“For me, the best “Louie”s have always been the most
destabilizing, and one of my favorites is “Telling Jokes/Set-up,” in which
Louie himself was raped, in a car, by Laurie (Melissa Leo). It raised the
question: Why is this funny rather than horrifying? One answer is the sheer
absurdity of it: while a woman might rape a man, she couldn’t do so in the way
Laurie does, by scrambling up his head like a spider, then planting her vagina
in his face. It was a vulnerable move, played as an attack. In contrast, the Louie-Pamela
assault felt provocative specifically because it seemed so real, without the
scaffolding of jokes and dreams. The show often plays with such deniability:
Was the scene in which Louie rescues his pleading ex from a hurricane a
fantasy? Or a “true” story? The Amia affair might feel like lost love until you
sought out the translations of her dialogue online, in which she seems more
put-upon: when Louie insists that she’s upset because she’s Catholic and feels
guilty about sex, she shouts, “I want to be alone and I’m not even Catholic!”
Scenes like this were a test of audience trust; if they created
misunderstanding, so be it. But there’s a different kind of success, which
comes of creating something so unsettling that it’s worth debating, defending,
and changing your mind about. While this wasn’t my favorite season of “Louie,”
it did embody my favorite quality of the show: its comfort with leaving the
door open, the work unfinished.”
