Louie Was Going to Make More Episodes, But Then He Got High

Louis CK revealed that the reason for the shortened season of his popular FX show was a surprising one.

Historically, Louie--like many shows--has featured at least 13 episodes each season. This wasn't the case with the current season, season 5, which featured only 8 episodes; this was a surprisingly low number; typically this would be seen as half a season, with the other half perhaps planned to be released later. Splitting seasons isn't uncommon, as we've seen from Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and even back to The Sopranos and Sex and the City.

But the reason for Louis CK to split things up wasn't strategic or story-based. He wasn't milking a cliffhanger ending or building up to anything.

He just got really, really baked.

According to a recent panel discussion, Louis had grand plans for this season. He was to delay it until the fall, so that he could make one solid season.

Then, the night before FX chief John Landgraf was going to announce the delay, C.K. smoked a lot of marijuana, felt a burst of inspiration for stories he wanted to tell this season, and wrote pages and pages on his computer, breaking out all of what he felt would be an amazing season. He called Landgraf and asked if he could produce on the original schedule; a frustrated Landgraf told him they had already allocated most of his budget to other shows, and the best they could do was a half-season.

 

So Louis CK agreed. Then he woke up... and couldn't make sense out of any of the incoherencies he had scribbled down the night before and did not use a single joke or idea he had come up with in the pot-fueled fury of writing.

The whole ordeal almost sounds like something that would happen on a TV show like, say, Louie.

And because I have to: