the monster in the dark

I have seen every episode of Louie (2010–?).

I will prob­a­bly nev­er watch an­oth­er episode of Louie ever again.

My fa­vorite episode, hands down, is S5E5, Un­ti­tled (2015). It is one of the best episodes of the show, and ar­guably may be the best. Or, at least it was. It used to be my favorite.

I don’t re­al­ly have any feel­ings about the show any­more, so I guess I don’t re­al­ly have a fa­vorite episode, ei­ther. It isn’t ru­ined for me, but I don’t think I can ever go back and re­watch it. It is now a thing of the past. This is a choice I make for my­self. Oth­ers have to de­cide what they want to do. I don’t know that there are any black and white an­swers. Does watch­ing the show make you a bad per­son? I don’t know that it does. Does it mean you’re tac­it­ly en­dors­ing his be­hav­ior? I don’t re­al­ly know. I think about it a lot. But I don’t know these things.

‘Un­ti­tled’ is un­like any oth­er episode of the se­ries. It is sur­re­al, dark, and twist­ed, while still man­ag­ing to be hu­mor­ous and make you think. I re­al­ly en­joy when those el­e­ments are sprin­kled through­out my en­ter­tain­ment every now and then, so I loved it.

In the episode, Louie picks up his daugh­ter af­ter a sleep­over and the moth­er of his daughter’s friend asks him to help her move a fish tank. She is di­vorced, over­whelmed, and has no­body to as­sist with things around the house. He awk­ward­ly re­fus­es to help and slips out the door, leav­ing her to break down and cry on the floor of the apart­ment. He sees her like this and still leaves.

Af­ter falling asleep in a taxi, he wakes up in his bed­room, but doesn’t re­mem­ber how he got back to his apart­ment. He goes out to the liv­ing area and his daugh­ters are play­ing chess at the din­ing room ta­ble. There’s a knock on his door. He opens the door, but there’s noth­ing there, not even a hall­way. It’s just darkness.

If you’ve seen the episode, you know what hap­pens next. Count­less movies and TV shows have tak­en the view­er in­side the dreams and night­mares of their char­ac­ters, but I can­not think of any oth­er movie or TV show I have watched that does it quite as well as this episode. Noth­ing feels cliche about it. You don’t know what’s com­ing – it all feels very nor­mal at first. When we see Louie wake up again, we find out he was hav­ing a night­mare, but be­fore that, we could have just as eas­i­ly been hav­ing it with him. It is ex­e­cut­ed per­fect­ly, and felt like so many of the dis­turb­ing dreams I’ve had in my own life. 

It is im­pres­sive how well he and his film crew man­aged to cap­ture the jar­ring im­agery, ir­reg­u­lar pac­ing, and un­usu­al at­mos­phere of a clas­sic, real life nightmare.

He con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence this through­out the episode, to the point that he no longer feels en­tire­ly cer­tain if he is awake or asleep, but he is start­ing to feel ex­haust­ed. Af­ter speak­ing to a friend and re­trac­ing his steps the day he picked up his daugh­ter, he comes to the re­al­iza­tion that these re­cur­ring night­mares are a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the sub­con­scious guilt he feels for not help­ing the woman with the fish tank.

He goes to her apart­ment, painstak­ing­ly drains the fish tank, and re­lo­cates it to an­oth­er place in the apart­ment be­fore putting it all back to­geth­er. He also does var­i­ous oth­er things for her around the house. She is hap­py, he is hap­py. The episode ends with him fi­nal­ly able to sleep sound­ly once again, and the night­mares end.

In the days since the NYT ar­ti­cle de­tail­ing the ac­cu­sa­tions of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment against him, much has been writ­ten on the mean­ing be­hind the con­tent of his show, his stand up, and the way he has por­trayed him­self through­out the years.

I’ve been think­ing a lot about that episode, just as I did af­ter I first saw it. And I thought about it a LOT af­ter I first saw it, be­cause I thought it was clever and bril­liant and just so weird and spot on and … 

it’s tak­en on a dif­fer­ent mean­ing for me now. 

As with many oth­er episodes, Louis CK was the sole di­rec­tor, sole writer, and the ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of that episode. That was all him. And his show is (was) based very much on his own life.

But was it, though? Be­cause now it seems like it was ei­ther the way he saw him­self, or the way he want­ed to be seen, not the way he re­al­ly was.

In S4E10 Pamela Part 1 (2014) (which many peo­ple now re­gard as be­ing a very clear in­di­ca­tion of his true na­ture) Louie oafish­ly and clue­less­ly fum­bles his way through many re­peat­ed and forced phys­i­cal ad­vances, all while ig­nor­ing and re­buff­ing Pamela’s at­tempts to push him away and re­sist. At one point she says, “This would be rape if you weren’t so stu­pid!” and “You can’t even rape well!” Those lines of di­a­logue are ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous and are noth­ing a woman would ever say in a sit­u­a­tion where she was be­ing forced to do some­thing sex­u­al that she did not want to do. Af­ter Louie ex­plains why he’s do­ing it (what he says re­al­ly doesn’t mat­ter here) her “no” turns into a “maybe”and he man­ages to land a kiss. They lat­er end up hav­ing a short lived re­la­tion­ship, re­in­forc­ing the idea that she se­cret­ly want­ed it all along, see?

The episode was con­tro­ver­sial when it first aired, and the con­sen­sus at the time about how it should re­al­ly be tak­en was mixed. It is in­fa­mous now, and (not that this shouldn’t have been clear be­fore) there is a very clear right way and wrong way to look upon it in light of what we know, as he has ad­mit­ted the al­le­ga­tions are true.

Re­gard­less, the episode did at­tempt to por­tray him as a hap­less dope who just doesn’t un­der­stand women and can’t do any­thing right but who tru­ly thinks he’s do­ing the right thing even though he clear­ly isn’t, but he’s still harm­less and a good guy in the end, how­ev­er ‘stu­pid’ he may be.

Go­ing back to ‘Un­ti­tled,’ it is un­set­tling and frankly just ab­surd to con­sid­er that Louis CK want­ed all of us to be­lieve that it would eat him up in­side and he would lose sleep and could not be at peace …

… be­cause he didn’t help a woman with her fish tank.
 
 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2017 Emi­ly Duchaine. Meme source.

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