Louis C.K. rebounds after less-than-Lucky first sitcom

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This article was published 17/11/2011 (5405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Crisis, what crisis? There’s no crisis of confidence for Louis C.K.

The veteran standup comedian, born Louis Szekely — C.K. is his stage name — appeared in one of the most controversial and short-lived sitcoms of his day, but he wasn’t about to walk away from TV just because of a show called Lucky Louie.

“That would be just giving up,” C.K. said. “And that would be sad.”

Few would have predicted that his followup comedy, Louie, in which C.K. plays a fictionalized version of himself, would become one of the ascendant cable channel FX’s most watched programs, however, or that Louie — and C.K. himself — would be nominated for several Emmys last summer. And in high-profile categories, too.

Louie follows a frustrated comedian, a newly divorced father with two daughters, as he navigates the turbulent waters of New York City’s dating scene as a middle-aged man.

Louie, which airs Mondays at 8:30 p.m. on Citytv, tells its weekly stories using a loose, stream-of-consciousness style, more in keeping with a standup comedy routine than a straight sitcom, with extended vignettes filling in for traditional scenes with beginnings, middles and ends. As with Seinfeld‘s early seasons, the vignettes are punctuated by occasional excerpts from C.K.’s live standup performances.

“Lucky Louie was a completely different experiment,” C.K. explains. “That was me trying to create a sitcom and stripping away everything sitcoms have added through the years that I thought made them less compelling and less connected to the audience. That was just totally different, but I learned a lot from it.”

C.K. — he chose that, he says, because it’s his Hungarian surname, Szekely, spelled phonetically — was determined to try another series, but to do it differently this time. Where Lucky Louie was taped before a live audience, Louie is a filmed comedy, in the tradition of Modern Family, Wilfred and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

“I was excited to try another one,” C.K. says — not one given to excitement, as a rule. His mien leans more toward deadpan.

“It’s a great creative outlet, having a show. I just wanted to try again. This one feels very different to me. It’s just a totally different world.”

In C.K.’s words, Louie is about “a divorced dad dating, horribly, at age 41. Forty-two, now.”

All comedy comes from pain, C.K. says.

“Pain? Well, you know, I’ve got two kids. I’m divorced, 42. I’m kind of heavy. I’m just a semi-interesting comedian. I’m not Brad Pitt or something. I don’t like waking up. I feel like staying in bed usually, but I can’t, because I’ve got two kids standing next to my bed, just eager to live another day. I’d like to coast. I’m sort of running out the clock. I’m not that excited anymore. So that’s where it comes from.

“As far as what’s out of bounds, I am divorced, but I don’t talk about my ex-wife on the show. She’s not represented in the show. Partly that’s out of respect for her, and partly because she’s no longer part of the deal.”

Divorce is not dealt with nearly enough in supposedly hip, urban, lifelike TV comedies, C.K. believes.

“Divorce is a story that’s lived by most people now, I think, and yet it’s still considered like death, this idea that everything is gone and shattered, and you might just as well die now.

“Well, that’s just not the case. There’s a huge life after divorce, and I’m living it. This show is pretty bleak in some ways, but it’s also optimistic, somewhere down there, way, deep down.”

— Postmedia News