The Truth Smarts

“I’m single. Not really single, just alone.” –Louis C.K.

Truer words have never been spoken. That shouldn’t be surprising. Since 2010, over the course of 2.5 seasons, Louis C.K. has molded the most honest thing on television. In a medium filled with laugh tracks and Jim Parsons’ Emmys, Louis C.K. truly is alone.

If you don’t know “The Louie Deal” by now, I’ll boil it down for you. FX gives Louis C.K. a bunch of money. He writes, casts, shoots, stars in, directs and edits 13 30-minute episodes of Louie and gives them back to the network. They are then aired weekly each summer. Until this year, nearly all of the work was done by the star himself…on a MacBook.

It’s the most unique deal in television (maybe in history) and results in a show that is almost entirely one man’s vision. More so than Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad. More so than Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men. More so than Tyler Perry’s Stuff That Black People Laugh At (that’s a show right?). So it’s a good thing that man is a bona fide comedic genius.

For more than two decades Louis has traveled the country performing a brand of comedy that can only be described as “his own.” He may have the most aptly named HBO specials in history because his act is equal parts Shameless and Hilarious, even though he would despise me using the latter word.

His television deal alone is enough to make him a comedy icon and legend for years to come, but instead of stopping there, he went ahead and made a choice that is literally revolutionizing the stand-up industry. Last December, Louis released his fourth full-length special, Live at the Beacon Theater, and made it available exclusively on his website.

Consumers willing to make a $5 digital payment directly to Louis himself were able to download the special straight to their computers, no middle men involved. He politely asked his fans not to download the special illegally. When all was said and done, he had made over $1.1 million, more than quadrupling production costs, and more than 220,000 people had received the special for an extremely low price. Since then, Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari have released specials the same way, with great success.

“’I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. And even the inside of your own mind is endless. It goes on forever inwardly. Do you understand? Being the fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to be bored.”

That quote comes from a scene in Season 2 where Louie and his two daughters are taking a car ride to see Louie’s great aunt. It’s one of many times over the past three years that have made me wonder if Louis simply records every interaction he has with his real daughters and re-shoots the interesting ones word-for-word with the two brilliant actresses Hadley Delany and Ursula Parker.

These moments make it seem as if you’re watching a sweeter yet strangely more twisted version of Big Brother. There are too many of them to list, and I don’t know how true to reality any of them actually are, but the fact that Louis is able to make them feel so genuine is a testament to his directing skills.

One of these instances will always stick out in my mind. In the Season 2 episode “Oh Louie/Tickets,” Louie is forced into asking mega-comedian Dane Cook to cop him some Lady Gaga tickets for his oldest daughter. For years there has been a real-life tension, perpetuated more by fans than by the comedians themselves, that Cook stole parts of Louis’ act. The episode’s candid interaction between the two is so mesmerizing, so real, and yet nothing is resolved. Each funnyman says his piece, Cook agrees to get the tickets and they move on.

The scene is so convincing that even after scouring the internet I still have no definitive idea of what parts were real and what lines were simply amazing writing.

“It doesn’t have any effect on your life. Why the fuck do you care? People try to talk about it like it’s a social issue. ‘How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?’ I don’t know. It’s your shitty kid. You fuckin’ tell em. Why is that anyone else’s problem? Two guys are in love but they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for fuckin’ five minutes?”

Maybe you believe in gay marriage, maybe you don’t. Regardless, you have to admit that no matter how simplistic and profanity-laced that statement is, there’s a valid point in there.

That’s the beauty of Louis' greatest jokes. They really aren’t even jokes. He simplifies some of the most controversial topics that exist today and forces the audience to inspect themselves in regard to those issues. The divine humor lies in the fact that these issues, which thousands of people spend thousands of hours lobbying for or against, can be summed up so damn easily. In the above joke, he expresses practically all that needs to be expressed by the pro-gay marriage camp in less than 90 words.

Analyze those nine sentences. There is no set-up, no punchline, yet I’m sure it incites a roar of laughter every time he tells it.

There are different methods of attack any comedian can use to make his audience laugh. Along with the more traditional humor, Louis is a master at using uneasiness, guilt and embarrassment with ourselves as a society. I’m sure a majority of his audience members let those feelings leave their brain as fast as they arrived and continue on with their lives, but when I hear Louis tell jokes they resonate for days (and hopefully influence my entire life). I don’t think I’m the only one.

“That’s what optimistic means, you know? It means stupid. An optimist is somebody who goes, ‘Hey, maybe something nice will happen.’ Why the fuck would anything nice ever happen?”

On its surface, Louie is defeatist. Louie continually reaffirms his stance that nothing good is ever going to happen to him or anyone else. Anything beautiful that does happen (the subway platform violinist from Season 2, Parker Posey’s rooftop speech from the most recent episode, etc.) quickly dissipates when the world rears its ugly head.

But doesn’t that make the show all the more optimistic? Louie doing his absolute damnedest to raise two young girls the right way no matter how shitty the world is around them? Maybe there’s a better word for that than optimistic, but that’s what it seems like to me. No matter what he claims, there’s always that glimmer of hope that he’s doing one thing correctly.

And ultimately I think Louis C.K. is optimistic. What else could possibly cause a man to trust his fans enough to pour a quarter of a million dollars into a project that could have been widely pirated and resulted in epic failure? What could convince a man to tolerate failure of the worst kind on his first television show (HBO’s Lucky Louie) and encourage him to plod on until he earned himself the right to make something he truly believes in?

“I have a lot of beliefs…and I live by none of them. That’s just the way I am. They’re just my beliefs. I just like BELIEVING them. I like that part.”

Louis would be the first one to tell you that he doesn’t actually do anything. He writes dirty jokes and gets paid obscene amounts of money to read them. But that’s not true is it? I’m not sure if it’s modesty or just a specific lack of awareness, but claiming that his work is unimportant is the one dishonest thing I’ve ever seen him do.

All comedians do a great service just by making people laugh. Louis goes a step further, also making his audience think critically about the world around them. But there is a very fine line between being observational and being preachy. Even the greats, such as George Carlin, had moments when their politics overpowered their act.

It never goes that far with Louis C.K, because above all things he knows not to take himself too seriously, something that very few of us ever learn.

“You don’t have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to.”

The Baddest Show on TV

I have never seen Avatar. I consider myself a movie buff regarding the time period from at least the mid-1950’s until now, and I have never seen Avatar. Or Alien. Or the two Matrix sequels. Or a single Lord of the Rings or Star Wars film. It isn’t that I in any way doubt the quality or entertainment value of any of those movies, and it’s not that I simply hate science fiction. It’s just that when it comes to movies and television I enjoy watching realistic people (usually men to be honest) making real decisions in a world largely based in reality. Call it personal preference. It’s mentally stimulating for me to put myself in a character’s position, having to make the same decision he has to make and imaging how I would handle it.

Which is why, to me, Breaking Bad is the absolute best show on TV, and it’s hard to put into words how excited I am for the Season 5 Premiere on Sunday. Let me try.

I realize my definition of the word “real” may be a touch different than Webster’s. It’s unlikely that a genius-chemist-turned-high-school-teacher has ever been confronted with the decisions that Walter White handles on a weekly basis, much less converted himself into a methamphetamine manufacturer in the first place.

But that’s the beauty of Breaking Bad. As Grantland’s Andy Greenwald so perfectly put it, the show “at times seems less like a TV drama and more like a terrifying chain reaction.” It started with a situation that thousands upon thousands of people have dealt with and, according to the statistics, one out of every four of us will encounter in some form; staring cancer in the face and wondering how your family will survive without you. Who will provide for them? What can I do now that will help them when I’m gone?

The decision Walt makes leads to dozens upon dozens of new decisions that are progressively less likely for any one of us to ever be confronted with, but, as they say, “shit flows downhill.” The consequences of his actions become more dramatic, more grisly and exponentially more shocking. It’s a reminder that you can make one decision, no matter how good your intentions, and before you know it you’re dumping poison into a Mexican drug lord’s burrito while his mute, wheelchair-relegated uncle warns him by incessantly ringing his communication bell. We’ve all been there.

The narrative of the show turned a very normal man’s life into a shocking but not unbelievable series of twists and turns.

Over its first four seasons, Breaking Bad has earned a handful (plus a finger) of legitimate “Holy Shit!”s from me. Mind you, this is coming from someone who didn’t flinch when we found out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, didn’t bat an eyelash when we discovered there was a Brian Moser and cried with joy when it was finally revealed that “I am Tyler Durden.” (If I spoiled anything for you just now you might want to check out the weather outside of that cave you’ve been living in.)

Scenes from six separate episodes, “…And the Bag’s in the River” (Season 1, Episode 3), “Crazy Handful of Nothin” (S1E6), “Phoenix” (S2E12), “Half Measures” (S3E12), “Box Cutter” (S4E1) and “Face Off” (S4E13), had me picking my jaw off the floor. No other show has ever done that.

One sign of a great show is when you’re re-watching seasons with someone who has never seen them before and you get excited to see their reaction to what’s coming up. I was giddy like a schoolgirl watching Seasons 1 and 2 over with my roommate; in part to see those amazing moments for a second time, but mostly because one more person in the world was about to become infatuated with the show just as much as I was, largely due to those shock-and-awe moments.

On top of the style and shock, Breaking Bad is the only show on TV that can rival Mad Men’s cast of characters. Every member of the show is a deplorable human being in one way or another. Jesse Pinkman is an on-and-off meth dealer. Saul Goodman is so crooked he makes Maurice Levy look like Clarence Darrow. Gus Fringe is the epitome of evil. Skyler White is….well she’s just a bitch. But somehow they’re all likeable in some way that makes you root for them at times. The most unlikeable characters on the show are the mostly innocent and essentially good Hank and Marie Schrader. It’s a conundrum that can easily make you question your own set of morals.

Do I side with the guy whose intentions were initially good but is now a psychologically conniving monster? If not, then who do I root for? How do I feel about this? When a television show causes you to pose such questions to yourself, it’s doing something right.

All this being said, do NOT watch Sunday’s premiere unless you have seen every one of the first 46 episodes. Instead, find a way to see each season, in order, quickly. I have the first three on DVD if you want to borrow them.

Breaking Bad is unique in the realm of premium television shows in that it follows one, mostly linear path through its entire existence. If it were a plant it would be a species of ivy. Storylines branch off in slightly different directions but always end up winding back around each other in a tightly clumped knot.

I have no idea what showrunner Vince Gilligan had in mind when the show kicked off in 2008, but when you revisit the first two seasons there seems to have been a very distinct plan in place from the beginning. The development is slow in many places. Knowing what we know now makes it seem all the more genius. Some shows, like Sports Night, Arrested Development or Freaks and Geeks, were cancelled early but are still considered great just from the body of work they were able to produce. If Breaking Bad had been cancelled at any point along the way it would have been forgotten for all time; an incomplete story.

Thank God it didn’t come to that. Instead we have two more eight-episode seasons to complete the darkest part of Walt’s life and see how many more people will die in what started as a “No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal.”

Mad Men may have four straight Emmys and Roger Sterling-esque money shots from every television critic in existence all over its box sets, but it also may have reached the point of being too beautiful. It’s disgustingly romantic, dripping in symbolism and utterly fantastic. But we mustn’t forget the root goal of television; to entertain. Nothing against Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce Holloway, but sometimes the dream sequences, whiskey-soaked diatribes and metaphor-laden partners’ meetings need to give way to some good old fashioned heroine overdoses and face explosions.

One more thing, then I gotta go get ready for this premiere. If you follow this blog you’ve surely noticed that I’m borderline obsessed with the work they do over at Grantland.com. One year and three days ago Chuck Klosterman (who is a much better writer than I) published a piece over there ostensibly arguing the same thing I just did (in a much better fashion). I highly recommend reading it.