become the thing people talk about with this season, since it's been so generally stellar, and it's beginning to feel like any show that even brushes the idea of rape causes people to write articles about how they're going to stop watching it as if the show is somehow oblivious and irresponsible enough to have zero context or reasoning for it within any televisual storytelling.

Not to say there's isn't a way for the show to go the wrong way with it from here, but I still feel like the scene was already the horrific mirrored counterpart of everything with Amia in the episodes before (the couch motif, how much the kids and her get along, the "Bye" scene before they had sex, etc.), and it kind of acts as the big end point to try to get across just how emotionally fractured Louie now is without her, trying precipitously to recreate any given moment they had.

And I feel like it's because Pamela acts more like a real person than most characters in the show, all while being one of the few that consistently understands and cares enough about him to call him out on his shit, even in such an extreme as that scene, that it shocked people like it did. Add to that the fact that it stemmed from the main character of a series that wasn't Breaking Bad or something.

So ultimately, it's true that we'll have to see where it even goes from here, but I feel like it's already dealt with it in as rightfully unflattering a way as it could for Louie. Maybe "Into the Woods" will be what it takes for him to regain and redeem himself before facing Pamela again.

[Qrazy]

Susan Kelechi Watson is the worst actress.