Horace and Pete “Episode 9” Review: The Tragedy of Pete

Louis CK shows off his dramatic acting chops on Horace and Pete

Some brief thoughts on Horace and Pete’s 9^th episode right after I use Hulk Hogan’s settlement money to educate every kid in Africa…

“The world is too noisy and distracted to probably ultimately survive. Everyone needs to shut the f***k up. The answers are in the silence. Monks set themselves on fire to protest and make this point. Just consider it.”

-Gary Shandling

Due to time constraints lets get straight to the bullets:

• Wow. Just wow. The final 10 minutes or so of “Episode 9” involving Pete’s hallucination of himself and Uncle Pete sharing a moment in the bar utterly floored me. The scene is a perfect example of how the half stage play, half serialized television show format of the show can come together in masterful fashion. The scene is as restrained as can be as it involves Pete and Uncle Pete (hooray for the return of Alan Alda!) simply arguing back and forth. Both hilariously realize the situation they find themselves in (one being dead, the other having a mental episode and both existing within one of the latter’s hallucinations) and understand that they are there to workout problems that they could not in real life. The sequence is stunning, one of the most intriguing and successful depictions of mental illness that I can remember. It’s hard to make me cry, but the moment of Pete just wanting to have one more moment of comfort in the Bar while his life was going to hell was so beautiful and heartbreaking that the tears began to flow. It’s also hard to blow me away once in a season of television let alone on two separate occasions, but Louis CK has now managed to do so with Horace and Pete.

• But “Episode 9” was not a one trick pony as the episode was great even before its stunning final third. Louis CK has shown off a lot of versatility as both a writer and a director throughout Horace and Pete, but in “Episode 9” it was time for Louis CK the dramatic actor to shine. Horace was hit hard by the disappearance of his brother/cousin after having to hear the tragic story that the injured Tricia told about attempting to weed Pete off of his ever shortening supply of meds. It culminated in Horace having a bit of a breakdown behind the bar and ultimately retreating to Pete’s empty room as a static camera shoots his misery. It was a great showcase for Louis CK who has become a really effective dramatic actor. His performance here elevated the early scenes of the episode which were already powerful and affecting on their own.

• It was also a beautiful showcase for Louis CK the director who used restraint in an absolutely beautiful fashion. When Horace enters Pete’s room the camera just sits in the corner and lingers. It allows for an emotional moment to linger without interference, the camera never gets in the way it’s just Louis CK, silence and an empty room. The same thing applies to the final ten minutes. It takes a massive amount of restraint to put forth a depiction of mental illness that is so subdued yet so tragic and sweet. We have hardly ever gotten the full scale of Pete’s mental illness on screen (we get it briefly in the first episode where Pete has to go off of his meds for a bit due to a switch in distributor) yet through indirect means Louis CK has gotten the point across in a way that may be even more impactful. The final scene was a perfect depiction of this. A lesser work would have had displayed the tragedy of Pete by showing him entirely off of his rocker doing something truly horrid in his final moments of freedom. Instead Louis CK places the focus on a moment of comfort amongst the mental chaos that is Pete, which allows the tragedy to truly sink in. Pete is just a normal guy, but instead of getting to live his life normally, he has to deal with this horrid disease that despite all of his efforts he cannot rid of.

• This week in bar talk, online dating and the Hulk Hogan settlement. The online dating scene was well done by Louis CK and in a way foreshadowed what was to come by presenting someone who is sick of normalcy while Pete can’t somehow achieve it. The Hulk Hogan chat was relatively out of left field but at the very least it transitioned very well into Horace’s outburst.

• We also get a cameo from actual New York mayor Bill De Blasio! De Blasio gets to show up briefly to fulfill Pete’s wish that he set up a couple of weeks ago precisely at the moment where Pete has disappeared. It’s both a sad moment as Pete’s wish only gets fulfilled after its too late but it’s a scene that also provides levity through the bar regulars asking their usual set of wacky questions (such as “is the NYPD bigger than the French army”). It’s a fun little cameo for De Blasio and a well plotted scene from Louis CK.

That’s it for now… I believe that next week is the finale of either this “season” or of the series itself (at least this is what the future episode list on the Louis CK website suggests). If this is the case I will be back with a bigger piece on the show next week…

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Review: Why so serious?

The DC trinity all together in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

I think it most apt to begin this review with an apology. It’s not an apology to any particular person, but rather the film Avengers: Age of Ultron. Almost a year ago I sat here and wrote about the film claiming its emptiness made it feel like a “two-and-a-half-hour commercial for future Marvel films.” It’s not that I don’t stand by that statement 10 months later, I’m still not enamored about how Age of Ultron ultimately tried to cram future movies down my throat, but at the very least it had some fun, and care surrounding it.

I say this because in comparison to Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Age of Ultron does a masterful job of balancing a fun breezy plot and set up for future films. Dawn of Justice is literally a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the upcoming Justice League movies. There is no narrative progression, no characters that have more than one-character trait, but hey look here are some vignettes for characters you are going to get the see in a Justice League movie! Dawn of Justice is simply baffling there is no other way to put it.

As mentioned earlier there is literally no plot progression in this film. The plot essentially boils down to Superman (Henry Cavill) getting a lot of attention after the events of Man of Steel, some of it’s good some of it’s bad. Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) does not like Superman for reasons that are still baffling to me. Lex Luther (Jessie Eisenberg) likes neither of them and is evil. A mild amount of chaos ensues.

Storytelling according to Dawn of Justice involves stitching together a bunch of vignettes with little if any through line holding them together and hoping for the best. There is no forward momentum and no since that one thing leads to another. Instead plot points just kind of happen and the filmmakers just pretend that this constitutes actual storytelling. There is no central idea or heartbeat that moves the film forward it’s just scene after scene after scene of emptiness without any point or value. It feels like instead of stitching, or even piling, plot points together the filmmakers just threw a bunch of things they wanted to get in a hoped that some sort of narrative would come of it. Ultimately by the time we get to the showdown between Batman and Superman so much pointless plot has been thrown at the screen it’s impossible to care.

Worse is that Dawn of Justice, despite its brutally long run time, has no time to build any characters. I’m fine with Superman not being much of a character as even in his best story he’s often relegated to being a symbol, but in order to do that everyone else around him has to be somewhat interesting. The problem is that the characters in Dawn of Justice are embarrassingly two dimensional, and even that is being generous. Ben Affleck’s Batman is officially the worst depiction of the character I have ever seen on screen, even topping George Clooney and his bat nipples. Batman is relegated to being a petulant child. He’s a man who can’t understand nuance, his reasons for initially hating Superman (before the film tries to give the character a semi intelligent motivation) are baffling, and blind range seems to be his only personality trait. He is the most static, brutally uninteresting, and soul draining frustrating adaptation of the character ever put onto screen, and with Batman that is saying something.

Even worse is that there are none of the other characters are any better. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) has gone from semi competent journalist in Man of Steel to a plot device in Dawn of Justice. She shows up only when the plot deems it convenient and then leaves without any further explanation. The film has no interest in developing her into a real human being in any capacity. Even worse is Wonder Woman who is just there for fan service. There is no pay off to her appearance, nor does she have any sort of character. She’s just kind of there. But worst of all in the character department is Lex Luther, who literally can’t pin down a consistent character. The film can never decide whether it wants him to be an eccentric weirdo or a charismatic evil genius and his character changes in literally every scene. To say the least, it’s mind numbingly frustrating.

Even worse is the set up for future films. The filmmakers in Dawn of Justice don’t seem to know how to do anything subtly so rather than dropping hints, or putting an Easter egg after the credits, the film literally stops for about 5-10 minutes just so we can be introduced to these characters that for some unknown reason we would like to see team up to fight for truth justice and the American way. It’s just another example of how lazy the storytelling in Dawn of Justice is. There is nothing clever, subtle, or creative it’s just all sledgehammer storytelling all the time.

But worst of all is that I don’t know how much of the I can blame on Zach Snyder himself. His direction is the best part of this mess and many of the otherwise completely generic action sequences are saved by his eye for shooting them. I’ve never had a problem with Snyder’s stylistic tendencies and without him this mess is most likely worse. The problems with this film ultimately feel more fundamental than Snyder going into full on Sucker Punch mode. It feels like either writers David S Goyer and Chris Terrio who have otherwise done some good work either had no idea how to make a screenplay all of a sudden or there was a lot of studio pressure in making this film. I’m not one to speculate but given the amount of money and future investment Warner Bros sunk into this mess I can imagine it being the latter. 

No matter whether it’s studio pressure, bad writing, or Zach Snyder being Zach Snyder Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is an awful mess from beginning to finish. The plot never moves, the characters never even attempt to develop and the film is so painfully long. It’s a film that has so little in it that it feels even more insulting that Warner Bros used this movie entirely to try and get me to come back and see more of these catastrophes. If this qualifies being the best possible trailer for the Justice League movies the Warner Bros are going to need to hire a new marketing team.

Grade: D

-Frederick Cholowski

Horace and Pete “Episode 8” Review: Only darkness can bring us together

Horace trying to console a depressed Pete on Horace and Pete

Some brief thoughts on Horace and Pete’s eight episode right after I have a good hearty laugh…

Sorry about nothing on Horace and Pete for the last two weeks, life has been hectic… On that note it’s time to jump right into the bullets:

• I enjoyed the last two weeks of Horace and Pete without thinking they were amongst the show’s stronger efforts. “Episode 6” gave us a great Steve Buscemi performance as well as the lovely Hannah Dunne but ultimately provided what turned out only to be an interesting diversion. “Episode 7” featured the controversial trans conversation at the very end of the episode which ultimately left the feeling that Louis CK was trying to cram way too much into one 10-minute ending sequence… Again both were very solid episodes of the show with some memorable sequences but both will end up on the lower end of Horace and Pete’s spectrum (which in reality is not a knock as the bar for this show has gotten very high).

•  With that in the rear view let’s discuss this Saturday’s episode which turned out to be rather spectacular. Let’s start with Buscemi who until two weeks ago had been good but not a great focus of the show. Since episode six Steve Buscemi has had the chance to really put on the great performance shoes and the work he did in “Episode 8” was by far his best to date. The long take of Pete breaking down and crying at the realization that, due to the side effects of the drug he was taking to remain mentally stable (Probitol which is not an actual drug from what I could gather from a brief internet search), that he would have to be readmitted to the mental hospital was fantastic and Buscemi was perfect throughout. The rest of the episode which dealt with Pete trying to deal with his what his future would behold melded a great mix of darkness and sweetness as the episode saw the return of Tricia a friend of Pete’s in the mental hospital. Pete is contemplating death until Tricia shows up and by telling him what he needed to hear (and the truth as well) at that moment managed to give him enough strength to move on. The sequence both delt with Pete’s dark situation with a beautiful amount of weight, but also managed to find a certain since of hope under the veil of darkness. That mixed with the fantastic Steve Buscemi made the core of “Episode 8” very powerful.

• Louis CK is also flirting with serialization in Horace and Pete and has been doing a wonderful job over the past few episodes building to what seems like a climax of sorts. The show has been flirting with Sylvia wanting to sell the bar since its first episode, but the central conflict between Pete wanting to maintain the status quo and Sylvia wanting to blow it up by selling the space has really started rolling in the last few episodes. Louis CK weves the threads subtly enough, there is a conversation midway through “Episode 8” about how Budweiser, the only beer the bar sells, is getting more and more expensive. On top of that with Pete potentially moving out of the picture (more on that in a minute) it opens the door for Sylvia to get the ball rolling on banishing the bar once and for all.

• Was this Steve Buscemi’s last episode? I don’t know how time has worked particularly on Horace and Pete so I don’t know whether a month will pass between episodes ala Mad Men. I don’t believe he is every shown leaving the bar with Tricia but the final shot with Horace and Sylvia in the “side of the bar” pose at the end of the episode (that we’ve seen numerous times with Horace and Pete) could suggest that the shutting out of Pete from the bar’s future plans is imminent.

• Another scene worth shouting out is Lucy Taylor’s drunken rampage at the tail end of the episode. Louis CK does a wonderful little job at showing the sadness of not only alcoholism on its own but the continued perception of the disease in comparison to others. Also Lucy Taylor acts the hell out of it and makes it a memorable.

• This week in bar talk includes AI and LSD, which both involve potentially hallucinogenic personifications on human inventions… Or something…

That’s all for this week! I continue to love this show and am curious where it’s heading as we assumingly move further towards its finale!

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?