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?
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