Season Review: Louie - Season 4

In many ways, Louie Season 4 seemed more like a collection of short films than a season of television. After the standalone first few episodes, the episode consisted of a six-part romance story, a 90 minute leap back to Louie's childhood, and a three-part arc with Pamela to cap it all out. Louie has always felt like something very different for television - previous seasons of the show were marked by how each story seemed to stand on its own and occupied only as much time and space as Louis CK needed them to. So it's nice to see that, even four seasons in, Louie can continue to push television to new and surprising limits.

But what made this season such a compelling television season, despite its short film limits, was the way it played with consistent ideas through-out each episode. The season seemed intent on fleshing out the women in Louie's life and analyzing how he communicates with them. "Model" and "So Did the Fat Lady" showcased two fairly random women that take an interest in Louie and traced the unique ways why each relationship is, more or less, doomed to fail. "Into the Woods" takes us back to Louie's childhood to see Louie's relationship with the first important woman in his life - his mother. The "Pamela" episodes take everything we learn about Louie through the season and turns it into a satisfying finish. And at the center of all of this is the gigantic "Elevator" arc, which takes the deepest look at Louie's life by putting a budding new relationship up against his relationship with his ex-wife as well as his daughters.

All of this gave Louie some of its most powerful material yet, whether it be the twisted dreamlike reality of "Model" to Vanessa's painfully perfect monologue about the unfair treatment of overweight women or the great flashback scene with Louie and his wife. And having an overarching narrative gave all of these scenes an extra sense of purpose that really elevated (NO PUT INTENDED) the season as a whole. And if some parts of the season didn't quite work - I thought the Pamela arc was a little shaggy and muddled on the whole - it still all came together to create one of the most thoughtful seasons of television of the year. I'm really interested to see where Louis CK takes it next, whenever and however it might return.

Final Grade: A-

Season Review: Veep - Season 3

I chose this picture because it's so delightfully weird to see a picture where these characters look happy to be around each other.

Anyway! In its first two seasons, Veep was one of the shows that made me laugh the most but it was also a show that I rarely thought about much when it wasn't airing. That's not such a bad thing, really. Not every show has to be a deep, thought-provoking experience - it's totally okay if a show just purely entertains you if it does it well, and Veep did it damn well. And yet, the game totally changed at the end of the second season, when POTUS announced that he would not be seeking re-election and Selena decided that she was going to attempt to fill his shoes. Selena's campaign has given Veep a sense of focus it's never quite had before, and that focus has allowed it to both deepen its characters and make some some of television's more poignant political satire of recent times. This was most evident in episodes like "The Choice", where Selena must choose which side of the abortion debate to side with, and "Alicia", which pulled off the narrative trick of looking at Selena Meyer's world through an outsiders' eyes. What's interesting about this season of Veep, though, was how the fundamentals of the show remained the same. Selena still had plenty of screw-ups, sure. She still had a team fill of self-obsessed assholes only concerned with their own political advancements, yes. And she was still a fairly awful human being and an arguably equally as bad politician, backing her way out of massive screw-ups without ever actually taking responsibility for them. But what this season changed was the way people received her. She wasn't a joke anymore - she was someone running a fairly legitimate and, for the most part, fairly successful political campaign. This is most evident in the debate episode, where Selena humorously forgets her own slogan and pulls something awful out of her ass, but the "something awful" actually wins her points. This allowed the show to make some seriously insightful satire about how the state of American politics and what it actually takes to succeed in them. 

Veep ended its season this year with an even bigger plot twist than it did last year - just as Selena's campaign was beginning to slide off-course, the president announced that he would not be finishing out his term, thereby making Selena president of the United States. It sets Veep off an interesting narrative path that should provide incredibly interesting, and it also caps off a season of half-hilarious, half-disturbing political satire.

Final Grade: A-

Orange is the New Black - "Hugs Can Be Deceiving" and "A Whole Other Hole"

How appropriate is it that these two episodes are getting lumped together in the review order? Both episodes deal with mental illness in such upfront but completely disparate ways - and yet, they're equally tragic. LET'S GET TO IT.

 "Hugs Can Be Deceiving"

There are few Orange is the New Black characters I wanted to see a flashback more than Crazy Eyes Suzanne. Initially introduced to us as mentally unstable to a terrifying degree, the first season gradually tore her apart and revealed how she was just a troubled girl genuinely trying to do right at her core. This allowed the series to make some compelling points about mental illness, points that are made stronger than ever in "Hugs Can Be Deceiving", which finally answers some questions about Suzanne's past that have no doubt been nagging at all of you every night, even when you least expected them. The first, and most important - "what's with her white parents?". We soon learn that, no, this isn't a Louie thing. Suzanne was adopted, thought to be her parents' only shot at a child until they miraculously conceived her younger sister four years later. But to their credit, the birth of their new baby didn't influence them to push Suzanne out of the spotlight, despite her apparent mental health issues and her struggle to fit in with the often closed-minded, WASP-y life she was thrust into. No, it made them push harder. And while the show doesn't exactly demonize her parents for this, it demonstrates that even trying their best, they simply didn't have the resources or even the knowledge about how to deal with someone like Suzanne. Society, really, has no idea what the fuck to do with her, and that even boils down to the society of Litchfield, who relegates her to roles like "time keeper" to stop her from ruining Jenga again. It's a heartbreaking truth, one that comes to circle in the final flashback to Suzanne's past, when we see her getting stage fright at her high school graduation and running off the stage as her classmates snicker. Even the people who want to support Suzanne - whether it be her parents or her fellow inmates - simply just can't. But then...enter Vee, who at this point is mostly a pretty mysterious figure but is obviously someone who knows how to read people. Vee probably doesn't fully understand Suzanne, but she seems to understand that no one does, and she immediately uses that to con her way into Suzanne's trust. She may not completely understand why she's lonely, but she understands that she is, and she knows she can do something about it. And just as Taystee was lured in by Vee's promise of a family she never thought she could have, Suzanne is lured in by Vee's promise of being the only one who can at least kind of understand what's going on in her mind. 

While this episode is clearly dominated by Suzanne, credit also has to be given to Piper, who makes her return to Litchfield in a way that seems to directly address the criticisms lured at her last season. This could all seem too cutesy or self-aware, but I've always felt the show wants us to see Piper's shortcomings. So when Piper comes in as a seemingly changed woman who's had her heart hardened by the system, it feels genuine rather than a character reversal. This is especially evident when she's playing off of Soso, a young new inmate who shares many of the same fears and shortcomings that Piper had when she first entered Litchfield last season. Piper finally giving in and telling Soso to shut the fuck up and get over it is perhaps the moment where she officially leaves her "deer in headlights" old self behind and officially becomes The New Piper. So who is The New Piper? We're not entirely sure yet, but if that speech calling out Soso's silly bullshit is any indication, it's someone who's going to be a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

"A Whole Other Hole"

If "Hugs Can Be Deceiving" shows us one end of the mental health spectrum, then "A Whole Other Hole" takes the complete opposite approach while still more or less having the same thesis statement. Suzanne's level of mental illness is immediately recognizable. It's completely overt, and while it's initially scary and potentially violent, its obviousness allows it to be dealt with in ways that don't fix the problem but at least allow the people in Suzanne's life to deal with it the best way they can. Someone like Suzanne is someone whose behavior strikes up all of the typical discussions about mental illness, the kind of person that you may very well think of when you hear those words. But "A Whole Other Hole" covers the other kind of mental illness - the covert one. That's the kind of mental illness where you may not even know the person is mentally ill. Hell, for most of Season 1, Morello seemed like one of the more well-adjusted inmates, someone who apparently had a light at the end of the tunnel that allowed her to get through her days with a pep in her step that many of the inmates didn't have. And then, in one traumatizing flashback and one incredibly misguided decision, that entire image comes crashing down in an instant.

It's an incredibly interesting counterpoint to Suzanne's brand of mental illness that makes what Orange is the New Black is saying about the topic all the more interesting. We see Suzanne's behavior and we immediately label her as crazy - hell, her nickname is Crazy Eyes. But Morello lives out her mental illness in ways that are less obvious but equally as harmful to her surroundings. She's created a delusional life for herself, a life that can completely escape her fellow inmates, her family members, and even herself. Suzanne's story tells us that treatment for the mentally ill often fails because no one knows how to deal with it - Morello's story tells us that treatment for the mentally ill often fails because no one even knows about it, at least not until it's already caused destruction. It's a bleak take on a complex issue, and Orange is the New Black knows it's not capable of giving the answers. But it's putting the question out there, in hopes that someone can, and that's damn admirable.

The other major plot thread of "A Whole Other Hole" also focuses on the dismantlement of something that was established in Season 1 - the Taystee and Poussey friendship. What I truly love about this season of Orange is the New Black is the way it takes everyone - even people who were mostly relegated to comedic background roles in Season 1 - and asks us to feel for them. Poussey was never much more than Taystee's sidekick in Season 1, but this episode opens her up in ways that I wasn't even sure was possible in Season 1. By revealing her desire for a relationship with the person who's most important to her life right now, we get a layer of complexity to Poussey's psyche that wasn't there before. And as with many of those other layers revealed to us this year, it's also revealed to Vee, who uses it to continue the wedge she's attempting to drive into the Litchfield ecosystem. Not only is this season of Orange is the New Black asking us to consider all of these peoples' feelings, it's also asking us to see how those feelings often send them directly into traps. 

Oh, and Larry and Polly like each other or some shit. Who cares?

Louie - "Into the Woods"

There are some episodes of Louie that take a while to sit me. I would guess that's pretty much natural with a show like Louie, a show that's constantly pushing the format of television to greater and greater heights - and weirder and weirder places. For a lot of its running time, I wondered just what the hell "Into the Woods" was doing. It seemed to be a short film about why you shouldn't smoke pot in middle school randomly plopped into the middle of what's been a very carefully constructed season of television, and while I enjoyed it for basically all of its running time, I wondered what purpose it was serving to the shows' narrative as a whole. And hell, maybe it wasn't serving any purpose! Maybe Louis CK just felt like telling this story and didn't give a damn about taking a break from the narrative he had set up for the season thus far. That may very well be part of it, and considering the show we're dealing with here, it'd be par for the course and completely acceptable, in my books.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize "Into the Woods" lines up pretty directly with Louie's narrative arc this season. It is, ultimately, a story about how Louie's turbulent adolescent relationship with his mother is paving way to how he's dealing with a nearly parallel relationship he's experiencing with his daughter. In a season that has been marked by Louie's relationships with the various women in his life and the trouble he has communication with them, it's incredibly interesting to see all of this traced back to his relationship with his mother as a child. That's influencing his relationship with his daughter, but it's doing so in ways that may very well be the opposite of how we might expect them to be. Instead of making Louie's mistakes force him into hypersensitivity over his discovery of his daughter smoking weed, it influences him to be open to her - both because his mother wasn't, but more importantly, because he wasn't open to his mother, a woman who obviously cared about him and was seriously hurt by his actions.

But I don't think all of this story is just about Louie's relationship with his mother and daughters. A good portion of it is just a good old-fashioned story about what it's like to be a boy on the cusp of being a "man", and I don't know that I've ever seen an episode of television that deals with the strange mixed messages you receive at that age as well as Into the Woods does. Louie is told it's time for him to step up and start "being a man", but when he actually has to do that, he really has no fucking clue. And the fact that it all feels so big and cinematic - right down to Jeremy Renner kissing a cat! - only adds to the power of the story, even if it's about a seemingly far away event in Louie's life. While previous seasons of Louie were mostly just about Louis CK doing whatever the fuck he wants to do, this season seems insistent on showing us just how every element of Louie's life has impacted who he is today. It's an incredibly interesting departure for the show, and I can't wait to see where it all ends up next week. 

Orange is the New Black - "Thirsty Bird" and "Looks Blue, Tastes Red"

Orange is the New Black may very well be the show whose new season I was most anticipating this year, and that says a lot considering this year saw things like Dan Harmon's return to Community and Louie return from a two-year hiatus. But Orange's first season was such a "lightning in a bottle" experience, a show that seemingly came out of nowhere to offer us a refreshing and completely unique experience that couldn't be paralleled anywhere else in pop culture. Shows that splash onto the scene like that go in one of two directions in their second seasons - they either improve and solidify the hype and praise they've been showered with or they completely collapse under the weight of their own expectations. I was genuinely unsure as to which category Orange would fall into, but thank the lord it's the first one, because I don't know what I would do if a show with as much potential as this one fell off the wagon. So let's get down to those first two episodes.

Thirsty Bird

There has perhaps never been an episode of Orange is the New Black that utilized its distribution model as well as this one. If Orange were a "traditional" television show, an episode like this would send fans into shock and rage. You mean the SEASON PREMIERE completely leaves out all of the fan favorite inmates and focuses in on BORING FUCKING PIPER, aka JASON BIGGS' FIANCE?!?! While I like Piper more than a lot of other people, I have to admit that even I was initially slightly let down when I found out I would need to wait until episode two to see the rest of the inmates I had grown attached to over the course of the first season. Then I remembered this is Netflix, and I can just watch the next episode and see all of those people again in a matter of seconds.

This is how "Thirsty Bird" manages to be a compelling study of its protagonist without sending us all into a state of panic about where everyone else is!!! And once you realize that the other inmates will be back soon enough, you start to realize just how great of a measure this episode is to how much Piper has progressed since we first met her. The Piper we met in the pilot was someone who seemed to have no issues following the system, because until now, the system had always done her right. She told the truth, because why shouldn't she? She made a mistake in her younger days - days that are now far behind her - and she was willing to face the consequences and get on with her life. Of course, as the first season progressed, we discovered that the Piper that made those mistakes wasn't buried as far down as she liked to pretend she was, and we started to see the anger and frustration hiding behind her perfectly sculpted image. This episode solidifies this with a set of far back flashbacks to Piper's youth, where she tells her mother about her father having an affair and is punished for it. Assumingly, that led to the Piper that dated an international drug dealer and carried a suitcase full of contraband across country lines, only to regress back into the safe and sheltered mindset she was born with while burying her rebellious and angry confusion at what's right and what's wrong. All of this is summed up quite well when Piper learns she's been transported to Chicago to testify in a trial against the drug lord that Alex worked for, and Alex warns her to lie and say she's never met him to protect herself. This is where there's a split between the Piper of Alex's world and the Piper that's about to marry Jason Biggs. The latter version of Piper would tell the truth despite the danger it might present to her, for the good of the system (and the good of not facing possible perjury charges). But the former version would say fuck the system and lie about her involvement because not doing so could result in her death - or, at least, Alex's death. The former version of Piper, once again, wins out - as it seems to be doing quite a lot lately. 

And then it turns out, Alex pulls a Jason Biggs Piper move and is rewarded with an early release, while Piper watches her walk away from behind the bars of a cell. It puts Piper in a position she's never been in before: a position where she's been screwed over. It's a hell of an interesting way to kick off the season, and we don't even get a minute of screentime from Crazy Eyes Suzanne. That's a great season premiere.

"Looks Blue, Tastes Red"

HERE they are!

Since "Thirsty Bird" was quite an anomaly of an opener, it's up to "Looks Blue, Tastes Red" to serve up the typical "back to school" vibe of a season premiere, and it does so quite well without any of that "new season" awkwardness that those kinds of episodes occasionally have. Indeed, the shows' timeline more or less means that there's really no "new beginnings" for the inmates of any kind - we're more or less right where we left off, give or take a month, and it's life as usual for just about everyone at Litchfield. What is new in this episode is the information we receive about Taystee, one of the more popular breakout characters of the first season but also a character we didn't know all that much about. This episode changes that, giving us a look back at Taystee's life - a life completely dominated by the dark side of the "system". 

Let's talk about the "system" a little bit. Orange is the New Black has always been a show that's deeply skeptical of powers that be and how those powers tend to benefit some while ruining the lives of others. But in these first two episodes, that bell has rang through clearer than ever, particularly as we lie Piper and Taystee's backgrounds next to each other. Piper comes from the positive influence of the system; Taystee squarely the negative. And yet, they've wound up in the same place. Sure, Piper has far more of a support system than Taystee, but it's a support system that's ready to give up on her at any moment, if the scenes with Jason Fucking Biggs are to believed. (Can we please talk about Jason Fucking Biggs and his dad going to a gay bathhouse together? I hope we get more on that development. Maybe Jason Fucking Biggs' dad was once a drug mule for his past gay lover too?). If these first two episodes are any indication, this season of Orange is the New Black seems like it's going to go even deeper into the concept of privilege, asking the differences in those who get it and those who don't - and how it can be taken away

But let's get to Taystee herself. This was perhaps Taystee's best episode yet, as it showcased just how capable she really is and just how well she could fit and thrive in society if someone would just give her a fucking chance. From the time she was just a child eating blue ice pops that taste red, no one expected enough from her to give her the time of day. And yet, every time she's given a challenge, she shines. She has ambition, drive, talent...she was able to make heroin dealing seem like a creative endeavor. There's no reason she shouldn't have been able to make something out of herself...except for her background, which is literally the only thing that could've held her back. And it did. Completely. Anyone who still honestly believes America is an equal playing ground where everyone has equal opportunity needs to take a look at people like poor Taystee. The episode ends with Taystee's heroin dealing boss/de facto mother showing up out of nowhere, and it makes me wonder just where this is going. The final flashback seemed to strongly hit at her death, which would mean the only person who ever saw what Taystee could do was gone. But she's not. She's here. And she's probably bringing some pretty bad shit with her. But it's hard not to see her peering over Taystee pleading her way into a $10 commissary credit and get the image of a proud mother looking upon her daughters' achievements. Granted, that mother is likely the one who landed her where she is and those achievements are a small victory at best, but it still promises an incredibly interesting dynamic for Taystee going forward.

The episode features a myriad of other storylines and bits of storylines, from a fun plot that gives us a sweet mother/daughter story with Daya and her mom to a sad slice of Red's dire straits to an interesting scene where two of the shows' bigger villians  (Pennsatucky and Healy) play off of each other, but it all comes back to that idea of these people reeving the wrong end of the stick. After all, the inmates' petty crimes have ruined their lives; Fig's have given her more power. With the resolution to Piper's story in "Thirsty Bird", I imagine this dynamic is going to play itself out in some fairly interesting ways as we progress through the season.

Louie - "Elevator" overall review and "Pamela (Part 1)"

Last weekend, following the tragic events caused by the crazed misogynist Elliott whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is-and-no-I-don't-feel-like-looking-it-up-because-he's-scum-and-doesn't-deserve-it, a movement spread like wildfire around social media, in which women spoke up against the deep fears and tensions they are forced to put up with on a daily basis simply because they were given a sex organ upon birth that required as such. Now, if you have spent any time on the internet, you know about this movement, and I don't need to waste anytime explaining this - unless this is 3,000 years in the future where there's no such thing as gender anymore and you're reading this on your toenails. In which case, hi! How's Saturday Night Live this year?

Anyway, the movement is sparking a lot of much needed debate about gender roles and equality in a country that likes to pretend it's fixed everything when everyone really knows that's far from the truth. This is aligning up quite nicely with this season of Louie, which is a season that seems to be about Louie's connection with the women in his life and, on a deeper level, the complicated relationships and distance between men and women in general. Louis CK has always had his thumb on issues of feminism (how many times have you seen his "women dating men is like men dating bears" stand-up act circulating around in the past week?), but this season is not only covering the issues of feminism but shining a big, intrusive flashlight onto the ugly corners of gender inequality. It's a season that has been painfully funny in some parts, deeply touching in many, and almost always kind of uneasy. This was certainly present in the terrific standalones "Model" and "So Did the Fat Lady", but it's the "Elevator" arc that brought all of these layers to the forefront of the show.

"Elevator" began in its first few parts as seemingly a sort of male fantasy. Louie has connected with Amia, a woman who he obviously has some sort of biological attraction to but literally cannot become emotionally attached to, due to their language barrier. It is basically the ultimate "manic pixie dream girl" story- Amia and Louie are free to simply wander around the city, not having to be bogged down with things like feelings and disagreements and words or conversation at all. This is all in stark contrast to what's happening with his daughter and, more importantly, his ex-wife. Janet has the power of words - to hurt Louie, to bring him down, to make him feel inferior, to remind him of their once promising past, to remind him of everything that could've been, to remind him of everything they weren't supposed to be, and just to simply remind him. His life with Amia is one where he can escape all of that and just be. Amia can't hurt him, she can only give him strength. He doesn't even have to understand her. But that's not a relationship. That's not what forming a connection with another human being is. And there's a point, right when both Janet and Evanka call Louie out for not going all the way with Amia, when Louie realizes that Amia is just as important as him as any of the women he can actually speak to were. And after he has sex with her and she feels immediate regret, it's clear that his relationship with Amia is a human relationship after all. That leads to the quite beautiful final installment of the "Elevator" arc, which finds a natural disaster forcing Louie to mend his connection with Janet using less communication than usual (because she's too freaked out to even speak correctly) and finds him putting a bow on his time with Amia by, for the first time, listening to her. The final point of "Elevator" seems to be "hey, women aren't here just to please you, assholes. They're people, too, and you need to sit down and work out your shit with them and respect them, because human relationships aren't magical and easy and perfect."

It seems like an obvious point, but then situations like the one in the tense and surprisingly pitch-black "Pamela (Part 1") arise, and you realize just how far off we really are. "Pamela (Part 1)" purposely uses one of Louis CK's famous pro-feminist stand-up bits to prop it up (one that's particularly well-known considering he performed it on SNL a few months back) and then turns around and has Louie come nauseatingly close to raping a woman he considers a friend by the end of the episode. I'm going to wait to see how the entire "Pamela" arc plays out to say too much about this one, but the contrast of that scene and the following one, where Louie attempts to teach his daughter how to safely navigate Manhattan, seems to suggest that even the "good" guys out there, the ones that know rape is wrong and would "totally never do that #NotAllMen"), have the capability of devolving into violence. It's a damn uncomfortable position to take, but what is Louie if it's not purposely shoving our face into truths we'd rather ignore?