Lucky Louie (and now Louie)

[MacGuffin]

HBO cancels 'Lucky Louie'

HBO's multi-camera comedy experiment is over, for now.

The pay cable network has opted not to renew its first multi-camera sitcom "Lucky Louie" for a second season.
 
The racy blue-collar family sitcom was created by and starred comedian Louis C.K.

"Louie is an incredible talent and a wonderful partner," said HBO Entertainment president Carolyn Strauss. "We loved trying our first multi-camera show with him, and we look forward to other projects with Louie in the feature."

[squints]

Tis a shame

[RegularKarate]

HBO cancels 'Lucky Louie'

HBO's multi-camera comedy experiment is over, for now.

The pay cable network has opted not to renew its first multi-camera sitcom "Lucky Louie" for a second season.
 
The racy blue-collar family sitcom was created by and starred comedian Louis C.K.

"Louie is an incredible talent and a wonderful partner," said HBO Entertainment president Carolyn Strauss. "We loved trying our first multi-camera show with him, and we look forward to other projects with Louie in the feature."

Wait, is she talking about the character Louie?  Clearly they know how to spell Louis C.K.'s name because they wrote it earlier.
Was the reporter confused?  Did it just SOUND like she was saying Louie and not Louis?

By the way, this is retarded... HBO can bite me. 

[grand theft sparrow]

You know, I was watching the pilot of that show The Class on CBS last night.  God awful show but it will be a hit, I'm sure.  I was also informed recently that Two and a Half Men is currently the number one sitcom on television.  Dane Cook is the hottest comedian in the country. 

Am I surprised that Lucky Louie is cancelled?  Not at all.   

it's too vulgar (read: real) for the "Everybody Loves Raymond" set and looks too much like "Everybody Loves Raymond" for most other people to give it a shot.

That's the only explanation.  It was the heir apparent to The Honeymooners.  People laugh their asses off at Ralph Kramden saying "To the moon, Alice!" but they turn up their noses to "Sometimes I want to punch my wife in the face."  Same thing.

"Baby, you're the greatest," vs. "I'm gonna fuck your tits off?"  Same thing.

I'm just glad I'm not the only one here who liked the show.

HBO: The New FOX

[pete]

dude, normally I love it when you break down comedy and rip the jokes apart, but you're way off on this one.  it's not that laugh-out-loud funny but it's very satisfying with its marginal optimism and has a very strong voice that goes way beyond cusswords.  Somehow the phony set was used in its favor, to get to the core of the blue collar, middle class lifestyle without the glitz of competent camerawork and editing.  it's a comedy not just because people say punchlines, but it makes the viewers feel pretty good at the end of the day.  I think the other reason it hasn't caught on is because not that many blue collar, grace under fire crowd watch HBO.

[grand theft sparrow]

OK, we get it.  You hate Ricky Gervais.

Sometimes the jokes were based around the profanity but it's a totally different thing from the bombardment of vulgarity that was The Aristocrats.  I can think of more jokes based around honest portrayals of everyday life than gags that were just R-rated versions of network sitcom gags.  The allure of the show for me was always the fact that they talked about real things that Raymond and King of Queens and even Seinfeld couldn't talk about.  The conversation with Louie and Walter in the first episode about how Louie's daughter needs to know the difference between black people and refrigerators?  I'll take that over 10 "mother's cunt" jokes.  Yes, I understand that the profanity can be jarring in a multi-camera studio sitcom setting but if that's what you thought the majority of it was, and that the majority of the humor came from potty mouth, you've got to watch it again. 

And I don't agree with Pete that it didn't catch on because the blue collar crowd doesn't watch HBO because I think the blue collar crowd would feel a little condescended to. 

This is why the show got cancelled.  Because everyone was so blindsided that characters on a show could say "fuck" in front of a live studio audience that they didn't realize that there was some really smart writing.  But if it was single camera, the show would have had a second season, no question.

[modage]

yeah i was mostly put off by the multi-camera studio audience, cheap sets thing.  if they had just filmed it without all that, i/america might've given it more of a chance.

[RegularKarate]

yeah i was mostly put off by the multi-camera studio audience, cheap sets thing.  if they had just filmed it without all that, i/america might've given it more of a chance.

but that's the problem.. you/America has no tollerance for what you're not used to.

[modage]

i just think that format is SO dead, i'm not interested at all in it. 

[RegularKarate]

i just think that format is SO dead, i'm not interested at all in it. 

I hope you're kidding.

[Ravi]

I understand where modage is coming from.  After Seinfeld I can't recall a three-camera sitcom I liked until Lucky Louie.  But there's nothing inherently bad about the format.  Its the writers who make bad sitcoms and the network execs who greenlight them that are to blame.  Oh, and the audiences who watch Two and a Half Men.  Fuck them too.

[polkablues]

yeah i was mostly put off by the multi-camera studio audience, cheap sets thing.  if they had just filmed it without all that, i/america might've given it more of a chance.

but that's the problem.. you/America has no tollerance for what you're not used to.

I think the issue is that we've all lived with the three-camera sitcom for so long, and from that we've developed such a monolithic perception of "what a sitcom is", that when something like Lucky Louie, with its profanity and portrayals of realistic human problems, uses the format, it feels like it's parodying the format.  And to an extent it was, which is problematic for a show that does strive to be smart and realistic, because those two sensibilities don't exist comfortably side by side.  The concept was very meta, but the execution was utterly sincere.  Unfortunately, the former distracted from the latter too much for its own good.

[modage]

exactly.

[grand theft sparrow]

The concept was very meta, but the execution was utterly sincere. Unfortunately, the former distracted from the latter too much for its own good.

I think the latter actually distracted from the former.  

[RegularKarate]

Here's what Louis has to say about it...

Lucky Louie has been cancelled by HBO

HBO decided not to pick up Lucky Louie for a second season. Here's all I have to say about this right now..

Lucky Louie IS NOT DEAD.

Lucky Louie is the best thing I ever did. It is a great show. People love it.

I will be fighting for the next weeks to keep it alive.

I thank HBO sincerely for giving me the first 13 episodes. I LOVED working with and being on HBO.

BUT...

It's just not in the cards that we go down like this. No way.

Funny shows don't go away.

If you weren't laughing, you were wrong.

More later.

LCK