2010 was arguably the most successful year of comedian Louis C.K.'s career. His autobiographically based program on the FX network, "Louie", quickly became a critical and cult hit. The show was renewed for a second season barely a month after its premiere, an especially triumphant verdict for C.K. considering his first starring vehicle, "Lucky Louie", was cancelled by HBO in 2006 following its freshman campaign. The show's acclaim coincided with increased recognition of C.K.'s stature as a stand-up comedian, the trade he's been plying for over 25 years, culminating in his latest special, Hilarious, becoming the first stand-up comedy film ever accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.
Louis C.K.'s work both onstage and on the small screen is marked by traits common to most great cultural criticism-- an unflinching honesty and an unwillingness to accept society's conventions at face value. On "Louie" the show, that fearless deconstructive spirit manifests itself both in the topics C.K. addresses-- homophobia, religious indoctrination, and male violence were just a few issues broached in the first season-- and the structure of the show itself, which eschews traditional sitcom tropes in favor of frequent detours, ruminations, and extended passages that don't even aim for laughs. Hilarious, by contrast, may simply capture C.K. and his microphone, but that doesn't mean his love of needling the status quo has been squelched.
Spotlighting absurdity in the seemingly mundane is a wellspring for comedians, but C.K.'s observations dig deeper than most. Silly asides about the satisfying heft of English pound coins and the varying inflective properties of the word "Jew" are goofy fun, but the real meat of Hilarious finds C.K. upbraiding himself and everyone else in America for all of the selfish, deceitful, moronic shit we do every day. C.K. spends a lot of time here excoriating our spoiled, dumbed-down nation-- for its impatience with technology, lazy child-rearing practices, even its overreliance on exaggerated adjectives. These lengthy rants pinpoint some really baffling societal hypocrisies (for instance, that it's considered heinous to hit dogs but not children), yet such generalized grousing doesn't really represent C.K. at his absolute best. His truly brilliant material is always his most deeply personal, the stuff that finds C.K. meticulously exposing his own flaws and failings as a father, husband, and human being, enumerating the world's idiocies and insecurities through a painfully honest account of his own faults.
C.K.'s 2008 stand-up document, Chewed Up, was a masterpiece of wall-to-wall self-deprecation, and Hilarious suffers slightly in comparison only because it's not as relentless with its squirming confessions. Still, there's plenty of hysterical awkwardness here too-- in C.K.'s struggles to meet women now that he's divorced, in his merciless appraisal of his own meager sex appeal, and especially in his affectionately misanthropic attitudes toward his children, culminating on Hilarious in a horrifyingly outrageous scatological scene.
To claim a comedian or other cultural commentator "says what we're all thinking" is by now a cliché, yet C.K.'s refusal to shy away from the most awful and destructive thoughts that rattle around in the minds even of decent-hearted people is his greatest strength. What's more, he does it largely without sliding into the bitter smugness that's frequently befallen the likes of Denis Leary, Lewis Black, and David Cross, not to mention he altogether eschews leaning on hip signifiers or knowing pop culture references to help forge an easier connection with his audience, à la Patton Oswalt or Aziz Ansari. C.K. may gripe constantly about his own physical uncomfortableness, but the crown of America's Best Comic fits him perfectly.
