LATER, LOUIE

So Louie aired its season finale this week. And based on this season as a whole, I don’t think I’ll be back next time around. I found it pretentious, preachy, overly moralistic, disjointed, self-indulgent . . . and perhaps most egregious of all, not funny. 

Somewhere along the way, Louie C.K. seemed to buy into all the glowing press about him and decided he was now an auteur with something IMPORTANT to say. What was once one of the funniest shows on TV, with a little seriousness and pathos sprinkled in every now and then (the Afghanistan episode, the Parker Posey episodes), and occasional lapses into self-satisfaction (an entire segmented devoted to him singing the Who’s “Who Are You” as he’s driving his two daughters upstate) has become a full-blown drama with half-assed attempts at humor once in a blue moon.

A 90-minute flashback episode about Louie’s childhood, complete with brutal bullying, theft, drug use, an adversarial relationship with his mostly absent father and a disintegrating relationship with his overworked and stressed-out mother, topped off by him in the present realizing that the way to deal with his daughter—whom he found smoking pot and who LIED to him about it, insisting that she hadn’t done anything even though he SAW her doing it—is to simply tell her that he loves her. I guess the message there is that any parent who doesn’t handle it that way is doing it wrong.

Episode after episode of him romancing an utterly uninteresting woman from Hungary who speaks no English. His completely disfunctional—even disturbing—relationship with the extremely unpleasant and downright unlikable character played by Pamela Adlon. (Did he or did he not actually try to sexually assault her in his apartment in a recent episode?) His younger daughter displaying very troubling behavior. The seemingly endless lecture he received from a date about how society treats overweight women. It was all just . . . not enjoyable to watch. Not for me, at least.       

It kind of reminds me of the situation with M*A*S*H. The first few seasons were often very funny. But as the show progressed, Alan Alda gained more and more creative control and decided that it was no longer to be a straight-out comedy. Now it had to make big, meaningful statements, it had to bring home just how horrible war really is, and it had to give the cast opportunities to show off their dramatic acting chops. Uh, okay, but as an audience member, that’s not what I signed up for. 

There is very little I remember about the last few seasons of M*A*S*H. I may have stopped watching by then. But I do remember that I watched the final episode with my dad the night it aired, and neither of us laughed once. And I remember that Alan Alda, who co-wrote and directed the episode, gave himself the juiciest of parts, with Hawkeye having a nervous breakdown brought on by witnessing a mother killing her own baby to prevent being discovered by enemy troops in the middle of the night. Hilarious stuff, huh?

I know this season of Louie has many supporters and defenders, people who genuinely enjoyed the direction it went in this season. But in my opinion, when it reaches a point when Maron is actually the funnier show, it’s probably time to give up on Louie.

If the comedy part happens to make a comeback next season, let me know.

© All text copyright Glenn Greenberg, 2014.