By many accounts, comedian Louis C.K. is one of the brightest minds in comedy today, using self-deprecation as his porthole to waxing on about the world and lifestyle trends. But as C.K. has proven on occasion, his thought process can easily be fallible. For instance, the reason why Season 5 of his FX series Louie received a shortened episode order was the fault of his brain being swayed by the soothing clouds of marijuana.
As part of Louie’s recent For Your Consideration panel to promote its Emmy chances, Louis C.K. and other cast and crew members showed audiences a couple of episodes and talked about the show as a whole, and it was here that the comedian explained why Season 5 got only eight episodes instead of 13 or 14 like seasons past. According to HitFix, C.K. had originally wanted to delay the production for Season 5 until the fall in order to escape the harsh New York winters, but the day before FX head John Landgraf was going to go public with the news about the delay, the balding ginger comic got completely baked and churned out many pages of material for potential storylines. He was so impressed with his ideas, he got in touch with Landgraf and reneged on the delay, and even though Landgraf told him most of the show’s original allotted budget had gone to other projects, C.K. agreed to chop the season in half.
So, you might be asking, which of Season 5’s hilarious segments and stories came from that pot-addled writing session? Was it the diarrhea on the street scene, or the nightmare episode? Nope and nope. It turns out that once C.K. passed a sober eye on everything he had written, he didn’t think any of it worth putting into the series, so it was all discarded. Surprising, really, since ending the season on a discussion about fart jokes seems like a sequence that could only be born of booming bong rips.
C.K. also shared other anecdotes, such as why Season 4 featured extended storylines, and that season’s recurring guest star Ellen Burstyn was even in the audience. But nothing really topped that herb-based story.
Check out this scene from Season 1 in which C.K. gets blazed with Josh Hamilton.
All in all, I’m perfectly happy with everything that Louie did in Season 5, even if it means we lost out on a handful of episodes. Here’s hoping he decides to come back for Season 6, red-eyed or clear-eyed.
