Lucky Louie, Season 1, Episode 9: “Drinking”
Written by Kit Boss
Directed by Andrew D. Weyman
Aired on August 6th, 2006 on HBO
Welcome to the latest in the series of weekly complaints about offensive jokes in Louis C.K.’s oeuvre, or as Sound on Sight calls them, reviews of the first and only season of Lucky Louie. In all seriousness, just when it seems like the show’s humor can’t get any more tasteless, it finds subjects now (ten years after Lucky Louie premiered, but still) universally considered to be taboo to mock (and probably weren’t looked upon all that much better at the time). In last week’s “Get Out,” it was statutory rape, and this week’s “Drinking” pokes fun at, you guessed it, alcoholism. (It laughs at rape as well, but one gripe at a time.)
It’s too bad writer Kit Boss feels the need to drag the episode into the muck of unfunny jokes, because its promising teaser riffs on one of C.K.’s more fertile comedic topics: existential dread. The mere thought of Louie keeping Kim up with his tossing and turning because of his epiphany about the brevity of life makes for a hilarious scene, and Louie’s jealousy of the dog’s ignorance is the perfect direction to take the joke. Lucky Louie works best when it mocks the white male buffoons who populate its ensemble, and the absurdity of Louie’s thought is a perfect example of this sort of mockery. The handjob at the end is an unfortunate coda to the scene, with lazy assumptions about gender power dynamics, but the rest of it is strong enough to not be overshadowed by a weak conclusion.
Of course, the dumb gag isn’t nearly as unfortunate as what’s to come. Even before the the addiction gags, there’s a blatantly sexist joke about women’s basketball in the tailgate party Louie attends with Mike and Rich. Although Boss seems to intend to mock the three for caring about an ostensibly unimportant sporting event by making the event one which features women, what he’s saying is that women are less important then men. Of course, as with most of the potentially offensive humor in Lucky Louie, Boss could argue that he’s presenting the men’s ignorance for the viewer to laugh at, but one of the show’s biggest weaknesses is its inability to give the viewer the necessary distance for that sort of laughter. Based on the evidence onscreen, Boss could just as easily be encouraging the viewer to identify with the men, making the joke particularly troubling.
But not as troubling as what soon ensues. After a series of gay jokes in the vein of most of the other tasteless gags (Rich and Louie do stupid impressions of gay stereotypes, and it’s unclear whether the audience is supposed to laugh at or with them), Boss brings “Drinking” into even darker territory. Mike is driving drunk, which “Drinking” treats as yet another chance for a low blow. Rather than chastise him or the other two for the stupidity of their actions, “Drinking” approaches drunk driving as an inherently funny concept.
Boss feels rape has the same comic appeal, as he shows when Mike and Louie get to jail. There are a series of prison rape jokes exchanged by the two, and not only are the gags unfunny, they’re simply tired. In the years since Lucky Louie, television viewers have been lucky enough to have shows, like Orange is the New Black, that treat the prison experience with sensitivity and empathy, but jokes about men raping each other in jail would be tired with or without improvements in cultural discussion of the subject. Rape jokes in general have (rightfully) become taboo, and prison rape jokes add another level of weakness due to their cheap shots at another under-privileged group (prisoners).
The downward slide of “Drinking” continues as Mike and Louie are forced to attend AA. Although the scene contains one of the few bright spots in Jerry’s monologue about dating old women (in that situation, he’s clearly the butt of the joke, rather than alcoholics as a whole), it also features some of the weakest material in Lucky Louie. Hearing the audience laugh as the leader of the meeting boasts that he manages a Walmart feels like the definition of cringe comedy (Boss had to mock the working class, too!). Then the end of the scene gets even more uncomfortable by suggesting that alcoholics don’t have real problems.
Lucky Louie has some good ideas, but episodes like “Drinking” make it obvious why the show didn’t last. Even though it’s only ten years old, its attitudes too often feel ancient.