Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
It was amusing this week to see that Jay Leno and NBC were cool with imagery (and the actual Tonight Show set) being seen on Louie in the manner they were used, but CBS clearly did not sign off on anything – hence, the fake posters for series like Lethal Renegade and The Big House in the “CBS offices.” I’m guessing they didn’t like the idea of a story based around the “David Letterman is retiring” scenario that one day will become real for them – and didn’t want to be part of something so speculative on the subject. (But sure, I bet Seinfeld’s name would be part of the mix!)
This episode was another great mixture of comedy and drama – almost evenly split, in that the first half had some of the funniest material of the season, while the second half (Well, he final scene, really) got really, really intense.
Louie’s opening monologue about putting too much thought into buying a Blu-ray player was hysterical, as he talked about reading an Amazon review from, “An insane person who’s been dead for months because he shot his wife and then himself.”
What’s interesting is we never see anything beyond Louie’s introduction on Leno – so we don’t know what exactly it was that he said/did that “went viral” (love Louie’s, “I’m what?!” response to that). I think that’s a good choice – we all know Louie is a funny guy, and it’s left to our imagination to decide what it was that has given him his moment in the sun. How great was Louie throwing down the coat they tried to put on him as he walked out onstage?
Garry Marshall has been on a role of directing crappy movies lately like New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, but I’ll always love him as the network exec in Soapdish (“peppy and cheap!”). That being the case, it was great seeing him show up in a similar role here, as the CBS exec who was being brutally honest with Louie.
What a monologue Marshall gave Louie in the closing moments of this show! The fact that he was so straight up with Louie about seeing him as a low-cost backup for Jerry Seinfeld and that if Louie failed, it would kill Louie’s career but not his, was funny, in that oh-so dark way this show can be. But then it got just intense and emotional (complete with stirring music), as Marshall’s character began going deep on where Louie is at in his life, saying he’d probably peaked and “You’re circling failure in a rapidly decaying orbit.” It was uncomfortable and intense and awesome.
And it’s just the beginning of a three-parter, so I’m excited.
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