actually adam lauver

Louis C.K.: Beauty and Farts

The season two premiere of Louie premiered on FX tonight (spoilers ahead), and not only was it a great episode of TV, it was also a pretty brilliant example of what I consider to be one of the greatest aspects of Louis C.K.’s comedy: the juxtaposition of irreverent humor and genuinely humanistic themes.

“Pregnant” sees Louie trying to help his pregnant sister when she has a sudden onslaught of excruciating abdominal pain—this prefaced by the revelation that she lost her first pregnancy. It’s a somber tone for a sitcom, but one that C.K.’s show is no stranger to (the oft-cited example being season one’s “God”). Although it’s a serious situation, C.K.’s frantically clueless reaction is hilarious—and when two strange men show up at the door saying that they’re his neighbors and they want to help (by one of them staying behind with Louie’s daughters while the other helps him get his sister to the hospital, no less), the initial feeling is that there’s going to be some kind of punchline about, well, strange men trying to spend time with one’s children.

But that punchline doesn’t come. Instead, you gradually get the sense that these men are sincerely trying to help. And when the one hails a complete stranger’s car down on the street and we see Louie shepherding his wailing sister into the hospital with two complete strangers, there’s an overwhelming sense of communality and compassion that, to my knowledge, is only rivaled in the world of sitcoms by NBC’s Community.

Of course, that somber, humanistic build-up does end up getting undercut by a punchline, but a different one than one might have expected: a long bout of flatulence on the part of Louie’s sister, ending with her feeling much, much better.

I honestly haven’t laughed that hard at a fart joke in ages. And the reason it worked for me is because of the contrast between the serious, danger-tinged, “We can only get through this if we help one another” storyline, and its quintessentially raunchy resolution. The joke works because in one fell swoop C.K. has taken us from the heights of humanistic optimism to the depths of blue humor, the most fundamental of all human comedy: a fart.

The juxtaposition doesn’t stop there. The fart joke is followed by a scene in which Louie awkwardly and emotionally thanks his two neighbors for their help and for their sense of calm in his time of crisis, to which the one replies, essentially, that that’s what neighbors are for. It’s a truly touching end to the story, and it completes one hell of a brilliant bookending: a long, drawn-out fart between two beautiful and poignant sequences about the importance of community.

That last scene with the neighbor, as with all of Louie’s more serious scenes, even manages to rise above the inherent cliche. Because C.K.’s humanism is refreshingly blunt. He seems to arrive at it more from a sense of sheer practicality and common-sense than from sentimental idealism. We shouldn’t care about our fellow human beings because God tells us to or because it earns us good karma; we should care because we’re neighbors and it makes sense for us to be there for each other. It’s good to be good. Simple as that.

That lack of pretense in C.K.’s philosophy is evidenced by the very bookending of the fart in “Pregnant.” At the center of C.K.’s humanism isn’t some glorious principle about evolution or compassion or God or spirit; it’s just a long, drawn-out fart. Which is perhaps the most human thing of all.

Anyway, it was a great episode, so be sure to catch it. And if you haven’t seen season one of Louie yet, you can catch it on Netflix Instant or buy it on DVD now. I know I will be when I have the money.

In the meantime, if anyone were to ask me to summarize Louis C.K.’s comedy, I’d have two words for them. Beauty and farts.