Louie above all else is a man trying to get his shit together. He’d probably now adore being reclusive not for the sake of himself, but more nobly out of the sake for his daughters. And it is this juxtaposition between quote -post 70s New York rot and ostentatious sexuality and grotesque sense of status made dominant by the culture that Louie examines.

The culture is what mr. Ck must participate in if he is to be assimilated and have his children raised behaviorally appropriately. This includes dealing with other New Yorker parents and the megalopolitan incubation they swim in. Like Noah stranded at sea, Louie throws up a facepalm in the ridiculousness he knowingly participates and observes in. He holds on to that rock because everything else has been eroded.

Thus how can we despise such a man? Is it his fault the chaos he fell into collapsed without a warning sign? He inherited a money pit! We can argue that he was destined to lament about his life and the seemingly hopelessness there is for anything substantial. Sexual encounters are below routine doctor appointments. By being arrested by the onslaught of feminism which finds masculinity threatening and oppressive, he can only shrug his shoulders and plead to thugs not to harm him. This is not to say that Louie lacks balls, only that he has been conditioned to be so anti-masculine it is downright embarrassing at moments. Trying to be a “good guy” does not always work, and his morals leave him like his male contemporaries: desperate.

And is this the central theme to the show? Yes. That is to say, it is observing the struggle of trying to raise children out of a divorced home while any sensibility of manliness is a fashion faux paus. Louie does not take an apprehensive approach. It does not place the man in a cosmic void of blind fate to laugh at his futile efforts at trying to maintain some sense of decency for his children. It is not deriding in other words, but sympathetic. And extremely so at times.

The mood does and can get depressing. This is all natural in the rhythm of life Louie finds himself in. he uses his comedy as an outlet, like many comedians do, to diagnose and articulate the world around him and its bizarreness. Sometimes that bizarreness becomes saddening and maddening. But it is part of his reality which, quivering behind a pair of unused balls, Louie wishes he could be more forthright. Stand-up is a shield in other words. Where the natural virility and inclinations of a man to provide which leads to confrontations with reality are now abandoned for institutionalized living, Louie’s testicles are left cleaved and castrated anxious to be released onto a world which finds himself offensive, yet necessary. The world in other words is not made up of roses and ponies as much as the current fantasies of the narcissistic era try to engender their orgy-porgies of delight, which reduces human contact again to nothing higher than a mechanical procedure. The simple and bare problem exposed by Louie is that good men are castrated and are unable to lift and elevate man above his preexisting ideals. In fact, there are no preexisting ideals now but the reflection of the self as the transcendent.

Grade: A

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