Writer-director-performer Louis C.K. brings his no-holds-barred standup comedy style to this cable special, proffering uncomfortable observations about his life as a guy, a husband, and a father. Things start very well with a treatise on the proper use of the word "faggot," which should never, according to C.K., be used as a derogatory term for gay men, but serves as a catch-all insult for everyone and everything else. Also covered is the myth that drinking milk will replenish a man's vital bodily fluids during marathon sex, a subject that somehow segues into C.K.'s ambiguous admission about the fate of any housecat foolish enough to watch him being intimate. Less interesting is a diatribe about the comedian's collision with a deer on the road, and an overlong bit about the frustrations of fatherhood, including fantasies of extreme tough love with small children. The best material arrives at the end, when wisdom seeps into C.K.'s epiphany about arriving at an age when a man stops yearning for sex with girls and pines instead for women a little roughed-up by motherhood, disappointments, and other factors of adulthood. Of course, being C.K., he backpeddles a little about not wanting sex with hot young things, but his heart is in the right place. --Tom Keogh

Stills from Louis C.K.: Chewed Up (Click for larger image)