Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Louis CK: Sorry’ On LouisCK.com, Where The Comedian Welcomes You Back Into His SNAFU World

Louis CK has produced and self-released two hour-long comedy specials in the pandemic, which already is more than most other stand-up comedians, and most of them aren’t even considered “cancelled.” If CK’s Sincerely was worthy of a Grammy nomination, then how much should you make of his follow-up, Sorry?

LOUIS CK: SORRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The once-celebrated comedian, born Louis Székely and holder of multiple Emmy Awards for his FX show, Louie, as well as for his stand-up, almost crashed and burned his career completely in 2017 when a New York Times story forced him to own up to longstanding rumors that he’d masturbated in front of younger female comedians without their consent. The movie he’d filmed that year and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival got shelved. He lost his agent and manager. He took a year off from performing. And then he slowly returned, and developed a new hour, Sincerely Louis C.K., which he filmed in March 2020 and released a month later.
Now he’s back with a new hour, which he filmed this August at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, a smaller venue in the complex not to be confused with the arena, although many people do.
This hour is called Sorry, and like Sincerely, available only on the comedian’s website, LouisCK.com, for $10.
In his email announcement, he flipped back and forth between sincerity and silliness, claiming: “I am very proud of this show and I feel confident that you will laugh fourteen or more times during it. It is, so far, my favorite show that I have personally generated.”

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Having SORRY spelled out in big letters with light bulbs onstage behind him certainly reminded me of the time I saw Ricky Gervais perform at this same MSG theater in 2008, with RICKY spelled behind him (as seen in his 2008 HBO special, Out of England). Gervais gets a mention in the end credit acknowledgements, but as for the comedy, it’s all pretty much classically CK stuff.

Memorable Jokes: After an opening shocker reminiscent of the late George Carlin’s HBO specials, in which CK reveals his favorite sexual position, then asks, “Are you picturing it?” the comedian plumbs the depth of his depravity.
There’s a sizable chunk wondering what to do about pedophiles, a new way to see James Bond movies, a demonstration of what’s wrong with America by having a fat woman go to the zoo for an MRI, trends in overseas baby adoptions, and finally, his musings on death and gender fluidity. Perhaps his most memorable premise takes on the counting of pandemic deaths and what it says about us as a species, particularly if we’re trying to compare COVID-19 to 9/11.
But that’s not the clip CK is teasing you with to buy his special. That’s this bit about how he takes issue with the very quotable scene from Good Will Hunting, and what that says about Matt Damon, who won the Oscar alongside Ben Affleck for best original screenplay.

Our Take: The comedian remains a filmmaker at heart, and his cinematic flair comes through right from the opening credits (since most comedy specials stick everything at the end), along with a bit-on-the-nose entrance music by walking out to Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.”

How does it feel, indeed, to be no longer talk so loud or seem so proud?
Well, it’s not entirely clear, judging by how we judge such things. After all, he’s neither persona non grata nor even persona non Grammy following his current nomination for Sincerely Louis C.K. So you can’t call him cancelled. Nor even a pariah, for he’s far from an outcast even with comedy circles — several big-name comedians pimped out his special Saturday over social media. Perhaps you could say he was disgraced. Although even that term doesn’t quite jibe with the thousands of fans who still cheer him at every stop of the way, their roaring standing ovations outweighing those who have stood outside his venues to protest. So his career remains intact, albeit his legacy diminished.
Because separating the art from the artist doesn’t quite succeed when you’re looking at stand-up comedians. Even though they’re clearly joking, they’re also clearly writing and saying things out loud that they chose to write and say, and that say something about them, too. All of those masturbation jokes and bags of dicks on his FX series and onstage hit different now.
But what about this hour? You can make an argument that his digging into pedophilia is one way to indirectly address his own issues, even if his issues are clearly cut from another cloth. He joked about pedophiles way back when SNL loved having him host, after all. More precisely, though, comes his joke about Michael Jackson. CK asks: “What’s worse: A pedophile who makes beautiful music? Or one that doesn’t? This is the choices. No pedophiles is not on the menu.”
Or when he talks about how the pandemic forced everyone in the world to feel what he already felt, not able to leave his home or go to work for a while. His observation? “When life kicks you in the balls, and you’re like, ow, f–k, everything’s different now, it shows you s–t you wouldn’t have looked at otherwise.”
He also cops to being worried about losing his memory in old age, yet still wishing he could forget some things.And his mother’s death (coming while he had more time to spend alone with her) allowed him to ruminate on his future, as well as that of his now college-aged daughters. “I’ll hang around, because I’m curious” to see how everything turns out.
And while CK may make reductive choices still, such as calling today’s heterosexual men by a gay slur when compared to today’s gay men, he’s also, unlike Dave Chappelle, much more progressive on the notion of gender fluidity and sexual expression.
Which just made me giggle when I saw he misspelled Chappelle’s name in the end credits. Sorry?

Our Call: STREAM IT if you’re willing to spend an extra $10 outside of your regular streaming subscriptions, and also for those of you willing to put aside whatever perceptions you have of CK’s offstage behavior. Sorry might not have that one closer everyone will quote for years (“Why?” “Of course, but maybe,” “Cell phones and flying”), although his 9/11 bit here ranks up there with them.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Louis CK: Sorry at louisck.com