9) Louie
Louie is probably one of the richest, most daring comedies on television, but its biggest gains in its fourth season were all dramatic. Sure, there were moments of defiantly brazen cringe humor, such as an early episode where Louie bombs at a charity event, finds solace in the arms of a young model and then creates greater conflict by accidentally hurting said model. However, freed from the shackles of episodic half-hours, Louie drifted to long-form storytelling, in segments that were terrific and tender, funny and tragic.
Most of this season focused on Louie’s relationships with women. The centerpiece, the six-part “Elevator,” was an offbeat romance with Amia (Eszter Balint), a Hungarian woman on the verge of heading back to her homeland. His connection with Amia, who did not always understand him on a literal level, was touching, but also put the rest of the character’s relationships – with his ex-wife, daughters and friend Pamela – into perspective.
Meanwhile, the Emmy-winning “So Did the Fat Lady” brought up issues about body image and acceptance in an unflinching and genuinely heartbreaking way, as Louie deals with his shame for judging sweet comic Vanessa (Sarah Baker) based on her weight. (Perhaps purposefully, that episode is the one adjacent to “Model,” discussed above.)
C.K.’s New York stories mined new dramatic territory while also offering some prime laughs. As Louie continued through various mid-life crises, the one that stuck out the most was catching his eldest daughter puffing away on a joint. (Hadley Delany and Ursula Parker, who play his girls, were stellar support this season.)
In the two-part “In the Woods,” Louie prepares to have a talk with Delany’s Lily about this drug use. Before he can, he flashes back to his lonely adolescence, when he also turned to marijuana to deal with social and parental woe. It is a lovely, bittersweet, moving 65-minute episode – the longest in the show’s run – and perhaps C.K.’s crowning achievement as a dramatist.
Note the last word in the previous sentence.