A standup guy

Louis C.K. is never let off the hook on his TV show.

He squirms, just as we squirm, watching the ginger-haired comic try to understand

the world around him.

Louis C.K. may be the world’s most humanistic standup comic. His humor doesn’t stop at observing human predicaments and flaws — he makes us question how we actually behave. In his award-winning TV series Louie (just wrapping up Season 4), he forces us to confront the difficulties of being human and to take sides: will we become our best selves, or remain selfish a-holes? Will we be part of the solution, or part of the problem?

This is quite a trick for a comic known for his acerbic stage act, one full of rants about how stupid people can be. But even there, C.K. was guided by a fierce humanism.

His standup routine leaves nothing off the table: he does five minutes on why his own kids are a-holes; he dissects his own marriage, racism, sexism, onanism; he covers guilt and shame, and is even more persuasive looking at the modern generation and its attachment to gadgets (“This is the worst, piece-of-sh*t, product-sponge generation ever”) and his aim is dead-on.

One much-debated episode from the current season of Louie tackles weightism, and society’s double standard about “fat” people. Louis is called out by the overweight woman he’s agreed to have dinner with (because she gifted him with hockey tickets); she notes that he won’t call it a “date” because he doesn’t want to be seen holding hands with “the fat girl” (even though part of Louie’s act pokes fun at his own weight). It’s this moment of confrontation — that suddenly applies to all of us, not just doughy Louis C.K. — which lifts the show above our previous notions of what TV sitcoms can be.

It’s important to note that Louis is never let off the hook in these situations — he squirms, just as we squirm, watching the pudgy ginger-haired comic try to understand the world around him.

That he’s able to do this without preaching, compromising, or hitting the trusty “senti” buttons is what places him among the few comics who transcend mere comedy. C.K., a mixture of Mexican-Irish-Jewish ancestry, points to Bill Cosby as a big influence; you can see it in his gift for spinning long tales onstage full of comic observation. But where Cosby’s was a gentle reminder of our human failings, C.K.’s is a brutal self-examination — open-heart surgery with a buzz saw.

Then he aired his own show on FX. Over four seasons, C.K. has conducted his own lab experiment on the human condition, packed into that old standby of television, the 30-minute sitcom. Yet no one would mistake this for the farce-driven Seinfeld or The Big Bang Theory. There are no big laugh lines. Instead, the show occasionally makes you pause and do a self-check. Writing, performing and editing the show himself, Louis takes a slapdash approach: sudden cuts to black, weird forays into fantasy and exaggeration, then unexpected shifts back to human vulnerability and pain. You could call it messy, but then so is human life.

One bit of surreality is that the character Louis has two young (very blonde) daughters. Yet his ex-wife is played by African-American actress Susan Kelechi Watson. It’s one of those things that make you go “Huh?” But in C.K.’s world, ordinary rules of television need not apply. (Her shift in complexion is partially explained in Season 4.)

Part of the template for Louie has existed before: it’s Woody Allen’s Manhattan world, though less glamorous, less Upper West Side, more twisted. C.K.’s character is generally a schlemiel, a smart, funny guy whom happiness usually eludes. Or else he eludes it. His world is populated by dive-cellar comedy clubs, where he’ll drop in and do impromptu five-minute sets for a couple hundred bucks a night. He makes a living, he makes mistakes, he observes things, he misfires with women. A sad sack, but someone you’re generally rooting for, because he contains the potential for growth and the desire for self-understanding.

A number of guest cameos validate his growing comic cachet (Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman turn up), along with appearances by some of his heroes (David Lynch in Season 3, Charles Grodin as a no-nonsense doctor in Season 4). Through it all, C.K. adopts a take-no-prisoners approach to the sitcom format: TV comedy gets a major root canal.

The current season finds his character back in NYC (after a real or imaginary trip to China at the finale of Season 3), still confused about his career, his kids, his love life. Still toiling in the fields of standup, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. One of the more cringe-worthy episodes of seasons past dealt with his character’s abhorrence of violence, which registers as cowardice to his date, making her think he’s a loser for not standing up to several punks in a donut shop. It makes you question why we, culturally, prefer vengeance and violence to negotiation. Then there’s the one where he confronts a self-destructive fellow comic who wants Louis to come along for a drive to New Hampshire, where he plans to blow his own brains out; Louis decides he won’t participate in his friend’s death trip, and tells him no.

These are hard, human moments: the kind of things people confront in the real world, though there are no roadmaps out there to guide us through them. Louis C.K., awkward, squirmable, yet conscience-driven, may be that very roadmap.