Louis CK shows off his dramatic acting chops on Horace and Pete
Some brief thoughts on Horace and Pete’s 9th 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?
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