Episode 1: Back

Hey, Louie’s back! Or was, anyway: the fourth season wrapped up last week. But seeing as I only just caught the premiere…hey, Louie’s back! After taking 2013 to kick up his heels for a bit, Louis C.K., who’s become pretty much the biggest thing in comedy over the last few years, has a new set of short films masquerading as TV to share with the world.

Like a lot of TV-loving people, Louie’s been a constant source of surprise and joy since it started airing, as much of its unique flavor is owed to C.K.’s complete control over just about every aspect of the show. This has allowed him to cover subject matter that’s controversial, personal, disgusting, insightful, or any combination therein, and do it all while playing with form in ways no other show can.

Season 4 opens with the show at its most oneiric, but considering David Lynch was part of a multi-episode arc last season, having Louie engage in a strange conversation with another comedian while everyone else in the café is texting on their phones really isn’t outside of the show’s version of reality. The opening bit about overly loud trash collectors was a great reintroduction to the show, mixing observational humor and ridiculous physical comedy with a nice reminder that the show is finally out of its long slumber.

“Back” plays up that sense of excitement that Louie has returned, as it’s something of a greatest hits showcase for some of the series’ previous highlights. Louie’s daughters are back for a couple of very endearing scenes that breakup the surrealism, and he ropes a bunch of his comedian friends back in for another poker game, which is really just an excuse to here funny people riff about masturbation and sex toys. That the rest of the episode can then take all the dirty talk and build it out into a anecdote around Louie getting older is just another example of the show’s ability to have seemingly stream-of-conscious ideas pulled together into a single story.

I’ve felt the tremors from a greater Internet divide in the Louie community as it has aired over the last couple months, so it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of Season 4 develops. I’ve been wondering for a while if peak C.K. had been reached, and if success would not so much go to his head, as it might blind viewers to when Louie does make a mistake. We’ll find out.  

Episode 2 "Model"/Episode 3 "So did the Fat Lady"

Yup, I think I’ve got a bit of an idea how this season of Louie could end up being divisive. FX’s decision to air the fourth season of the show in double installments probably caused plenty of problems for viewers watching live, as there appear to be more multi-part arcs this year. Watching episode 2 and 3 back-to-back, I was getting the back half of week one, and the first of week two, and they represent such a drastic difference in quality, I’m not sure I’d have taken the viewing well with a week in between.

“Model” is Louie devoting a whole episode to self-loathing navel gazing , something the show has dealt with plenty of times before. The setup is funny, as Jerry Seinfeld is present to play himself as a kind of anti-C.K.: rich, respected, and together, but something of a dick, which Seinfeld plays well. But there’s only so much of C.K. in “universal piñata” mode I can follow before it seems like a one-note gag, despite dressing it up with class implications. It’s a purely comedic episode in which the joke is how increasingly discomforting the situation becomes for Louie, but it doesn’t have the follow-through other C.K. shaggy dog stories have had.   

Now, try washing that out with “So Did the Fat Lady,” and you remember what C.K. can do when playing with uncomfortable truths instead of just awkwardness. Part of the contrast is that “So Did the Fat Lady” is an episode with happiness in it; even Louie’s self-loathing bang-bang ritual (in which he and his brother eat a meal at one restaurant, followed immediately by another meal somewhere else) has joy to it. The source is mainly Sarah Baker, who pursues a date with Louie with all the charm and warmth he himself lacks when he’s not onstage.   

The chemistry the two have together as they walk and talk around New York is meant to make Louie look like a yutz for putting her off for the first half of the episode, but there’s more to it than that. After a seemingly insignificant comment, Baker has an absolutely inspired monologue that dregs up all the unspoken subtext of their relationship up to this point, and it’d be painful to watch if it wasn’t so specifically, pointedly true. The episode then, in contrast to “Model”, finds a way back to joking about what Louie’s experienced in a why that makes the punchline feel earned, and I’m in love with the show again. Things could still get plenty bumpy through the rest of the season, but “So Did the Fat Lady” is already a frontrunner for its highpoint.