This Thing I Saw

Horace and Pete

Starring: Louis CK, Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Alan Alda, a whole mess of comedians and New York stage actors

Directed by: Louis CK (also written and created and produced and distributed and edited... probably too many things, in all)

Available at louisck.net, $31 for the entire 10-part series.

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I don't do a lot of reviews here. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that a) I'm fairly lazy about reckoning with the bits of culture (high, low, mass, what have you) enough to the point where I can articulate something useful about the experience in written form; and b) I'm at the point of early middle age where many of the things I see are repetitive copies of things I've already seen that I thought were new when I was a kid and I first saw them, but now also realize that even they were copies of stuff that came out before I was born. So largely I've turned off my feelings in pre-emptive self-defense against disappointment, leaving me a cold, immovable thing actively incapable of pathos.

And with Louis CK's limited series Horace and Pete, currently only available directly from his website, it's not like I was moved to write something because I wanted to evangelize to you, my audience in the high single digits. This isn't for everybody. Which sounds condescending, but I don't mean it in the sense that "I got it, but meh, it's probably over your heads." I've watched the whole thing, and I'm still not 100% sure it's for me.

So it's possible you won't like it. And I can't in good conscience recommend it, not unreservedly. But it is definitely worth your $31 dollars. That seems like contradictory nonsense, but let's be honest, that's kind of my wheelhouse. Nevertheless, I will try to explain.

First of all, even though I saw all 10 episodes, every single minute of every single one, I completely missed the boat. A lot of what I know about the show and it's conception and production history comes from a very detailed and emotional interview about it Louis CK gave on Marc Maron's WTF podcast last week. The idea from the beginning was that it would be made and released without hype, promotion or even any advance notice. It would just show up. Or at least the first episode would, on Louis CK's website. And nobody would know what it was or if there was going to be another one or, once more showed up, how many there would be. Even the running times vary wildly between about 70 minutes to around 30, episode to episode. So the way it was released was designed to be part of the experience of taking it in, all of which I missed. I didn't experience that disorientation/irritation/confusion/thrill/gratitude of being presented a thing I didn't know I wanted or even had enough information to ever expect. By the time I got to it, it was done. I could binge watch it the same way I could a whole season of Daredevil on Netflix.* The fourth-dimensional element--the ephemeral, temporal one--was lost to me before I even knew to look for it. Whatever added experiential quality of belonging to that real-time community as the parts emerged is locked away forever for all the rest of us. In the whole history of the interwebs, it's the first positive argument that I can think of that's ever been put forth for signing up for somebody's goddamned "newsletter."

I've got some self-imposed restrictions on lengths of postings here (mostly formed by the fact that I have a day job I have to have some sleep for), so I'm not going to delve into the plot or characterizations much here. Besides, if you do end up watching it, the less you know the better. Fascinating as the interview with Maron was, I knew way too much going in. This is less me conforming to the internet etiquette of spoiler avoidance than trying to respect, to the extent it's possible, the original intention of the presentation.

Louis CK wrote and directed and stars and edited... all paid for with his own money. The main cast was assembled on faith and direct, personal appeal and somehow ended up being this core of American national treasures Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco and Alan Alda. The older I get, the more I've learned to separate out actors from their roles, the more respect I've developed for the work behind the finished product. Also, given my cool-guy dispassion for most of popular culture, when something pierces that facade or throws off my equilibrium, my response is usually outsize. Put those things together and you can get a reaction out of me bordering on undignified. Luckily I watched all of it alone.

All of that said, I don't know that I loved it. I'm not sure I even liked all of it. The performances were obviously stellar, with surprisingly high marks for Louis CK, especially given the heavy hitters he tasked himself to stand in there with AND the fact that he was directing himself, which is sometimes a real problem (I'm looking at you, Ben Affleck and Quentin Tarantino), AND the fact that his character was written to say little and, for great long stretches, just sit and listen and react. No small feat. Lots of attention is (rightly) being given to episode 3, a cozy two-hander between Louis CK and an absolutely alight Laurie Metcalf, where she does like 90% of the talking. She's the obvious star of the piece, but he's the invisible gravity holding it all together for the rest of us.

But there are obviously issues one could pick at. The characters aren't all too well fleshed out. Alan Alda and Edie Falco do wonders with fairly one-note people. Alda's an irascible, inflexible old guy and Falco's really mad a lot, with the exception of one episode where she gets to smile a bunch. The writing can be patchy and uneven, with whole awkward scenes of what should have been part of a stand-up monologue forced into the mouths of multiple actors in unconvincing simulations of conversation as Louis CK tried to work out ideas on the page and never quite got there. Plus not ALL of the acting is great, especially where comedian friends of Louis' are concerned. Kurt Metzger is game as a bar regular and is actually really good when monologuing (as he mostly does), but falls down just about any time he has to exchange words with another human. And the less said about the two painful (but mercifully brief) appearances by Mark Normand, for all I know a great comedian but a punchbowl-turd of an actor here, the better.

Some of the professional criticism is focused on the idea that some of the excesses or missteps could have benefitted from being reined in by network oversight. On the surface it makes sense, making the creator answerable to executives and advertisers and the time limits of a programming block to tighten things up and keep everything pared down and crucial. That sounds like a bit of complete and total capitulation to me, though, not to mention a misunderstanding of the intent here. Genuinely independent artistic endeavor is hard. Unfortunately it's the purview of the already wealthy (and it takes rich people even to afford the debt required to mount something like this) to attempt a project on this scale, which requires no small amount of courage to risk financial comfort when one has reached a hard-earned point in one's life where coasting on what you've already got is an option. That's why something like this is so vanishingly rare, if not utterly unique. For me, that's the part where it's already worth your (and my) $31. Enough about that though. I've already voted with my credit card.

For critics to then suggest he should run back for the cover and approval of a corporate network umbrella reads a little bit like Stockholm syndrome to me. It doesn't look as polished as a studio-produced program because it isn't one, and it shouldn't be. Further, I'd say the flaws in it, the DIY shabbiness of parts of it, the Archie Bunker aesthetic of both the production design and technical direction, the left-in line flubs, the clunky corniness of the real-time topical references, all of that helps to save it from what might have been a crushing darkness or (worse) a smug pretentiousness that could have infected the whole thing. The blemishes and exposed framework peeking out from under the presented face become endearing rather than detracting or distracting. Except that Normand guy. Sorry to harp as he's barely in it, but man... this show sets the acting bar WAY too high for that nonsense not to really, really stand out.

Like I said, I don't know that I love it. I do know that I couldn't stop watching it, even as episode by episode the meandering began to suggest direction, toward an inevitable stopping point in the distance that I wasn't sure (purely for dramatic tension reasons, not as a comment the quality) I wanted to get to.

And now all I can say is I can't really stop thinking about it. I think that's what makes it art.

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*This sounds like a slight against Daredevil. It is not. Say what you want about Horace and Pete, it featured 0% flip kicks or ninja fights by comparison.