NEW YEAR'S EVE

Louie
Season 3 (2012)

I’ve already written about discovering and loving Louie a couple of months ago; as much as I’m trying to slow down and savor December part of me can’t wait for the new year, when I’ll have time to sit and watch this show from start to finish.  In the meantime I watched the last episode of Season 3, a combo Christmas/New Year’s head-trip.  

The episode begins with a close, lingering shot of Louie huddled on the couch, clutching a mug, wrapped in a blanket, a dazed look on his face.  Does he have the flu?  Has he undergone some traumatic event?  The camera then pans back to reveal that it’s Christmas morning and Louie’s two adorable daughters are happily ripping open their gifts.  As each present is joyfully revealed there’s a quick flashback to the various ordeals Louie went through getting them. 

I am totally adding wrapping paper nap to my list of annual Christmas traditions!

One of his daughters opens a beautiful doll and we get a long, darkly funny scene showing Louie desperately trying to fix the doll’s broken eyes prior to wrapping it.  It’s a comedy of errors with a significant creep factor given the doll’s eyeless face.  It involves Louie drilling through the doll's head, disassembling its body, scrubbing it in the toilet, painting its face and, ultimately, weeping.  In typical Louie fashion these scenes are equal parts tenderhearted, comedic and a bit stressful.

Doll Surgery

After Louie’s daughters depart with his ex-wife he quickly dismantles the tree, shaking the ornaments off and throwing it out the window, before crawling into bed in a funk.  His sister (surprise Amy Poehler cameo!) calls and invites him to Mexico for New Year’s.  Louie then has a dream about his grown-up daughters and his own, wretched future self.   Upon waking (or does he?) he hallucinate/dreams that the newscasters on TV are telling him to kill himself.  One cold shower later and he’s off to the airport to meet his sister’s family in Mexico.

I’m not going to spoil what follows but if you thought any of the above sounded weird or dark you have no idea!  The rest of the episode takes the viewer, and Louie himself, to places you would never expect, especially for a Christmas episode (such as it is).  The real mystery here is what’s real and what isn’t.  Is Louie dreaming the whole time?  The rapidity and bizarre nature of what unfolds suggests it’s a fever dream but certain details root the whole thing in reality.  And then it simply ends, offering up no explanation.  After watching I started to search online to see if any interviews or anything shed any light on this surreal episode but then stopped, deciding that the ambiguity is part of the art.

And art it undeniably is.  The episode begins with a creative, albeit familiar, take on a parent’s holiday stress and then literally ends up on the other side of the world.  Like every episode of Louie I’ve seen it feels like a brilliant short film and manages to cram more emotion and impact into one half hour of TV than most series manage in their entire runs.  As a Christmas episode this may fall short but in every other way it soars.

Christmas Quotient: A 3 for the first 1/3 and then a 1 for the rest—but remember this is only indicative of how Christmasy the episode is, not the quality of the episode itself!

See It, Skip It, Own It?
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it’s definitely worth seeing (and discussing and contemplating).