Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Louis C.K.: At The Dolby’ On LouisCK.com, Where The Comedian Continues To Beat Around The Offensive Bush

Louis C.K. has put out his third self-released stand-up comedy special since the pandemic began three years ago. The first won a Grammy. The second earned a Grammy nomination. What charms can this one provide for the comedian?

LOUIS C.K.: LIVE AT THE DOLBY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The comedian born Louis Székely (his last name shortened to CK for your phonetic comfort) has won six Emmy Awards, three of them for writing his stand-up specials, although all of his Emmys, two of his three Grammy Awards, and all three of his Peabody Awards for his TV shows were awarded before his fall from grace in 2017, when he was exposed for exposing himself to multiple women.

He addressed that a bit in 2020’s Sincerely Louis C.K., which won him his third Grammy. He titled his follow-up, tongue firmly in cheek, Sorry, with the title in giant lit-up all-caps letters behind him onstage. There’s none of that to be found here, unless you want to read between the punchlines.

Instead, CK’s 10th stand-up special, filmed at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood in January, takes viewers into his dark thought process when he considers different forms of confidence, America’s changing abortion laws, Biblical stories about Jesus, divorce, and dealing with the death of your parents.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: If you’re a Louis C.K. fan, then you probably already saw this hour of material, because more than 50,000 of you (at least) saw his performance in late January at Madison Square Garden, either as one of the audience members in his sold-out show in the arena, or as one of the 32,000+ viewers who watched the livestream live online. He says his Dolby set included several minutes not in the MSG show, but still.

Memorable Jokes: Despite his fame, fortune and infamy, he jokes that he has neither the personal confidence to pull off wearing white pants, nor the moral confidence to claim he’d do the right thing if he lived in another time or place in history. As to the latter, he finds ways to make jokes about modern-day slavery, as well as the notion that a comedian could get into trouble for an Auschwitz joke, from the institution itself on Twitter. Thus resulting in a joke that might not have much more of a shelf life (thanks to Elon Musk): “It said Auschwitz, with a blue check — so it was like, oh, cool, it was really them!” CK joked, before adding: “Why is the death camp Tweeting?” 

The comedian also questions himself for how he treats the homeless guy he sees on the corner near his building in New York City, before chastising all of us for ostracizing the homeless.

There’s a chunk of jokes about the Bible, prefaced by CK whipping out a Bible to show us and read selections from, first making fun of Jews for dominating the book with Old Testament tales, then pointing out and reading stories about Jesus that he thinks seem wildly ordinary upon further reflection. He also says he’s scared of Hell, but wonders how Hitler might’ve changed after 75 years down there.

He jokes about people still not believing he’s half Mexican, before describing his current relationship with his Mexican father by reminding us all that we have a favorite parent, and it’s usually not the one who lives to be 100.

And as the clip he shares shows, he has purposefully ignorant and excitedly offensive suggestions for bridging the divide between pro-choice and pro-life believers when it comes to abortion.

Our Take: At this point, I’m not sure if we need Louis CK as a comedian as much as he needs us as an audience. Not even Dave Chappelle is churning out content at the rate CK is right now, although the fact that Chappelle is the closest comparison, both in terms of their relentless engagement with their fans as well as how much their relationship with the fan base has changed in the past five years, is telling in itself.

One nice touch in this special, though, is opening straight into the middle of his warm-up act, Greg Hahn, not just by ceding a few minutes of stage and screen time to Hahn, but also by allowing the home audience to get settled in just as the live audience does before CK takes the stage.

As for CK’s material now?

In some respects, it hasn’t changed much from when he was considered the king of the comedy mountain. He’s still gleefully crude, forcing his audiences to confront or imagine offensive ideas for themselves while he reveals his own take on them. This time it’s about abortion, murder and death in general.

But what has changed is what we know about Louis CK offstage, and how he has behaved in the past. That necessarily changes the impact of some of his jokes. Despite the fact or precisely because he never seems to address it directly. So when he makes a masturbation joke about Jesus, or makes an offhanded remark that the women who withhold sex from him might be considered sinners in the eyes of Catholic doctrine concerning contraception, or even when he cops to not wanting to give his local homeless guy “another five bucks, you know? ‘Cause I only have a few million,” he’s weirdly opening the window to let us see how little he’s changed since his supposed downfall.

As a comedy critic, I’m also baffled by some of his other material choices.

Despite all of his jokes about masturbation and blow jobs, he says he feels sorry for the sperm of a gay man, saying “that’s a tough destiny” why? Because he can only make the painfully obvious other joke about sex for gay men.

And then there’s his selection of jokes about Jesus. Not that they’re bad. They’re just, well, the same jokes hundreds of other comedians have made about Jesus and the Bible over the past six decades or so. Even if CK dedicated this hour to Lenny Bruce (which he did), what new ground is he breaking here? He even covered some of this same territory himself in a first-season episode of his award-winning FX show, Louie. So why cover all of this old ground again now? Does he feel reborn in a way himself?

Not exactly.

About 45 minutes into this hour, he stops upon realizing he’s sweating through his clothes. “Do I have a huge stain?” he asks us. “So what.”

Our Call: Louis CK jokes as if you don’t know any of the controversial stuff about him, even though if you’re on his website buying a special direct from him, you either know everything about him and love him for it, or love him despite it, or you’re simply one of those people who loves to say you can “separate the art from the artist.” So who am I to tell you not to STREAM IT? You likely already decided for yourself before reading this review.

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.