Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Disappointingly Redundant Louie

I finished watching the first season of Lucky Louie this week, and to say the least I'm quite disappointed. It's not really awful but, oh, I don't know, it's so complicated. Louis CK is great, he's one of the greatest comedians I've ever seen. He's not much of an actor but neither is Jerry Seinfeld or Larry David or Mitch Hedberg, comedy is not necessarily about acting. So that aside, I'm still disappointed. It's like when you really love a band and know the tunes they put on that EP that probably sold about 20 copies and then they put out a full length (you know, something that will actually sell) and they put the same fucking songs on it. And you wonder, why did you do that? I thought we were moving on, you've recorded this before. that's what watching the only season of Lucky Louie is like if you've seen all of his stand-up repeatedly. I haven't seen his new stand-up special, I'm sure it will be great, but Lucky Louie is nothing more than a complete season of acting out his old, old comedy routines. Which is good, at times, like when he is explaining his nightmares about Hell in the confessional to the father. Priceless. But that only really takes you so far before you say, wait a second the premise of every episode is that he's left in charge of his daughter, he fucks it up, his wife gets mad, they make up, everyone is a better person, until next episode when it all begins again. The show is fine, its humourous, but it isn't original, its a little redundant, it lacks the creative spin on traditional topics like marriage and kids that Louis CK made his name on. Worth a viewing, if nothing else, so that you know why HBO pulled the plug on a show that had great potential and just had not come into it's own yet.

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