Last season on Louie, F. Murray Abraham, an Oscar winner for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus, played one-half of a couple looking to have a threesome with Louie. (“What right did you have to assume that?”). This time around, he’s Louie’s extravagant Uncle EXCELSIOR!, a man who implies having a “hunting dog by his side and boots” means you’re gay, orders Cornish game hens at the Russian Tea Room in the middle of the afternoon, and criticizes his nephew for not seeing his father in over two years. Although Louis C.K. has used the same actor for different roles before, most famously with his mom/girlfriend played by Amy Landecker in season one, it felt especially befitting for “Dad,” of all episodes, to bring back Abraham.
It was one of the show’s more bizarre and ambiguous episodes, beginning with Louie yelling at Jane to stop playing her “beautiful” music and ending with him jumping on a Kenny Powers-approved Cam-Am Spyder, then a speedboat to avoid having to see his dad, with stops at an unhelpful electronics store, the aforementioned Tea Room, a poker game, doctor’s office, and a car dealership in the middle. There wasn’t really a conclusion to speak of (that was a fantasy at the end, right? Did he even leave New York? Is he still on dad’s porch, staring blankly at nothing?), and the episode left me more with questions than answers. But Louie isn’t about resolution; it’s about foot-dragging acceptance and absurdism, and by those accounts, “Dad” was a success.
- Is this where we talk about our daddy issues?
- The actress who plays Jane, Ursula Parker, performed in Carnegie Hall when she was 8; I once saw a homeless guy take a piss on Carnegie Hall at 8 a.m.
- “Hey, I was helping you.” “No, you weren’t.” To be fair, I’d laugh at Louie falling over that box, too. Wasn’t that the lesson of “Duckling”?
- I enjoyed the fake-out after Abraham tells Louie about his dad, and the camera pans over to Louie’s stunned face. TV has trained us to expect an act break there and none came.
- CAN LOUIE DO (ANOTHER) POKER EPISODE? Invite Sarah Silverman back, too.
- Between the sass-talking GPS and Louie’s boat escape, I couldn’t not think of Knight Boat, the Crime-Solving Boat. “You don’t have to yell, Michael. I’m all around you.”
- “Maggot sucking a dead cat’s face” is the new “yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye.”
- Nice of Tommy from Quinzee to drop by, YA FACKIN’ QUEEHS.
