Lou-ie Lou-ie Lou-Advertisement

Alright, guys. The third season of Louie premieres tomorrow night on FX at 10:00pm and we all have to watch it. “Why,” you ask, internet reader. “I watch comedies all the time. Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls. I just don’t have time for another sitcom.” I understand, internet reader, you’ve got your Hulu sitcom setlist packed to the brim. But that doesn’t matter. Because Louie ain’t no situation comedy, girl. It’s a situation. Period.

Okay, maybe not THAT kind of situation.

It’s the realest situation out there on television. Louie C.K. is the sole writer, director, star and until this upcoming season, editor of each episode. EACH EPISODE. He has no executives breathing down his neck telling what can and can’t be on his show. Every installment of Louie is his little baby. That he fathered on his own. Each each episode is like a little Jesus.

All blatant Messiah allusions aside, Louie is able to speak about a certain kind of truth most TV shows can’t. New York blows. Not in a like “Oh, the pretty girl I have sex with all the time won’t call me back so now I have to find a new woman to hook up with” blowing (I’m looking at you, How I Met Your Mother). Like real blow. The real Windy City. Reason it blows is because it’s so awesome. You can eat the best hot dogs in the world and there’s free wi-fi all over the place.  This is all sounding really incoherent but I promise this has a point. Louie’s show addresses the small things that give him grief. Apartment hunting, dating people who can’t wait for the night to end, masturbation, ungrateful children, being alone on a Saturday night. All the usual sitcom fodder, but these things don’t just function as excuses to crack jokes out for twenty-two minutes. They exist to tell the truth about the way those particular situations effect a particular person. The show’s a bit divisive, as you have to be able to relate to Louie C.K. to enjoy it, but for those who can, you’ll get so much from it.

Take for instance season two’s episode 10, Halloween. SPOILERS ABOUND SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ ON, LET ME JUST ASSURE YOU THAT IT’S AN AWESOME EXAMPLE OF AWESOME TELEVISION MAKING. Starts off with Louie taking his two daughters trick-or-treating in the West Village, dressed as a fairy and Fredrick Douglass. (The daughter is really into history.) Adorable. The night takes a really bad turn the moment Louie relents to his daughters’ pleas to go trick or treating past midnight and some creepers start following them. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced how unsettling New York creepers can be, but on Halloween, when they’re dressed like monsters, the last thing you want to do is be cornered by them. Especially if you’re with your kids. The segment is drenched with a surrealist tone, making it like a dream and a nightmare at the same time and when it resolves, it arrives at a throughly un-cliché conclusion. 

Watch Louie, and see life be resolved in ways it always is in real life but never shown on television.

“My thing is, if you’re…

“My thing is, if you’re a writer, you write. Period. If you aren’t writing you just don’t want it that badly.”

From an interview with Writer’s Assistant Jess, current internet girl of my dreams, over at Amanda Pendolino’s blog on everything television and film here.

For those who don’t hear “Yes, and”

People leave the PIT better people.

Yesterday, I had the immeasurable pleasure of attending the Improdome show at the People’s Improv Theater on 123 East 24th street with my dear friend, Michelle. PIT truly lives up to its eponym, as the Improdome show allows for any audience member to sign up to perform improv in teams that are selected randomly during each show. On a high and on a buzz, I signed up to participate. I hadn’t done any improv outside of my tenth grade theater class and hadn’t performed in front of an audience in practically ever, but at that moment I was pretty sure I was the funniest man on the planet (Michelle particularly enjoyed my freestyle on the origin of my stage name, “Saleem Sauce”) so I wasn’t too worried. 

Precursor: I have a hearing problem. I wear two dandy hearing aids which attempt to capture all the sounds my ears miss but only about 70% of the noise that is directed towards me in a day is actually received. I do quite well for myself around people I’ve spoken to for a bit, but I’m pretty lost in new conversations. (Online dating was practically invented for my kind.) 

So we enter the theatre and watch the selected audience try to make us laugh. To our enjoyment (and my slight apprehension), these cads didn’t have to try. They listened to one another for their jokes, and conceived some of the most immaculate collaboration I’ve ever seen. SNL could have taken a chapter out of their books. What was great was, as opposed to some people who to walk onstage with their own spectacularly witty thing to say to get a cheap, whorey laugh (hi folks!), they brought a ball and passed it around. And they said “Yes, and” alot. 

But what about those like me? Who are so wrapped up in their own minds, either by design or choice, that the mere act of joining in on a joke is a process in itself? Those who are perpetually confused by the muddled voices that are attempting to transmit to broken receivers? We, the deaf, the socially awkward, the impaired, the hesitant, are desperately trying to communicate but can only move along at our own pace. Can we perform improv? Can we let go of our fears of saying something stupid because we don’t understand what we’ve heard and bare our soul to make a Wednesday night audience laugh?

I deeply worried about this for approximately fifteen minutes after the show. I mean, what good is improv if it can’t improve anyone’s life? But as I left with Michelle, shooting zingers about how obnoxious the How I Met Your Mother ads in the city have been lately, I came to the conclusion that joining in on jokes is only a rigorous process for those who are removed. It’s quite easy to say “Yes, and” to your dear friends, which means it’s quite easy to say “Yes, and” in any situation. All you need to do is forget that you are hesitant, even if you didn’t catch what was said. You don’t need ears to pass a ball around. 

Of course we can! We just need to take improv classes.