Season 1, Episode 8 "Dogpound" 8/10/10
With each passing episode of "Louie," I grow more and more convinced that the show is a worst-case-scenario broadcast of my life in ten years. A slightly-more-aware everyman with a job most would kill to have but beyond the point of motivational fire to really kick life in the ass, Louis C.K.'s portrayal of the partially true-life character is painfully relatable to anybody who's ever fallen into a funk or given up halfway to their dreams.
Tuesday's episode opens with Louie dropping his kids off with their mom for the week, which usually turns the ignition on a weeklong binge of eating and depressed listlessness. But not this time, he decides! This week will be different! So he buys a water on his way home... and a pint of ice cream is seductively calling to him from the cooler. Fast forward a full day and we find our protagonist groggily rising from a food coma, several cartons of ice cream and pizza boxes strewn about the room.
His junkfood hangover is amplified by the pot smoke from his neighbor’s apartment, so Louie heads next door to ask the guy to open a window. What ensues is a communication exchange so frustratingly odd, with a neighbor character so passive-aggressively cryptic and friendly at once, that it's not hard to share Louie's rapidly-escalating contempt for the guy.
"I don't smoke pot," the neighbor says, while sparking a joint in Louie's face. Then, just as we're convinced our annoyed friend will haul off and punch the guy, the blazer invites him in and offers him a bong rip. It's been a long while, Louie says as he sits down on the guy's bed next to his unconscious girlfriend, but he indulges... to perilous effect. He's gotten too damned high. See for yourself:
The next morning finds Louie in the kind of vodka/weed haze that renders the entire world a crowded, irritating cacophony of gibberish. Wearing sunglasses and looking like he'd been molested by Death himself, he shuffles into the local coffee shop and must resort to hand gestures as he orders himself a coffee to go. As he tries to worm his way through the hipster nest, he finds himself only able to connect with a dog outside the cafe. Somehow this translates to a new quest: "I gotta get a dog," Louie decides.
At the pound, he's swayed into bringing home an adorable but elderly dog named Bear, who proceeds to die four minutes into his new life. Louie begins to reflect on what the canine experience may mean about his life on a symbolically metaphorical level as Bear is hauled off by the animal collection truck, but the thought is cut off as his kids arrive immediately after.
With inventive camera angles enhancing various experiences and emotional depictions, Louis C.K. finds new ways to deliver the story in a gimmick-free manner that serves the production rather than hinder it. At the end of each episode it's hard not to feel just a little big fucked with, having been hit with a little heavier dose than we bargained for when we sat down to watch a sitcom about the life of a comedian. Rather than cartoonishly depressing a la Al Bundy, "Louie" is a real-life knee to the balls with a captivating level of Willy Loman-esque gravitas and underdog charm. You can't help but want to give the guy a damned hug half the time.
