Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
First off, I was very happy to see Lilly and Jane back this week. This show gets a tremendous amount of wonderful material out of the scenes between Louie and his two daughters, with none of the cloying, saccharine crap regular sitcoms use when it comes to cute little kids. Young Ursula Parker is especially funny and natural, and had me cracking up as Jane exclaimed, “I don’t get it! I just don’t get it!” at a knock knock joke that went over her head.
The way we first heard Louie talk about her “Who didn’t let the gorilla in the ballet?” joke early in the episode in his standup routine and then actually saw her say it at the end was a really nice touch. The standup bit was hysterical, as he analyzed her thought process when she said this joke, while the payoff was just a sweet scene between father and daughter.
Of course, the main story here was Louie’s friends trying to set him up with a woman named Laurie (perfectly played by The Fighter’s Oscar-winning Melissa Leo), without bothering to tell either of them about it. What followed was an expertly-done Louie scenario – and a much more typically strong episode for the show than the season premiere. The way Louie and Laurie were both pissed off, but then had a sense of shared bemusement about the situation seemed to be heading towards a, “Hey, maybe there will be some sparks here after all…” situation.
Her then matter of factly giving him a blow job inside her truck was a surprise (to Louie as well), but it’s what followed that brought this to that special hysterical and yet pretty messed up place Louie can go.
Her proclamation, “I just sucked your d**k. You’re gonna eat my p**sy” was just one small segment of their very funny, very on point back and forth, as she demanded satisfaction, and Louie made things worse by saying stuff like, “If I had done what you did, I would feel like a whore,” while saying that going down on her would be too intimate. This was a classic male double standard of course (he had no objections to him doing something so “intimate” to him), but made all the more direct and graphic (and amusing) by the specific acts they were so openly discussing.
But it got really messed up when she went from calling him gay (seemingly to goad him into going down on her to prove his sexuality) to simply smashing his head into the window and forcing his face into her crotch. It’s one of those fascinating things… I have no doubt if the situation were reversed with a male character doing those exact actions to a female character (the initial sex act included), it would play as a ghastly, brutal sexual assault. But when Melissa Leo does that to Louis C.K., it’s a very funny moment… even though it still is, you know, a ghastly, brutal sexual assault. In fact, it’s funny almost because it’s so f**ked up. Damn if Louis C.K. doesn’t know how to tap into that weird place others wouldn’t think of going for humor. “Lick it! Lick it!”, indeed. This is a show not afraid to go to very uncomfortable and even twisted places, and I continue to admire it for that.
Despite Louie saying he’d be up for “going out” with Laurie again, I’m guessing that he won’t be seeing her again… But this is Louie, so you never know.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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