Louie: "Moving"

Season 2, Episode 3

The blurred line between fiction and reality becomes problematic

“You’re so afraid of life that you've become boring.”

-Pamela

Because it is a scripted television series, the end of every episode of Louie contains the standard “This is a work fiction…” disclaimer that keeps works like this from being sued. And while I understand and appreciate that Louie is not a completely factual retelling of C.K.’s life, it’s always struck me a bit odd that this show can claim that none of the characters within the show are purposely similar to anybody in real life. This work seems close enough to C.K.’s real life that the point in the episode where it was reveal that Louie the character only had $7,000 dollars in savings rang a bit false too me. I recognize that stand-up probably doesn’t pay as well as one might think considering how famous comics can become, but it just seems to me that Louie, who is supposedly such a good father, didn’t have more money for his children.

And yes, I know that there was a certain standup bit that dealt with this, but that was a joke (I think), and even if it wasn’t, Louie has been a family man for the past seven or so years, so where did all his damn money go? (Besides rent and alimony, obviously. I get that those would eat up a lot of his income.) But even if we can set aside this irritating discrepancy, we still can’t escape the fact that the standup bits were strangely the funniest thing in the episode.  I’m not against Louie getting serious in the episodes main sections and using the brief standup bits to break up the tension – I’ve said as much before. But tonight’s episode kept acting like it was trying to be both funny and moving, and it only really succeeded with the latter part.

Look, I like the premise of this episode, and I like how it ended on that sweet note of Louie wanting so desperately to give his daughters the best home that he could, and that we was willing to cling to an impossible dream to do it. (I especially liked the tag at the end that showed him painting his current apartment with his daughters so that they would have something resembling a fresh start, domicile-wise.) But the path that it took to get to that moment was a weird one, and it didn’t congeal into a whole as much as I would have liked.

Much like in “Pregnant”, “Moving” sought to tell a single story with multiple parts, but unlike with the premiere, it didn’t really feel as if these parts built off of one another so much as they just happened to take place after each other. I certainly liked all the various bits – Todd Barry and Pamela Adlon were equally funny in their roles (I especially liked watching Pamela try to make eggs for an apartment’s current tenant), Louie’s tour through the expensive house certainly had a nice surreal quality to it, and the scene at the banker’s was equally funny and depressing – but it didn’t fit together too nicely. The humor was there, but it didn’t build up enough/wasn’t shocking enough to be completely hilarious, and there wasn’t enough pathos to make up for the lack of humor. Nor were the surreal moments – both the house tour and that random government conspiracy with the homeless – quite weird enough to be wholly entertaining like things were back in the season one episode “Dogpound”.

I can’t help but wonder if C.K. is trying to move away from the vignette style of storytelling that he used last season. Both “Pregnant” and “Moving” told one complete story, and even the two stories of “Bummer/Blueberries” set up a pretty obvious parallel so that you knew they were meant to be in the same episode together. I respect C.K. for trying to do something different, but tonight’s episode seemed to indicate that many he should just try to tell more inventive stories in the format that worked so well last year.

Quotes, Etc:

The AV Club did a posted an interview with C.K.this week concerning (among other things) his creative process with the show, and it makes for quite an interesting read.

“It doesn’t matter that he’s Hassidic, but it’s a detail.”

“It’s going to fit, ehm, Moses.”

“Your mom ate me asshole last night. It’s was good. It wasn’t great, but it was good.”

“..but the tub isn’t full of water, it’s full of diarrhea from homeless people.”

“There’s people there now, but they’ll be out in a week.”

“Okay, we’re done with the pickle, you don’t need any more pickle…things.”

“Isn’t there…I mean, what about Obama?”

“What are the odds he’s not going to be a piece of shit?”

“There’s never been a black king of England. That’s never going to happen.”

“Every British royal looks like cock meat.”