Lucky Louie
10:30 p.m.
HBO
The pilot episode of this adult-only sitcom—which, if you're reading this between 12:01 and 3 a.m., you can still catch—got hammered by some critics. We'll take a wild stab and conclude that the implied or nearly acted out masturbation, foreplay, drug dealing, racism and salty language rubbed a few folks the wrong way. Me? Laughed my ass off several times. I cringed at times, too, but you've got to appreciate comedian Louis C.K.—whose strongest contribution to American culture to date remains his writing and directing that cinematic classic Pootie Tang—for getting something this ballsy on the air (if by “air” you mean paid cable). The pilot began with a hilarious breakfast conversation between C.K.'s lucky loser Louie and his cute lil' bug of a daughter (Kelly Gould)—the twist being instead of fibbing, playing dumb or dumbing down his responses to protect his kid (like any father who has been in that position has), Louie lays everything out, including the fact that he does not know the answer to her question because he smoked too much pot in school. C.K. gets game support from Pamela S. Adlon (the voice of Bobby on King of the Hill) as his wife Kim, veteran character actor Mike Hagerty as his boss and Jerry Minor (Saturday Night Live, Mr. Show with Bob and David) as his neighbor. But the cast member we're most hoping to see more of is Jim Norton (Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn) as Louie's drug-dealing friend. Anyone who regularly listens to XM's Opie and Anthony Show knows how funny Norton is (and how much O&E suffers when he's gone taping Lucky Louie, although some time replacement Patrice Oneal's an excellent pinch hitter). Tonight's episode picks up where the pilot left off: with Louie's wife Kim wanting sex so she can have another baby that part-time muffler mechanic Louie knows they cannot afford, he's faced with rekindling the magic or suffering the consequences? No, I don't know what that means either, but I'm willing to give this show another chance to find out.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.