Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Louie: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Louis C.K.’s semi-autobiographical sit-com.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater June 26, 2011

Comedians get their own sit-coms with atomic-clock regularity—it happens all the time—so it’s refreshing when one comes along that actually does something different with the format. Seinfeld famously pushed the envelope by being “about nothing,” but misanthropic stand-up comic Louis C.K.’s new show, Louie, goes the opposite direction. It’s very definitely about something—the pains of being a bitter, divorced single dad trying to raise two kids in the big city—but yet this isn’t what makes the show unique. What gives Louie its identity is the fact that FX gave Louis C.K. a small budget but almost complete creative control. The result is a show that seems less like a sit-com and more like a series of short films, vignettes from C.K.’s comedy routine come semi-cinematically to life. It’s also extremely edgy by basic cable standards; it’s the kind of show that you’d expect from HBO or the like. Of course, C.K. did have a show on HBO in 2008—the quickly cancelled Lucky Louie—but this new creative outing trounces it in every way. Like C.K.’s stand-up, Louie is bleak, miserly, and sometimes depressing as hell, but it’s also insightful and almost always hilarious.

The setup is hyperbolized autobiography. C.K. plays an exaggerated version of himself, a semi-successful comedian and divorced dad who lives in N.Y.C. with his two young daughters. “It’s hard to start again after a marriage,” he says in one of the stand-up segments that act as segues between the vignettes that make up each episode. “It’s hard to really look at somebody and go ‘hey, maybe something nice will happen.’” Even when it works out, it still ends in despair, he suggests, summarizing his general philosophy. “You’ll meet the perfect person, who you love infinitely— you even argue well—and you grow together, and you have children, and then you get old together, and then she’s going to die. That’s the best case scenario.” The show is filled with these kinds of depressed ruminations on how pointless everything is, but like any good existentialist, C.K. finds humor—if not exactly purpose—in the indifference and meaninglessness of the universe. If that sounds too lofty, he also mines satirical comedy out of the mundane, and most of the episodes revolve around the absurdities of his everyday life.

In the pilot, Louie volunteers to be a chaperone on a school field trip, but when the bus blows a tire and ends up stranded in a rough neighborhood in Harlem, he makes all the class’s black kids sit in the window seats to make the bus look less conspicuous. Is this racist, or just a pragmatic response? Louie himself isn’t sure, but his ultimate solution is even more ridiculous: he hires a fleet of limousines to take all of the kids home. Race isn’t the only potentially controversial topic he taps into. One episode opens with a poker game that devolves into a prolonged and juvenile roundtable discussion of the intricacies of gay sex—one of Louie’s poker playing friends is gay—but then, surprisingly, morphs into a frank, intelligent conversation about homophobia and the hurtful use of the word “fag.” C.K. is adept at this kind of switcheroo; he’ll start with broad, crass comedy and then hone in on some unexpected truth at the heart of it.

Another example is the “God” episode, which just might be the best of the season. In the first segment, Louie enters a gas station restroom and finds a glory hole carved crudely in one wall. Underneath it, in black magic marker, someone has written “HEAVEN.” When a non-descript older man —that is, a guy whose appearance doesn’t scream sex deviant—enters the bathroom and prepares to, well, enter the hole, Louise stops and asks the guy why he’d risk sticking his penis in the unknown. “I dunno,” the guy says, “you’ve gotta have faith.” As vulgar as this scene is, when Louie follows this with a stand-up bit about the absurdity of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, the point becomes clear: Is faith always good thing? In the second segment of the episode, Louie flashes back to a childhood memory about Catholic school. Upset that the school children don’t understand the enormity of Christ’s suffering, one of the nuns hires a forensic pathologist—played brilliantly by Tom Noonan—to explain in great, gory detail the sequence of flaying, bloodletting, and asphyxiation that culminated in Jesus’ death. Young Louie, guilt-ridden and traumatized by this, sneaks into his church at night and pulls a statue of Jesus off of the cross, crying that he’s sorry and trying desperately to comfort the wooden crucified Christ. It’s a bizarrely touching moment, one that you wouldn’t expect from an episode that started with a man preparing to stick his junk in a gas station bathroom wall.

I don’t mean to paint the show as overly serious or always concerned with delivering some sort of social/moral/political message—the show has plenty of funny-for-the-sake-of-funny sequences. Louie takes abuse from his grossly insensitive personal physician—Ricky Gervais in two extended cameos—and gets high with his downstairs neighbor, leading to a hilarious hangover scene. He goes to shrink who may or may not be a necrophiliac, and finds out his septuagenarian mother has become a lesbian. He talks with a fellow PTA parent about the worst things they can imagine doing to their kids, and stars in an “all-Jewish” remake of The Godfather directed by Matthew Broderick. That said, the show does have more substance than Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or other similar sit-coms. It’s almost nihilistic comedy, and hardly an episode goes by where Louie doesn’t remind us that even the happiest life ends in the nothingness of death. Jokes about cancer, AIDS, and rapidly declining health abound. Even the show’s 1970s soul-like theme song ends with the lyrical phrase “you’re going to die.” Obviously, this kind of humor isn’t for everyone, but if black-as-sin comedy is your thing, Louie is deeply, darkly funny. Softening the blow somewhat is Louie’s relationship with his daughters, which is handled tenderly but without a hint of schmaltziness. When he tells us that he just wants to be a good dad, any gooey sentimentality is covered up by his next confession: that his second greatest ambition is to be “the world’s best masturbator.”

Louie: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Louie has a very distinct look for a sit-com. Shot using the Red One digital camera, the show has a more cinematic quality than most cable comedies, which jives with the Louie's storytelling—each episode, after all, is basically a short film. The show makes the transition to Blu-ray easily, with 1080p/AVC-encoded digital-to-digital transfers that look fantastic. The only real anomaly here is that in the pilot episode, there's aliasing galore—on clothing, brick walls, Louie's microphone when he does his stand-up routine, etc. I'll chalk this up to Louis C.K. and his production crew not being familiar with the new technology they were using, because in subsequent episodes the problem is almost entirely absent. (There are still a few spots where you'll notice a slight shimmer.) The combination of the Red One rig and good lenses makes for a formidable level of clarity, and the in-focus areas of the image are frequently tack-sharp. You'll usually be able to make out each whisker of Louie's ginger beard, and clothing textures in close-ups are finely resolved. Since the cinematography uses a lot of shallow depth of field, focus can sometimes slip, but this is inherent in any handheld production. Color can be somewhat pallid at times, with pinkish skin tones, but for the most part the picture is realistically toned, with deep black levels. In one of his commentary tracks, Louis C.K. promises a slightly different aesthetic for the second season, but I wouldn't change things too much. Louie looks great.

Louie: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are a few minor issues with the show's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound presentation, but nothing crippling. Since most of the dialogue seems to be recorded on location, there are instances when voices sound a bit muddy in the mix. This never gets to the point where it's unclear what's being said, but it's worth noting that the dialogue isn't always as clean as it could be. And while each episode technically comes with a 5.1 track, the rear channels hardly get any play at all. There's some extremely quiet ambience panned into the surrounds—room noise, basically—but that's about it. Otherwise, the audio presentation is solid, never spectacular but certainly serviceable. The disc includes optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles in easy to read lettering.

Louie: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentaries: Louis C.K. generously sits down for eleven commentary tracks that fans will certainly want to listen to. C.K. is his characteristically funny self, but what you wouldn't expect is how involved he is with the process of filmmaking. He basically shoots and edits the series himself, so his commentary tracks are often filled with production details and the usual smart-ass remarks.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (SD, 33:54): There are five extended deleted sequences here, each opening with an introduction by Louis C.K.. Louise also gives a general introduction to the special features and some closing remarks.
• Fox Movie Channel Presents: Louie - Writer's Draft (SD, 3:47): Louis talks about the format for the show and the influence of Woody Allen.

Louie: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Louie has elicited comparisons—favorable ones—to Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it's definitely its own comedic beast. C.K. has gone outside the sit-com mold to deliver a show that's funny, original, and strangely touching. If you're a comedy fan, you won't want to miss it. Recommended!