Preface:
Very seriously, if you don't like spoilers, don't read any of this
blog post, which contains MAJOR SPOILERS for events old and new on
all three sitcoms it discusses: Louie, Grandma's House,
and Peep Show. The kind of spoilers that dwell on the profound
televisual pleasure of the skillful revelation of surprises, ruining
them for you in the process. So do not read on unless you've already
seen these shows and want to compare reactions, or you like to read blog
posts about TV shows you'll never watch, or on an impulse that you'll
regret immediately after, cringing at each MAJOR SPOILER that erupts
in your face.
For
two comedians so drastically different, Louis C. K. and Simon Amstell
have a remarkable amount in common. They both star in artistically
ambitious, autobiographical sitcoms of the “comedy of
humiliation/discomfort” sub-genre, playing less successful versions
of themselves who are awkward, vulnerable, and have a difficult time
finding love and getting laid. Both men have Jewish ancestry on the
paternal side; C. K.'s parents divorced when he was ten, Amstell's
when he wasn't much older; both shows are haunted by paternal
absence. The strong autobiographical element in their comedy goes
along with a broader concern with truth telling: Amstell became a
minor celebrity in the UK by mocking celebrities, first as a
presenter on Pop World,
then as the host of the pop music-oriented quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, while (to judge
by the bits featured on the show) C. K. prides himself in his
stand-up comedy on telling uncomfortable truths which often have to
do with sex.
But
that's where the similarities end. C. K. is an out-of-shape man in
his early 40s who's obsessed with the idea that he's decrepit;
Amstell is a wisp of a waif in his early 30s who's as fat-phobic as
C. K. is food-addicted and who frequently remarks on the youthfulness
of his own appearance. When in Season 3 of Louie,
Louie confronts the idea of failure, it's as a middle-aged man whose
aim, given his career in show business, has always been to become a
stupendous success, and who has started to realize that it may not
happen, and soon his best years will be behind him and he will have
no more opportunities. When in Series 2 of Grandma's House,
Simon grows more desperate after giving up his TV host job, it's as a
once-precocious success who thinks his best years may already be
irretrievably behind him even as he watches his peers, such as the
oft-mentioned Russell Brand, take their careers to “the next
level.” It's important to the comedy of both men that we believe
they're too prickly, insular, hapless, and, of course, honest
for mass popularity; but in truth there's no inevitability to these
things. Before Forgetting Sarah Marshall,
only five years ago, it might have seemed that Russell Brand was too
edgy and outspoken to make it in America; and (being Russell Brand's
age) I'm old enough to remember when David Letterman, then in his
mid-40s, was being considered as Johnny Carson's replacement, and
everyone thought he was too edgy – in his case, acerbic and
facetious – for the position. Edginess and awkwardness may reduce
your chances of success in entertainment, but they doesn't preclude
the possibility.
One
of the most obvious differences between the two men is that C. K. is
heterosexual and Amstell homosexual, which in their case affects not
just their sexual preferences but their stance towards masculinity.
C. K. struggles with what it means to “be a man”: fear of
fighting and whether that compromises his masculinity; shame over his
“disgusting” fantasies about women; a mixture of shame and
defiant pride over his masturbation addiction; nervous mockery and
jittery tolerance of male homosexuality, accompanied by
homophobic/homoerotic fantasies (e.g., the denouement of the dentist
episode). Amstell, on the other hand, seems as far from wanting to
approximate traditional masculinity as he's incapable of doing so,
with his adolescent appearance and voice; in Grandma's
House the only function that
traditional masculinity serves is to be mocked as absurd in the form
of Simon's mother's boyfriend, Clive, an erratic alcoholic who calls
Simon “Captain” and whose blustery attempts to engage in male
bonding with his amused and horrified pseudo-stepson tend to evoke
pity and fear.
The
Trouble with Truth Telling
An
unfortunate aspect of Amstell's truth-telling persona is his
nastiness towards those he deems deserving, whether celebrities or
relatives; although in Grandma's House
this is tempered by self-deprecation, on the one hand, and
intermittent compassion towards most of the other main characters,
Clive included. An unfortunate aspect of C. K.'s truth-telling is
that he seems to think that he's speaking for “men” and hides
behind this idea when he tells us unsavoury truths about himself,
such as about his sexual thoughts and habits. The same can't be said
of Amstell: when in his stand-up show, Do Nothing,
he tells us about his attraction to young men who are thin and
vulnerable, like himself, he's not talking about anyone else's
foibles but his own, and one is astonished, as throughout the show,
equally at his confessional bravery and his infinite narcissism.
This
willingness to speak on behalf of “men” is no doubt a large part
of the reason that C. K. has been embraced as philosopher-comedian,
appealing to the same middle-aged white male demographic, confused
and disoriented in a world that is no longer theirs even though it
still pretty much is, for whom Walter White is a badass. C. K.'s
weird, prematurely-curmudgeonly, anti-modern world stance must also
have something to do with it, as well as his absolute confidence in the familiar fallacy that
if he thinks something, and it's unpleasant, it must be true. The
nadir of this attitude is on display in an early episode in which he
asserts that lesbianism is wrong “not ethically, but
geometrically,” a repetition of the stale sexist idea that “it
can't be sex if there's no penis involved,” and therefore
lesbianism is neither harmful nor serious. Those silly girls can do
what they want to because nothing real
can happen until men are involved; and if you find that offensive, it
must mean it's true,
and not a culturally dominant prejudice that denies the truth of
another person's experience.
A
World Populated by Psychopaths
In a way, Louie
has more interesting things to say about 21st
century masculinity than more progressive sitcoms like Grandma's
House or Jonathan Ames's on
Bored to Death, which
is a kind of post-masculinity buddy-comedy. Louie doesn't get the
kind of firm, clear exemption from masculinity of an Amstell or Jason
Schwartzman, baby-faced men whose adolescence has wondrously survived
into their early 30s. He's a farting-and-masturbating “regular guy”
who's nevertheless as neurotic and anxious as Woody Allen (although
by Season 3 he's become almost as inarticulate as Jerry Lewis); whose
“ordinary” appearance is brutally criticized throughout the
series, mostly by men; and whose pathological relationship with food would appall Bridget Jones.
A
more troubling aspect of C. K.'s comedic persona on Louie
is the fact that he is almost always presented as a sane man
surrounded by psychopaths, albeit a sane man with a binge-eating
disorder and, quite possibly, clinical depression. That would be
enough to make you a freak on most shows, but it's nothing compared
to the eccentric, hysterical women he encounters in personal
situations (dates, sisters, mother) and the strange men who put him
and others in dangerous situations. Louie the character and Louis the
writer rarely make any attempt to find out what is making these
people act in the strange ways they do: why the woman who approached
him for sex after the PTA wants him to buy her blueberries and spank
her in bed and why the spanking makes her break down in sobs of
despair; why the bus driver doesn't know where the field trip is, how
to get there, or the regulations about taking buses on highways. Once
these people have confirmed for Louie, once again, that the world is
an insane and scary place, nothing more is needed from them.
Sometimes the dynamic flips, in the episodes where Louie goes into a
panic that turns out to be unjustified; then he is blindly
hysterical, with the difference that we know the cause, and it's a
good one. This does happen with another character in the show, once:
the teenage bully who threatens to kick the shit out of Louie in
front of his date, whom he then stalks to his house, where he
confronts the boy's father and discovers that both of his parents are
physically and verbally abusive. This of course ends up feeling a
little like an after-school special, but if C. K. is so drawn to
unhappy eccentrics and extreme situations, he might try a little more
often, Cassavetes-style, to help us understand these characters and
feel something for them. One of my favourite episodes is the one
where a fellow comic that Louie's known for years, but not very well,
chooses him as the person he's going to say goodbye to before
committing suicide because his life is empty, facing the viewer with
the question of whether this is always a stupid decision, sometimes a
sensible one, or simply a personal one.
While
I watched the first two seasons of Louie with half-interest and
occasional detached admiration, for me Season 3 is the big pay-off,
where Louie and the show together try to push beyond their
boundaries. Season 3 contains not one but two inspirational
plotlines, although they're only “inspirational” within the
context of the show's dark universe. First, Louie finds a new woman
to obsess over in the form of Parker Posey's bookstore clerk, who
agrees to go on a date with him, during which she reveals herself to
be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, pushing him to try things and do things
he wouldn't normally do, to make the effort to enjoy life while you
can. And then the season settles into its major arc: Louie's attempt
to “get in training” for taking over Letterman's job on The
Late Show. Fighting his own
terror of failure, which manifests itself as a horror of effort, and
his settled, comfortable conviction that he's a niche comic who can't
entertain the mass audience, he pulls it together in order to be a
role model for his little girls and show them that if you want
something, you have to try. The more layers of cynicism and
self-doubt that Louie strips away, the more vulnerable he becomes,
and as he allows himself to want the job and believe in himself it's
hard not to root for the underdog. He isn't allowed to get what he
wants, or it wouldn't be Louie,
but his triumph is that he thought he could, and knows he could have.
And
then in the final episode, Parker Posey briefly reappears and we
learn the reason for her sudden melancholy at the end of the date
episode, while she was sitting, exhilarated, on the edge of a high
rise roof; and that she was not a Manic Pixie Dream (or Nightmare)
Girl after all, but Milly Theale. Like the Letterman opportunity,
she, too, taught Louie to be a little less afraid of life; and she's
denied to him even more brutally. In Season 3 of Louie,
the world is perhaps even more insane and scary than ever, but Louie
has somehow found the inner resources, and outer motivation, to take
some risks, and C. K. shows the real difficulties and rewards of
opening yourself up to possibility despite fear and pain.
Do Not Go Gently Into the Post-Masculine Era
Something
similar happened to the protagonist of Peep Show,
Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell), in the initial Series 7 of Peep
Show, Jesse Armstrong and Sam
Bain's point-of-view-cam sitcom, with voice-over access to the
thoughts of Mark and deuteragonist Jeremy (Robert Webb), a couple of
hopeless losers, Mark an anti-charismatic nerd and Jeremy a vaguely
charismatic, irresponsible, unemployable mooch. Before I saw Louie,
I thought Peep Show
was the darkest sitcom I'd ever seen, with the most excruciatingly
humiliating and generally horrifying situations. The first four
seasons focus on Mark's seemingly hopeless obsession with his
co-worker, Sophie, first leading the viewer to sympathize with and
root for Mark despite his frequent ineptitude, then making us
realize, with delicious dawning horror, that Mark is incapable of a
functioning romantic relationship, never really wanted Sophie in the
first place, and has fucked up her life by winning her over.
Armstrong
and Bain then take us through the revelation of Mark's true, but
involuntary, awfulness and manage to bring us around almost to
sympathizing with him again as he keeps fucking up on Sophie and
adding to her hatred of him. When Mark gets a crush on a new
co-worker, a cute, funny nerd girl, we're relieved that it seems as
though something is finally going to go right for him, and at the end
of Series 7 it looked like he might be ready and able to take baby
steps towards “growing up” by kicking Jez out and moving in with
a completely awesome woman.
If
Peep Show had ended
with Series 4, it would have been a masterpiece. Series 7 doesn't add
much to the proceedings, instead drawing out the question of whether
Mark's “growth” will prove illusory and Dobby will turn out to be
Sophie II, which no longer has the ability to surprise, or whether
this time he won't screw it up, in which case Mark and Jeremy split
up and the show has to end. Peep Show
has gone into a soap-opera holding pattern and could go on this way
for years with ever-diminishing returns. Grandma's House,
on the other hand, is over too soon after only two series: proving
true to his perfectionist and somewhat antagonist stance, Amstell has said that he likes to end things once they're good and while they're
still liked. As for Louie – isn't he, too, going to have to get the
girl and start getting his life together (if they're not equated) at
some point, and won't that be the end of the show? Mark's emotional
trajectory with Sophie makes perfect sense for Louie as well, but I'm
not sure if C. K. hates him enough to tarnish the beauty of his
wistful, delusional feelings for women he can't have. Louie's
self-loathing is always on the border of self-pity, which is a frequent difference between British and American dark comedy, and which is
something else that Louie has in common with Walter White. Rage, rage
against the dying of the light, ageing white dudes. Or whimper, whichever.
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