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Louie
2010 · TV series · 5 seasons
Created by Louis C.K.
Louis C.K. stars as a fictionalized version of himself; a comedian and newly divorced father raising his two daughters in New York City.
10 positive2 negative2 mixed5 neutralfrom 19 commenters
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19 comments on Hacker News
Guess it depends what you mean by "cancelled". There are accusations of misconduct which caused specials and projects to be temporarily or permanently halted (Louis CK/the TV show Louie, Roseanne Barr, TJ Miller, Chris Hardwick), there are attempts to censor or delete (Dave Chapelle, Joe Rogan), and outright disappearance from the comedy scene (Bill Cosby). Each accusation has its merits and detractors, but there is no doubt that everyone above has had their comedy output affected by (usually) unrelated aspects of their personal life being called to question.
> In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.
This thought often crosses my mind in particular when I consume media that is more 'psychological' in nature. Much of the time I can't shake the feeling that no matter how convincing the characters and their 'inner life' is presented, we're still ultimately seeing a projection of the writer themselves.
Sometimes I notice how certain characters seem richer than others, and usually these characters are obviously closer to the writer's own life. Perhaps this is why slice-of-life shows seem to do well (Atlanta, Better Things, Louie), because they're just the writers writing about themselves.
Or when I read a Dostoevski novel, I can't help but wonder how much of these character's inner lives are really just thinly-veiled versions of Dostoevski's (and, considering my love for his novels, probably my thoughts are 'compatible' with his).
What makes all this worse or more complicated though is that especially for television as a media, there are all sorts of pretty serious constraints. A show needs cliffhangers, ideally every episode, and at least every season, and unless you're on Netflix, you need mini-cliffhangers before every ad block. I imagine that's got to have some significant effect on the story.
I rather like this article by David Foster Wallace that sort-of goes into all of this: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction).
At one time someone close to me was experiencing back pain, we both saw a lovely episode of the TV series 'Louie'. Here is a quote from that episode:
Dr. Bigelow: What can I do for you? Louie: Uh, well, I hurt my back today really bad. Uh. Can you help me with my back? I mean... Dr. Bigelow: What's wrong with your back? Louie: It hurts. Dr. Bigelow: My professional diagnosis is your back hurts. Louie: Well, what can I do about it? Dr. Bigelow: Nothing. Louie: Nothing? Dr. Bigelow: The problem is you're using it wrong. The back isn't done evolving yet. You see, the spine is a row of vertebrae. It was designed to be horizontal. Then people came along and used it vertical. Wasn't meant for that. So the disks get all floppy, swollen. Pop out left, pop out right. It'll take another. I'd say 20,000 years to get straightened out. Till then, it's going to keep hurting. Louie: So that's it? Dr. Bigelow: It's an engineering design problem. It's a misallocation. We were given a clothesline and we're using it as a flagpole.
"Louie" is just too damn pathetic. It's such a sad loser of a character that I couldn't bring myself to watch.
That kind of comedy works for a movie or maybe one season but for me it gets old.
I'm reminded of a scene in Louie where Louis CK is approached by a Hollywood producer to discuss movie ideas[0]. The producer asks him for his best idea for a movie.
Yeah? All right, well well, you know how movies, there's always a guy and his life is, you know, okay?
And then something happens, like a conflict and he has to resolve it, and then his life gets better?
Well, I always wanted to make a movie where a guy's life is really bad and then something happens and it makes it worse but instead of resolving it, he just makes bad choices and then it goes from worse to really bad, and-- and things just keep happening to him and he keeps doing dumb things, so his life just gets worse and worse and, like, darker and-- Like-- like he has-- lives in a little one-room apartment, he's not a very good-looking guy, he has no friends and he lives-- he works in, like, a factory, where they-- like a sewage-disposal plant, and then he gets fired, so now he doesn't even have his job at the shit factory anymore and he's-- and he's going broke and he takes, like, a trip and it rains, like, just stuff, just shit keeps-- horrible.
But then he meets a girl and she's beautiful and he falls in love, so you think that's gonna be the thing, the happy thing, but then she turns out to be a crook and she robs him, she takes his wallet, and now he's, like, stuck in the middle of nowhere and he's got no wallet and no credit cards.
---
[0]: Louie S2E10 "Halloween/Ellie"
I'm not too impressed with Louie's attempts at 2 to 3 stories per episode. The show is hilarious, but I think that experiment failed, personally. However, I think when he does outlandish episodes like the one where he has a dream about his "Uncle Excelsior" are much better examples of throwing the rules out the window and making something really interesting and memorable.
I think there are two separate viewpoints, both useful, neither true, that can be used to understand the structuring of stories. The viewpoint espoused in this article is that there exist certain timeless structures, imposed by the form that inextricably results in a type of output. And that the job of a writer is to discover these forms and work within them.
There's another line of argument, made by Steven Johnson in Everything Bad is Good for You, where viewers are trained by the media to read texts in a more sophisticated fashion. As viewers become more media savvy, the desire for surprise causes a constant creative arms race as structures that were once avant garde becomes commonplace, then tired, then old fashioned.
The A/B plot mentioned in the article is only about 40 years old (starting with Hill St Blues in 1981). Prior to that, television comedy followed a strict single line for fear of confusing the audience. Nowadays, it's not uncommon to see a sitcom go up to E plots. What's allowed them to do that is that television has developed increasingly dense visual shorthand that allows them to speed through a plot even faster, allowing for more story to fit into those 22 minutes.
Previous constraints on syndication meant that characters were required to remain in a stasis throughout the entire run but season long and series long arcs are now becoming the norm with even relatively retrograde sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory engaging in long term plotting.
If you look towards the cutting edge, you start to see people playing around with the traditional three act structure in interesting ways to keep the form fresh. How I Met Your Mother plays around with time and memory, sometimes establishing the conclusion at the front of the episode and then uses flashbacks to flesh out the central conflict in reverse. Louie routinely fits 2 or 3 stories into a single episode or stretches a single story across multiple episodes. Arrested Development S4 was an overly ambitious attempt to build a single, series long story, told and retold from multiple perspectives. And one of Girls' most polarizing episodes, One Man's Treasure (the bottle episode where Hannah has a tryst with the rich doctor) was hated by some precisely because it rejected the standard formula and resolutely avoided going for a climax and resolution.
Such techniques follow the standard adoption cycle, first appearing in cutting edge, low rated comedies aimed at early adopters before eventually gaining widespread appeal and mainstream success before becoming hacky and relegated to shows for children and old people.
The tv show "Louie"
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
Louie, Season 3 stands out to me as the best show of the year. Every 'section'(between advert breaks) is extremely well written, directed, and even orchestrated. Each 'section' feels like an operatic movement, with each episode being extremely cohesive and emotive. From an artistic point of view, it's one of the best shows of the year. From a comedy point of view, it's probably the best show of the year, definitely the stand out show for me this year.
Homeland was also very good this year, it managed to keep up the suspense and excellent acting, I'm excited to see the new season next year.
I enjoyed Dexter, I'm not sure I like where they are heading though, it's getting darker and darker by the series. I also enjoyed Castle, I think it's very funny and well written, but perhaps I have a soft spot Nathan Fillion.
Most anticipated TV series for next year is the new Arrested Development. I love the first three seasons, I'm a bit nervous with netflix financing it, I hope the (probably) smaller budget hasn't meant too many compromises in terms of writing and production, but with the excellent cast from the previous seasons all returning, I'm excited to see how they're going to pick up from the end of season 3.
If you had finished the article, you would've seen that it really is just a review of the Louie TV Show, with the idea of "laptop loner" being hamhandedly forced in.
As someone who has lived in the US, AU & the EU in a few places I'd have to say this article is great. It's something you wind up doing if you live in other places.
America is #1 in quite a few things, such as software, just try naming non-US software companies that matter, it's an interesting exercise. Also the US highway system is excellent, the US's culture of entrepreneurship is also awesome. The best US colleges are the best in the world. US computer games, TV shows (Breaking Bad/Mad Men/Louie/The Sopranos etc) and other things are great from the US.
But in many things the rest of the rest world laughs at the US. US High School education, for instance, is not well regarded. The US health care system is regarded as scary and pretty poor.
There are even other countries that are really good at seeing things overseas and copying. Australia, for instance, got a points based immigration system from Canada, Universal Saving for retirement from Singapore and looked around the world for ways to reform the Australian Reserve Bank.
I might suggest that either you have already watched a lot of movies or your definition of interesting is rather narrow. I have hundreds of films in my instant queue. The number of critically acclaimed TV shows is pretty large, too. Have you seen all of Mad Men? Battlestar Galactica? Breaking Bad? Arrested Development or Louie? It would take a while just to get through those. There are, of course, many more. Lots of documentaries and smaller films you might not yet have heard of, but that you might like a lot.
It's hard for me to understand why anybody would think there's nothing interesting to see there.
I can't see him doing it for the show "Louie" itself, since it's already in a good position.
But I could completely imagine someone else in a similar position doing, perhaps even with Louis CK's help and the same platform. Imagine if Chris Rock wanted to launch a new crazy-experimental TV show. Funding via the Internet, with Louis CK's help, and then license it to a TV channel as well. I think it would be a huge success.
> only real 'talent' on the show that he stars in, writes, and directs
And edits. In his AMA on reddit yesterday, he revealed[1] that he cuts Louie himself. In season one, there was a second person that helped him, but season two was apparently all him. He could be oversimplifying, and presumably other people at least watch his cut to smooth any rough edges, but it seemed like there was minimal involvement of others in the process.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_and_this_is_a_thing/c37ec9f?context=3
I think it all comes down to marketing and advertising. In the end you may not make as much with an HBO/Comedy Central special, but would anyone know who Louis CK is without these?
It's more of a branding thing with the specials and getting your name out there. It may not payoff up front, but the deals that come after it (such as Louie, the TV show) make it well worth it in exchange for the money lost.
The trick isn't really building a platform for smaller indie people to do these sort of things, that's easy and already available widely. The trick is building a service where these smaller indie people can make it big without having to go through the big players like HBO/Comedy Central first. YouTube is on the right track and Pandora/Spotify seems to be doing this for music, they just need time to growth, because as big as YouTube is, it still doesn't have the weight and advertising ability that a channel like HBO/Comedy Central has. As the ability to sift through the junk becomes better and better via analysis of social cues/demographics, it will be easier for these sort of simple "I don't care if you pirate because it's cheap enough" models to take off for smaller people. But at that point YouTube or whoever fills that gap just becomes the next HBO/Comedy Central and the cycle repeats.
Bottom line is there's always going to be a "big wig" who owns almost all the eggs. For standup comedy it's Comedy Central and HBO. If you can make it there you're set. Maybe someday it will be the YouTube comedy channel, but someones going to always come out ahead and being the leader means you can set your own price on what you wish to pay (as HBO/Comedy Central has done here).
It's completely a generalizable solution. From upstart standups who tape their open night sets for YouTube to seasoned comics with tv shows and HBO specials like Louis CK and David Cross (who similarly self-produced his last special "Bigger and Blackerer" by asking his buddy to tape 2 of his sets, though he didn't self distribute), this model absolutely works.
Louie's just doing for comedy what have been doing for years, recording the concert and selling it at the end of the night or online for more than they'd have made otherwise through traditional distribution deals.
If you have access to Netflix streaming, his show Louie [http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Louie/70179977] and one of his older stand-up specials "Chewed Up" [http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Louis_C.K._Chewed_Up/70108425] are available.
Louie is a surprisingly good show. I think I like it for the same reasons I like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, which is it sticks out from the rest of tv (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Bones, House, Law and Order, etc.) I think what's nice is that its not just another over used trope, spin off, sequel, trilogy, reproduction--it's original. I especially enjoyed the episode with his mom. The authors arguments are really interesting and I tend to agree with her. There are flaws in everything though.