Louis CK: Whimsical comments – the troubled comedian is back … with a whimper | Funny

Louis CK is back, again. It has been almost ten years since the actor, actress and writer-director admitted his guilt in list of sex crimeswhich led to several organizations severing ties and sending him into exile – for a few months, anyway. Since then, he’s toured a lot (often to public parties meaning he’s the one who’s been wronged) and released four comic cards himself, among other things, so it’s not like the new presence is too surprising. But it is clear that Comedy is supported by Netflix – a round of comedy whose last hour called 2017 was also a Netflix release.

A triumphant comeback is not a slow comeback, an unspoken idea that no one really cares about his character; no defense or apology, just an image of shame. Describing a visit to a nursing home where his elderly father is expected to be in a special setting, CK says: “The theme of the visit is: ‘This Is What It Is’,” meaning a worrisome reception. It sounds like this is the theme of the Stupid Tour, too – whether we want it to or not.

There are some special moments where CK claims to be holding his own against his glaring failures and different sounds. A genuinely funny look like “I can’t be blamed for my dreams. I’m not a good person in my dreams,” doesn’t hit as hard as it should because we’ve already heard so much about him doing bad things in real life. It’s also hard to avoid reading some moments that want to be self-deprecating or honest, like when he talks about not having much sex recently and especially having a relationship with women his age, like he passionately burns his schlub belief, putting himself as harmless. Perhaps this is unfair; there are many comedians where we are not given the opportunity to examine whether their dark side is being mocked or sidelined for the sake of comedy. But it’s true CK lives in, even if one is strongly rejected by many of his acolytes.

This disharmony, the lack of a shared reality, makes certain others stand out, unequal. It’s got some pretty good looks, to be sure. CK remains, without a doubt, humorous, methodical and natural. When he starts a bit about how he hates waking up on planes, he backtracks to make it clear that waking up is often dangerous, and his non-verbal demeanor over his constant nightmares is hilarious. The bit about his love for the universally available wet pad in chicken breasts is like a classic Seinfeld moment, just pushed by the weirdness that veteran Seinfeld can avoid.

Elsewhere, however, he relies on the odd laugh. In previous special episodes, some of these surprises often started very cautiously, leading the audience to laugh at the absurdity. Here, a joke about burning his mother or rehashing a child abuse joke from earlier in the game just comes off as sarcastic — just what it needs to push the envelope it’s supposed to. Some jokes don’t involve trying to push each other; CK struggles to say that her 42-year-old friend was having trouble conceiving because her eggs were either “broken” (yuk, yuk) or “rotten” (yuk, yuk, yuk!). The joke is: he has a dick?

CK is capable of more than this, and Ridiculous has the light of its writer to turn what would be a joke’s complaints into something very popular. “Every part of my body hates its neighbor,” he says at one point, a reminder of the gift he has for describing the ugliness of aging, or just being alive. Perhaps I’m saying that far from his creative output, it’s these things that are the most difficult where the part that he is considered to be the most intelligent (like “everything is strange and nobody is happy” from years ago) leaves. In other words, the understated nature of some of these specials released by Netflix is ​​what makes them worth it. It’s a reminder that CK’s weaknesses, both on and off the field, are his exploits.