Lucky Louie

So far, I've not read anything about this show -- it popped up after "Entourage" last Sunday without a lot of heraldry. The underrated Louis C.K. , he of just about everything you can imagine, wanted to move his standup act to a more formal sitcom framework, or as he puts it, "Like 'Everybody Loves Raymond' with swearing."

The first episode started off conventionally enough, save for the live studio audience being a disconcerting element. After fifteen minutes or so, the cast was going full tilt with the cussing and the blue language, and the show's prospects perked up a bit. There were a few great punchlines (when's he's caught pleasuring himself to tabloid photos of Jessica Simpson, he defends himself by saying, "I'm not jerking off to her music"), but more giggles than anything else. It is a lot of fun to hear abrasive New York comedian Jim Norton call our lead character a "dousche," a sobriquet woefully underused on network TV.

I will come back for the next showing, because I'm such a fan of C.K.'s work and am interested in watching him subvert the sitcom into a nasty and crude little pretzel of impropriety.