It's an experiment, and one with some rough edges. But Alda, Falco, and Buscemi are powerhouse dramatic actors, and C.K. makes a good reactive foil to them. The first episode (which runs slightly over an hour) feels like such a self-contained story that I have no idea what later installments will be about, or feel like, but I can't wait to see them, whenever they happen to appear.
There is, as in live theater, the occasional hesitance over a line, and the first episode relies on melodramatic twists that don’t always feel earned. But when it really gathers steam--nearly any time Mr. Alda opens his mouth, and especially in his scenes with Ms. Falco--it’s like little else on TV. (If it can be said, technically, to be TV at all.)
The feeling you are watching a play instead of tv without laugh tracks and being told artificially is refreshing. Its a raw look at the reality the hides all around us.
Giving it a 10 for originality and for its unique voice. It is a bit uneven in places--another draft or two of the scripts would have helped and some of CK's casting decisions are just plain bad (he nailed all of the main parts though). At the end of the day, it's a very funny, very shocking, and very sad series about a sad, dysfunctional family who run a neighborhood bar.
If the show has flaws--it’s certainly slow-moving, and the intentional abrasiveness of its characters can sometimes feel cartoonish--they deserve to be forgiven just because of the singularity of vision on display.
Even at its most obvious or ungainly, it's never less than interesting, and it's certainly not shy of conviction; no C.K. fan with an Internet connection and $5 to spare will want to pass it by.
The acting is superb, especially as the tensions become more overt in the second half.... He’d probably kill with the same material [on poltics and current events] in a stand-up show, but in a script about abuse, alcoholism, denial, and family estrangement, it doesn’t quite work. The strength of Horace and Pete is in the age-old themes festering at its heart.
With Horace and Pete, [Louis C.K.'s] ambitions can sometimes outrace his execution, but the commitment of his cast to a consciously old-fashioned kind of drama reminiscent of Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill makes the pilot exciting even when it’s a bit stilted.
The show falls short of being worth the fee. Its plot, surprisingly, ended up becoming both fairly complicated and quite maudlin, but the characters are too remote to either follow in byzantine detail or feel for.
Love it and only 3 episodes in, not sure if it Cheers in a curb your enthusiasm style or visa a versa, but I'd love to see the same style make over given to other Shinny TV Shows, Suits CK style, CSI CK :-), Game of CK.
Carry on Louis just keep pumping out 1 off seasons of thinly veiled parodies
I really wanted to be drawn into this work. Now, I know it was not constructed to be a comedic piece, and frankly, I'm fine with that. More than fine. But, that said, the timings are like comedic timings. I applaud the risk-taking. I also applaud the story premise, but as a guy who worked on "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," "Fortune in Men's Eyes," and the like for decades, when an essentially dramatic work is ostensibly written and shot for the small screen it should not ignore its stage antecedents. Thanks to a most remarkable cast, the unsure writing is often saved.
When the last episode was over I thought: "You really need a comedian to write a tragedy like this."
I think it's hard to give this show a mediocre rating, because either you like it or you want to forget about it.
I'll give that mediocre rating anyway, because it's an average of things I liked and those I didn't like.
The show was very earnest and real. We have popular actors/actresses that did their jobs very well.
Many of the stories the people told, where very touching.
So, there was really something there, that I liked a lot.
You needed a little patience, but it was mostly worth it.
But what I ask myself and what leads to only a 5-rating is the why.
Why all this tragedy, this suffering and sadness, what did it lead to?
What do I get out of it? Nothing.
After witnessing a tragedy like this, I need to take something with me.
Sadness and tragedy alone are just sad and tragic.
A sad and tragic story has to have more than that. Otherwise it'll make you sad and nothing more.
I don't need a happy ending. But I need more than a "That's it. It's over.".
All of them dead or gone. These are sad things you want to leave behind and if there isn't something more,
there nothing you want to keep and take home with you.
I appreciate Louis C.K.'s work, but it was too much of a downer for me with no apparent benefits.
I purchased the first episode of this show because of all the great reviews and because it was a Louis C.K. project. I like the idea of releasing a series right to the internet without all the network BS. I really like Louis C.K. and Steve Buscemi. I watch a lot of TV shows so I thought this would be a home run for me and be something I would enjoy. But... It just seems un-watchable. The dialogue is very forced and the whole show just seems depressing and dry. I get there is some humor in the show, but there is no good delivery for it, and there is a lot of awkward silence and dead air. As others have said, it feels like a bad play being acted out.
I tried the first 20 minutes of episode 1, and found myself just so turned off and uninspired by the show that I ended up skipping through the rest of the episode to different spots hoping it would eventually pick up or something interesting would happen. Yes, the show makes some good points and the script writing is great, but the show itself just doesn't have the delivery needed to hold my attention and it is not entertaining.
I really wanted to give this a good review, and I want to buy the rest of the episodes. I wanted this to be a great show. But I guess I just don't get it and I can't force myself to watch something I don't like on principle. And when you have someone like me, who has grown up with a TV glued to my face 8 hours a day, watching pretty much every sitcom, cartoon, documentary, sci-fi show, drama, talk show, and reality show aired in the past 50 years - and found something enjoyable in all of them - to not find something enjoyable with Horace and Pete is a failure on the show's part, and not something I am "missing."
I love you Louis C.K. But I don't love your show.
I love Louis CK. I love his stand-up, I love his FX show, I love his appearances on talk shows.
Horace & Pete is wildly disappointing. The cast is amazing, the acting is strong... but it just goes nowhere. It's shot like a 3 camera comedy with no audience and weird lighting. Nothing that happens in the show engages me. FAIL.