Courtesy of The New York Comedy Festival and Blake McElrath
First, it's time for another losing Thursday night football pick! I'm grabbing Jacksonville +12.5 points in Atlanta for the simple reason that the 2011 Falcons shouldn't be favored by that many points over anyone except the Rams and the Indianapolis Orlovskys.
OK, so last night was a big for the BS Report studio: the great Louis C.K. stopped by for a lively chat about his new comedy special ("Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater"), his superb FX comedy Louie, the story behind the famous Dane Cook episode, the ups and downs of his standup career, his creative process, and topics like "Why does Hollywood try to meddle so much with creative people?", "Can Chris Rock become a serious actor some day?" and "Is it OK to want to beat up kids in your daughter's school without actually beating them up?" Somehow we babbled on for two parts without ever mentioning Boston (he grew up there), the Celtics (he loves them) or boxing (his favorite sport). Maybe next time.
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling put-upon and impotent this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
Predicament: The season finale of Curb’s New York adventure has everything you’d want: pre-gay seven-year-olds, Mayor Bloomberg, Nazi iconography, narrative symmetry, and the highest concentration of Parkinson’s disease jokes per minute in sitcom history, presumably.
Too bad that the amazingly sassy, kid who played Ana Gasteyer’s Project Runway-loving, swastika-appreciating son Greg had the misfortune of appearing in the same episode where Michael J. Fox got to play himself as (maybe?) a diabolical bastard who uses his debilitating illness to completely fuck with Larry David, otherwise that’s all people would be talking about. Instead, Fox, perhaps ticked at being shushed by Larry at a piano bar, has a field day playing with his own saintly image, and ultimately uses his vast influence to get Larry kicked out of New York for miming a violin during Fox’s benefit speech. Although Larry doesn’t actually leave until he’s once again asked to appear at a charity event for ill children — then he and Leon are off to harass pig-parkers in Paris.
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling put-upon and impotent this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Walter White, Breaking Bad
Predicament: The main objective of “Hermanos” is to establish Gustavo Fring’s origin story and the source of his conflict with the cartel and the now-silent Tio Hector, just as Hank seems to be backing the stoic chicken man into a corner. But that increased scrutiny — combined with Walt’s unwitting participation in Hank’s case and Jesse’s apparent shift in loyalty towards the man he’s supposed to be poisoning with ricin — causes Walt to feel strangely simpatico with the man he’s been trying to murder all season. (You know, in self-defense.) He knows this looks bad and wants Gus to understand he wants no part of the tracking-device scheme Hank is counting on to counter Gus’ ice-cold, largely redemptive questioning.
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling put-upon and impotent this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Walter White, Breaking Bad
Predicament: Perhaps galvanized by making clear to Skyler where he resides on the guy-who-knocks-or-doesn’t-knock continuum last week, he both disregards her instructions about returning Walt Jr.’s new Challenger to the dealership by instead blowing it up (rather than walking away from the explosion, he sits and watches it while calling for a cab) and revels in her discomfort over the sheer amounts of cash she’s being tasked with laundering, as well as her realization that a car wash is insufficient as a cover. He also provides a vial of ricin for Jesse to slip his new pal Gus.
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling put-upon this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Walter White, Breaking Bad (Last Week: 1)
Predicament: Here comes the hangover: The morning after drinking too much red wine and telling too many DEA agents that the dead meth chemist they’re investigating is a mere pretender and the real Heisenberg is still out there, wink wink, Walt wakes up with a giant headache. Make that two — Skyler is understandably concerned that someone may knock on their door one night and shoot Walt in the face. His response is chilling. Not only is he too indispensable to his employers’ concerns to be in danger, he’s actually the one who will knock on someone’s door. Skyler gets the message loud and clear: Her passive high-school chemistry teacher husband is no passive middle-manager; he’s a stone-cold killer, and if she has any illusions that they’re going to get out of this thing clean, she is mistaken. She takes Holly and drives to Four Corners, and even after two coin flips tell her to keep driving to Colorado, she can’t do it.
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling put-upon and impotent this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Louis C.K., Louie
Predicament: Double the Louie episodes (seriously, what’s your hurry, FX?) means double the opportunity for angst. In the first, Louie appears on Red Eye (!) to vigorously defend the art of self-doin’ it against a prim, virtuous Ellen of Citizens Against Masturbation on behalf of everyone who’s ever lived, save for her. She appeals to his loneliness and desperation and dares him to come to one of her meetings, but not before he fantasizes about shoving an entire bag of dicks into an attractive elevator passenger suffering from a crippling case of no-dicks-up-in-here. Louie shows up at the end of a CAM meeting, then goes out for a drink with Ellen, then ends up back at her hotel suite with her cozied up next to him in a silk robe. He tries to kiss her, with predictably doomed results, and she proceeds to talk him through how amazing sex could be if they fell in love slowly and then got married. He, of course, uses this as inspiration in the hotel bathroom, which proves to be much sexier material than NPR reports about African genocide.
Last week’s episode of Louie opened with a quasi simulation of his failed HBO show Lucky Louie, punctuated by Louis C.K. wearing a backward baseball cap and destroying the concept (and his hypothetical career) by questioning the realism of what they were doing. For maybe 90 seconds I found myself thinking, “Goddammit, here we go. This is it. This is going to be the first bad episode of Louie, because he’s going to obsess over something that’s essential only to him and not especially new and not even accurate (because the show he seemed to be satirizing wasn’t how Lucky Louie actually was).”
And then — of course — the episode changed. It didn’t just become unbad; it became incredible. The more I think about it, the more I suspect the interaction with Dane Cook might be the strongest seven-minute stretch I’ve ever seen on television: It’s realer than any reality show, more emotionally complicated than most 300-page memoirs, yet still awkward and severe and (somehow) easy to watch. I want to know everything about this scene — I want to know if this conversation truly happened, I want to know Cook’s views on his involvement, and I want to know C.K.’s deeper intent. And I can tell I’m not the only one who feels this way. What’s so distinctly compelling about this season of Louie is how everyone seems to collectively realize that what C.K. is doing is not only cool, but also authentically artful and unnaturally profound. There’s no debate over its value because there’s no contradictory position to take. It’s not polarizing in any important way: If you’re watching this show, you intuitively know it's fantastic (and substantially unlike the way fantastic TV typically is).
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling put-upon and impotent this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
Predicament: Big drama for the Greenes as their beloved German shepherd, Oscar, has to be put down just before they move to New York for three months. Larry and Jeff are suffering from low blood sugar, so they wind up eating Oscar’s last supper of Pinkberry — a perfect crime they would have gotten away with if it weren’t for that meddling Vance, currently observing a vow of silence as recommended by his spiritual adviser, shattering said vow by ratting them out after Larry left a nasty note on his windshield lambasting his double-parking habits.
Meanwhile, Larry declines TV director Tessler’s invitation to come volunteer at a one-day camp for disabled kids by claiming he’s going to New York to work on a show with Seinfeld. As the camp’s date changes, so, amazingly, do Larry’s travel plans, but not his insistence on avoiding it — or Tessler’s persistence in asking, going so far as to call Larry’s bluff by offering him a three-month sublet in Manhattan. So, for anyone wondering what the narrative conceit that would send Season 8 of Curb Your Enthusiasm to New York would be, there you go: It’s to follow-through on an elaborate lie devised to avoid helping the helpless.
The stars of AMC shows that aren't Walking Dead are getting their piece of the zombie action: Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is negotiating to join the already cast Mireille Enos (The Killing) and James Badge Dale (Rubicon) in Marc Forster's World War Z, the Brad Pitt-starring adaptation of Max Brooks' zombie-apocalypse novel. Not much is known yet about the role Cranston would play, except that it's "small but flashy." Translation: He will play zombie food. Grade: A [HR]
As if Batman didn't already have enough loathsome villains to deal with in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers shot a scene for the movie on Saturday. Grade: C [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling powerless and put-upon this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Louis C.K. (Last week: 3)
Predicament: Following a bravura, wordless, six-minute intro, in which Louie walks out of the Comedy Cellar after his set amid applause, and into the subway where a tuxedo-clad violinist is juxtaposed with a vagrant bathing himself, Louie’s conflict this week is a relatively sweet and simple one. He’s madly in love with Pamela, who can’t bring herself to feel the same. He is able to make her laugh, twice, which is apparently no small feat, and he finally lets it all hang out during a stroll through the Chelsea flea market. Pamela may be less surprised by this confessional outburst than the audience; while it’s been clear that the two have chemistry, the extent to which Louie’s got it in for her hasn’t really been hinted at previously. And when she turns him down, his perpetual hangdog expression feels fully earned.
In fact, he’s so heavily in mope-mode that Pamela’s offer to take a bath together blows right past him, and he doesn’t realize the mistake he’s just made until he’s already trudged out of her apartment.
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling powerless and put-upon this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Louis CK (Last week: 1)
Predicament: When Louie has Jane and Lily, he tends to want to teach them some valuable lesson, and this time it’s in the form of a road trip. They’re driving to Pennsylvania to see his great aunt Ellen, who lives alone at age 97. He wants the girls to hear firsthand what life was like in a different age, before television, before cars, while there’s still the opportunity, which, of course triggers some brief mortality anxiety. Lily keeps chanting that she’s “Bored, bored, bored, bored,” and Louie’s incredulous — their brains have barely begun to develop, it’s a miracle they’re even alive, they haven’t earned the right to be bored. He does his part to keep things interesting by blasting and singing along to pretty much the entirety of “Who Are You?” — hey, if you’re gonna bust the budget clearing a music license, you might as well get your money’s worth. (Think the final omelet-making scene in Big Night: Once you realize you’re seeing the whole thing, the pace is weirdly engrossing and, in this case, hilarious, if only to see Louie experiencing the closest thing we’ll see to unbridled joy.)
How are television’s favorite angry white males of a certain age feeling powerless and put-upon this week? Let us count the ways.
3. Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
Predicament: A week after learning that he will likely lose his house in the divorce, Larry isn’t really a victim in the second episode of season eight, although he does enjoy being surrounded by victims. After finding out that the hysterical Chubby Hubby-blocking woman in the grocery store and the woman who lets her dog do its business all over Larry’s front lawn are both residents in a posh safe house for battered women in his neighborhood, Larry accepts an invitation to deliver a pep talk to the gals. When their washing machines break down, he offers his own. Furthermore, he hones his amateur dermatologist skills by noticing a mole on the breast of Richard Lewis’ burlesque-dancer girlfriend. He’s also responsible, somehow, for her decision to get a breast reduction, and for Curtis “Booger” Armstrong losing his laptop and for an innocent good Samaritan being arrested for domestic violence.
