Review: ‘Louie’ – ‘The Road, Part 1’: Left luggage

A quick review of last night's “Louie” coming up just as soon as I get a hot pour bun…

Given that last night's episode was the first half of a two-parter that will wrap up this abbreviated season, and that “Louie” multi-part stories don't always fully reveal themselves until they're done, I was half-tempted to just pass on writing up “The Road, Part 1” and returning next week to discuss the finale.

But whether the vignettes this week were setting up some larger point for the next – perhaps about Louie finally making a human connection on this road trip he's just hoped to survive – I thought each individual story was interesting enough that the episode was able to function on its own. We get a glimpse of Louie's packing ritual (he is not the only man of a certain age and size who makes sure to include at least one extra shirt for sweat-related emergencies), witness another airplane indignity (with the flight attendant faux-sweetly shrugging off the damage she just did to his knee with the food cart), and then get to see how frustrating the Cincinnati stop is for a man who just wants to be left alone because he's gotten too old for this shit, even though it's part of the job.

Louie brings Mike the car service driver to tears by telling him that he has no more need for adventure, or for meeting new people, when he's on the road, yet the sequence at the airport provides him with an adventure he actually seems to enjoy, even as it costs him his suitcase and all its contents. When you watch him buying new clothes in the final scene, it's not with the frustration that we saw him going through the airport near the start of the episode, but more matter-of-factly as the cost of getting to ride around on the tarmac and seeing the bomb squad detonate his previous carry-on.

Fun, wistful stuff that may tie in thematically to whatever we get in Part 2, but that functioned just fine in the interim.

What did everybody else think? And are you okay with the season wrapping up next week, or has it felt rushed because Louis C.K. didn't want to do as many this year?

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