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Given that, Louis C.K.’s new show made me laugh very hard. It’s also uncomfortable in ways he seems in control of and ways he does not. It has a few characteristically ingenious riffs, particularly about religion: one imagining if God gave a quick, explanatory news conference (“Mormons, no.”) and another picturing the God of jihadis on his way to gather the 72 virgins for a suicide bomber, rubbing his head in confusion at how he got here. And Louis C.K. remains exceptionally skilled at body-horror comedy (likening his chest to the ceiling of a cave) and herky-jerky pivots that blend the sexual and the profane.
In the most jarring part of the show, he discussed the death of his mother in June in a remarkably unsentimental aside. Interrupting a mundane story about visiting a cemetery with his French girlfriend, he detoured into the details of his mother’s cremation (mixing in a few sex jokes for good measure).
“She was a practical woman who didn’t care about the pageantry of death,” he said, before describing her body being taken away in a gray van, a half-filled Gatorade bottle rattling around with her. In the past, Louis C.K. has questioned the value of life, mocking its sanctity and downplaying its importance, but this grim image goes just as far in undercutting the solemnity of death.
Last December, one of his early post-return club sets leaked online and several of the jokes, including a particularly nasty one about the Parkland students, earned widespread condemnation. He has cut that joke and a few other controversial ones — though he has a dopey new punch line comparing vegans to gay people that seems intended to bait. His stage show is leaner than that December set, more deliberate, with fewer attempts at ingratiation. (There’s no talk of the millions of dollars he lost when his show-business deals were canceled.)
After hearing that rough draft of a set, many concluded that Louis C.K. had rebranded himself a cranky right-wing comic. And there was (and is) a new edge to his comedy that bristles at offense taken easily. There’s a lame joke about cultural appropriation. But the truth is that the comedy of Louis C.K. hasn’t changed as much as the context surrounding it.
Louis C.K. has long found humor in following the logic of immoral thoughts, while somehow not just keeping the audience on his side, but convincing them of an enlightened intent. It’s partly why people were not just disturbed by his behavior, they felt betrayed. He did sharp, empathetic material about the hurt of gay slurs. He told jokes about rape and violence against women that were considered feminist. It’s hard to remember, but there was a time not long ago when no comic got the benefit of the doubt more than Louis C.K.
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