Louie: Untitled
May 14, 2015 10:09 PM - Season 5, Episode 5 - Subscribe

Louie helps a woman move her fish tank.
posted by bleep (7 comments total)
 
The thing about the bee joke: There were two things going around twitter awhile back, one talking about how a retweet is like telling someone else's joke as if it was your own, and the other was about replying to a tweet and just rephrasing the joke as if you're tellling it for the first time. Reminded me of that.

Overall I thought this episode was amazing, one of Louie's best. If you watch only one Louie episode this season, make it this one. Ursula Parker's amazing monologue and "I think you could use a glass of water, sounds to me like you're dehydrated." The dream sequences. I'm choosing to believe that the entire episode was the dream, every part of it had that surreal feeling, even outside the obvious bits. "Really? I don't remember that... oh no." That thing scared the crap out of me! But the in-dream parts were just amazing, it felt so accurate to how dreams are. Louis CK seems to be gifted at portraying dreams.
posted by bleep at 10:22 PM on May 14, 2015


The moment when the horrible monster man with the cartoon eyeballs jumped up on Dr. Charles Grodin's desk and Grodin was like, "Yeah, sorry"? That was kind of perfect. Also, the diarrhea song. Oh, my lord.

My girlfriend has a real problem with the women on Louie, feeling like they are always these hysterical weepers or castrating harpies, and they are always crazy and Louie always ends up having sex with them. So I think another woman having another weepy meltdown (and Louie ending up having sex with her) kind of ruined the whole episode for her. I can see where she's coming from, but I feel like it's more complicated than that.

The women on the show aren't all nuts. (The woman from another country Louie fell in love with last season seemed like a nice, sane person, even if we never understood what she was saying.) At least, they are no more nuts than the men. I also feel like the more troubled or nasty women on the show feel like real women, they just don't represent all women and they portray some kinds of women we just don't see much in fiction. Pamela, for instance, feels very real to me and I can see why she's attractive to Louie even if she is kind of damaged and sarcastic and mean and moody. She's compelling and complicated, and she's kind of a jerk sometimes but she's not just a jerk.

I don't know if the scene with Louie's younger daughter at the doctor was part of the dream or not, but I am getting worried about that kid. Her youthful fancifulness seems to be edging into neurosis and that was the kind of monologue that's a little troubling at her age but would be really troubling in a kid just a few years older. She's such a little sweetie, but it kind of feels like we may be watching the early days of some actual mental illness.

I am glad this show has turned up on Fanfare! I kept wondering where it was, but I was too lazy to start covering it here myself.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 8:29 AM on May 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't think I've ever gone into a Louie episode expecting to have the holy bejeebus scared out of me, but boy did he do a great job making that unnerving. He plays with the expected conventions of his show all the time, and that's part of what makes it so great. That moment when you first started to realize, oh crap, we don't really know if he's awake or not any more (because usually there's some small clue when this kind of trope is used) was sheer brilliance, and I think the hair on my arm stood straight up always wondering when scary guy was going to rush him. Then it slowed it down so that not only was he not rushing him in a blindsided way, but he was coming at Louie more slowly but such that you still knew it was inevitable. And it ended in such a sweet way. Louis CK is doing stuff nobody has ever done before, and he's doing it really, really well.
posted by SpacemanStix at 11:31 AM on May 15, 2015


The part of that episode where he flies down to Miami and he's on the plane was also amazingly frightening. He's really good at that.
posted by bleep at 11:49 AM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


At least, they are no more nuts than the men.

Yeah, this is it for me. Everyone is nuts. This season especially is reminding me a bit of Seinfeld, where he's playing the straight man and everyone around him is unhinged in some perplexingly unique way.
posted by something something at 2:57 PM on May 15, 2015


I feel like the most stable, relatable woman on this show is his ex wife. And I guess Sarah Silverman. I think Louie makes terrible dating choices, especially Pamela, but that I think isn't a criticism on the writing or show, just that the character consistently makes terrible choices, much like Mad Men's Peggy Olson.
posted by sweetkid at 11:48 AM on May 16, 2015


Well personally my criticism isn't that he makes bad dating choices, which is fine, but how many monstrous, aggressive women he meets who he isn't dating, like the mothers of his kids' friends, or the woman who beat him up in the street a few episodes ago.
posted by bleep at 1:58 PM on May 16, 2015


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