The Székely Effect: TV In The Age Of ‘Louie’

There’s a famous scene at the beginning of the second episode of the first season of Louie, which stars comedian Louis C.K. (born Louis Székely). Louie and his comedian buddies are playing poker, joking around. Nick DiPaolo then stops the game to ask Rick Crom, who’s gay, about his sexuality. Take a moment to watch what ensues.

The scene is didactic, but not pedantic. It’s informative without being cloying. But most importantly, it’s astonishingly intimate, and deeply personal. I remember thinking at the time that I’d never seen anything like that in a sitcom. Louis C.K.’s show was destined to change the art form.

Nobody respects sitcoms. Sure, the critics tooted their horns for The Larry Sanders Show and Arrested Development, but they saved the hushed, reverent tones for the Difficult Men of one-hour cable dramas. Laughs were disposable; anti-heroes were treasured.

But then Louie came along. C.K.’s sitcom wasn’t the first on television to have a strong authorial voice, nor was it the first to approach its material from a semi-autobiographical perspective, but it did hail a new mode of comedic TV storytelling. Its influence isn’t always direct, but it’s palpable in as widely ranging series as IFC’s Maron, Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer, and Netflix’s Master of None.

It’s no accident why these three series might have a couple strands of Louie’s DNA in their genetic makeup. All have had direct or indirect contact with C.K. and his methods. (Marc Maron, in particular, has close ties to C.K., having been friends since their Boston days in the late 1980s.) Maron, Amy Schumer, and Aziz Ansari are stand-up comedians who not only started to develop their own TV work at the same time, but also were part of the downtown New York comedy scene in which C.K. was a central figure. The Comedy Cellar, a club in Greenwich Village, was the meeting ground. A famous table in the back of the restaurant above the club was where comics congregated, trading jokes and career stories. C.K.’s sitcom deal with FX became legendary. Take less money upfront but maintain creative control? It was a comic’s dream! When it came time for Maron, Schumer and Ansari to launch their own projects, however, it wasn’t just the flexibility afforded by IFC, Comedy Central and Netflix that carried C.K.’s imprint.

SITCOM AUTEURISM

The status of the showrunner has risen in American pop culture; that much is obvious. But while the likes of Michael Schur, Dan Goor, Mindy Kaling and Mitchell Hurwitz all have name brand recognition to many TV fans, their projects don’t carry with them the same level of personal expression as the post-C.K. shows do. Part of that has to do with the flexibilities of cable; part of it has to do with C.K., Schumer, Maron and Ansari actually being the stars of their own shows. It goes deeper than that. Each series has a thematic core that is developed, deepened, and codified with each passing episode. For C.K., the absurdity of human communication is his calling card. For Schumer, the attitudes of men toward women—and of women toward each other—inform each sketch’s thesis. For Maron, the confusing state of midlife narcissistic angst exudes from the show’s every pore. And for Ansari, the travails of being an ethical, romantic person in the digital age—and how race is (not) discussed among adults—achors his own thematics. These shows have much more of their creators and stars in them, on every level.

It doesn’t hurt that they all began their careers as stand-up comedians. Their material finds its way into their shows, and not always directly. Louis the comedian is very much Louie the director, just as Aziz Ansari the comedian informs the worldview of Dev Shah. One can’t imagine a situation where Marc Maron isn’t himself in every performance he delivers. And Amy Schumer…well, there’s no hiding Amy Schumer from the world. Louis and Maron both play comedians, while Ansari plays an actor. Schumer embodies the characters within her stand-up material. Life imitates art etc.

THE CAMERA DOESN’T ALWAYS SERVE THE JOKE

Seinfeld may be a great show, but it essentially follows the template of every multi-camera sitcom that came before it. The British version of The Office may have broken ground on the single-camera look, but half the lineup on every network now apes the look with diminishing returns. Louie, on the other hand, is quieter, more patient, and very much enamored of the finer points of composition. The below shot is held for a lot longer than the standard few seconds.

Maron and Master of None may not look exactly like C.K.’s show, but they all pay attention to lighting, framing, and blocking in a way that most sitcoms don’t bother with. Master of None even goes so far as to sculpt widescreen, CinemaScope images with deep, rich colors. Every frame carries the hue of flickering bar candlelight, which of course echoes the many bars in which Dev and his friends find themselves throughout the course of the series.

Even Amy Schumer breaks with the boundaries of sketch comedy visual style, directing a 12 Angry Men parody in rich, chiaroscuro detail.

THE OPENING CREDITS CONTAIN THEIR OWN DISTINCT FLOURISHES

Whether it’s Louie‘s signature font, or Master of None‘s Woody Allen-esque electrominimalism, these sitcoms carry their own calling cards.

For each of these sitcom auteurs, the joke is not the be-all, end-all. Intellectual rigor, emotional delicacy, and visual texture all play their parts, and don’t always function as laughter vehicles. Each star has imbued their own point of view within all levels of the show, and are able to supply maneuver the business-art dichotomy via small budgets and non-broadcast trust. And it all started in 2010, when Louis C.K. finally found a hit on television.

Evan Davis is a regular contributor to Howler Magazine, Deadspin, and formerly to Film Comment. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.