Louis C.K. review: Controversial comic addresses sexual misconduct accusations, fallout

Normally I wouldn’t feel great about putting money in the pocket of admitted predator like Louis C.K., but an assignment is an assignment, so when I get to The Good Place my conscious is clear (Thank you, Capital Broadcasting!).

Comedian Louis C.K. mocks Parkland shooting survivors in leaked audio

He addressed both incidents in his set at the Raleigh Improv. I am not going to reproduce any of the jokes here. That wouldn’t be fair to Louis, the people that paid to see him, or the people that will pay to see him in the future. I’ll just say this. Louis C.K. may have said that he was going to listen and learn from what he did, but when there are audiences willing to pay to hear you talk, it’s hard to remember that you said listening was going to be your priority.

I used to love Louis. He is responsible for two of my very favorite punchlines in the long history of stand up comedy. I am not going to reproduce those either, because I will inevitably get them wrong, but the point is, when my editor for Out & About asked me to go see and write about C.K’.s set, I wasn’t going in hoping to rip the guy. I wasn’t going to pay to see him myself, but I wanted this to be undeniably terrific.

The set wasn’t undeniably terrific, but it was a packed room. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was enjoying themselves. These weren’t all one type of person. No one was wearing men’s rights T-shirts. No one shouted out anything about wanting to hear more jokes about transgendered people. It was just normal people enjoying an undeniably skilled comedian.

Now look, the jokes are definitely vulgar in some cases. There are plenty of low-hanging fruit type punchlines and some times where I thought to myself “Louis, do better,” but those moments have existed in every one of his specials. We tend to forget them because…well, by comparison to his truly genius bits, the bad stuff is simply forgettable. Also, this was a one night set in a medium-sized city. Anyone that likes standup comedy could recognize that the jokes he was telling were not finished products.

I mentioned that Louis C.K. did address the accusations of sexual misconduct and the fallout from him admitting his guilt. It was the only material that I felt uneasy laughing at, because despite his apologies and acknowledging he needs to do better, he’s still out here making money off of the story.

There’s even a moment where he puts a dollar figure on what the scandal cost him in terms of lost work. He turns it into a funny bit about the joy of hearing about other people losing money, but there is this beat where it is clear that his goal is to garner some sympathy or empathy from the crowd, and I am not sure he deserves that if he is back out on the road getting paid to tell jokes about his crimes.

Whether or not you are going to support Louis C.K. in the future is totally up to you. It seems early for him to be back out on the road, but what hit me is that a lot of his jokes aren’t that different from the ones he was telling when we all agreed that he was a genius. If you are offended by what he did, that is fine. We agree, and we probably agree that listening to him joke about it is uncomfortable, but the dad jokes about various groups that aren’t in the majority or go against social norms? I mean, you might want to go check the tape of what you were laughing about before.