Boy somebody hated Cheers...

This show is like the anti-cheers, or rather, a remaking of a "bar regulars" show with the correct level of depression fueled alcoholism and alcoholism fueled depression that would characterize its regulars. I know it was set in Brooklyn but still has a very Boston brand of alcoholic, wife beating, racism inside of it. I feel like I could hear CK doing a bit: "It (Cheers) wouldn't be like that!...buncha drunks united by nothing more than an actual illness!...a realistic bar show would be the saddest show ever made!"

The unrehearsed feeling did not add to the realism in my mind, it seemed like a play, but also almost like a teleplay, or like an old tv show filmed in front of a live studio audience, w/ little editing. The theme song too was like a more depressing version of cheers, based on the bar being a comforting place etc. I actually really hated that song, I usually like Paul Simon but I'd rather listen intently to my radiator than hear that song again.

The medication issue w/ Pete was unrealistic, they would have put him on a different dopmine receptor antagonist. Anti-psychotics have the same mechanism more or less, and atypicals would have come out in his time on the other drug. There is no way they'd commit all those scarce mental health resources to someone whose psychosis is so amenable to pharmacology. It would be completely unethical to take away the agency of someone who lived on the outside for a decade on any antipsychotic med. No judge would approve the recommittal. But I'm a Psych resident so this particularly stood out to me.

All in all I applaud Louis CK for his creativity and sense of the tragic, he could spend his time just being one of the best stand-up comics to ever live, but instead keeps exploring expressive venue & style, and recasting his vision. Really honorable. However this show, for me, was not brilliant nor very emotionally resonant.