Louie is the best adaptation of stand-up comedy’s most brilliant performer’s routine to the television medium. That was true one year ago when we first were introduced to the series, and it remains that way as the new season starts up. Season two also allows any of Louis CK’s new fans – thanks to the show – to get a better feel for how the stand-up changes things on a near yearly basis. Louis is famous in the comedy world for being one of the few guys who does a whole new set of material each year. It’s not that he feels superior, I really don’t know the motive to push that hard for the man, but I do know that he’s got so much funny in him that the well may never run dry.
So how is the new season different than season one? It’s not. Because while we follow the life of the comic Louie on the series, each episode is its own piece. This allows Louis to formulate a story that lives in each moment, but doesn’t depend upon some grander master plan. Nobody was hoping to find out what happened between Louie and a girl after season one ended. Or if they’d find out who killed Rosie Larsen, which will obviously be tackled sometime in the next four seasons of The Killing, so we really shouldn’t bother Louie with the problem. There was no cliffhanger. There are only moments. They just happen to be poignant, thoughtful, hilarious, painful, sickening, and a few times all of those things at the same time.
Take the very first moments of season two where you watch a father lovingly, but with obvious tedium, brush his daughter’s teeth as she makes proclamations about how much better it is at her mother’s house. I won’t spoil any more of this little bit because I don’t feel anyone but Louis CK could pull it off with such hilarious sadness, but you can’t help but laugh loudly at how Louie reacts to his daughter as she runs off to bed.
If you watched season one, and loved it, then you’ll be getting more of the same show. But with a season already done, and a year to work on the series, you do get a sense from Louie that the show is finding itself much more. One glaring continuity error involving a green jacket aside – sorry, but it was so alarming I had to rewind and rewatch the scene to be sure I actually watched a jacket disappear – the show is even more fine tuned into Louis’ comedy style than before.
Louie is the everyman taking us through the banality of daily life and pointing out the shitty absurdities. From kids to death to body issues, the man is our tour guide. Sometimes cynical, always honest, Louis CK is the funniest and most entertaining stand-up comic of the last decade. Louie is that observational humor transposed onto vignettes with the stark realness left intact. A feat that is worthy of praise in itself, but you’ll be too busy laughing to really analyze the machinations of what Louis is doing. And that’s why Louie is a success, because you forget everything but the laughter in each of life's mundane moments.
The second season of Louie premieres Thursday, June 23rd at 10:30 PM ET on FX.
