Photo: KC Bailey / FX
Last week, Louie aired an episode in which his titular character encounters a confident waitress at the Comedy Cellar, finally agrees to go out with her after she dangles Stanley Cup playoff tickets, and then makes the mistake of arguing with her when she refers to herself as "a fat girl," whereupon she tells him some shit about what life is like for her. Critics showered Louis C.K., who wrote the speech (and Sarah Baker, my IRL friend, who performed it) with accolades.
James Poniewozik: "...Louis CK doesn't use the phrase 'check your privilege,' because earnest slogans are the death of comedy. (Also the death of drama.) But the episode, easily one of the most thought-provoking episodes of TV this season, is as good an illustration as any on TV lately of the phrase in action: look at yourself, look at your circumstances, think about what it would be like to not be you."
Alan Sepinwall: "Louie learns something about himself, but he also learns that this awesome woman is right in front of him, and maybe he should pay more attention."
Erik Adams: "[I]t's an episode about moving beyond finesse, about being able to approach tough, difficult topics of conversation without fear of upsetting someone. (In that respect, its closest Louie parallel might be 'Eddie.') Because that’s another thing Vanessa argues for, an argument that goes crucially uninterrupted in that glorious long take that has finesse for days: To just be able to fucking talk about this stuff, and have somebody hear and listen to her. And then to have that person know she wants her hand held, to treat her like somebody deserving of that gesture out of affection, not pity."
Hooray for Louis C.K., for creating a character bold and thoughtful enough to talk about what it's like to live in America as something other than a perfect size 4! Hooray for Louie, for opening his mind to a woman who doesn't conform to society's standard for beauty! Hooray for Louie, also, for spending the next three episodes actively pursuing love! Except, it's not with Vanessa. It's with a woman who doesn't speak or understand English! SHE'S PERFECT!
In the second of last week's two episodes, Louie comes home to his building just in time for an old lady to get herself stuck in the elevator. She needs her pills, so she throws her keys to Louie through the opening between the door and the car and sends him up to get them. When he goes inside, he finds the pills, and also finds a woman dead asleep on the couch. He eventually tries to wake her up to let her know that the old lady -- it turns out she's the napper's aunt -- is stuck; he has to try for a while to rouse her, and when he does, she's scared and confused and chases him out of the apartment before he can explain. But as the episode ends, and she comes up with a conciliatory cake, we learn that, since this woman speaks no English at all, it wouldn't have made much difference if he had told her everything.
When I saw that this week's two episodes were "Elevator, Part 2" and "Part 3," I thought maybe they would revolve around Louie striking up one of his usual weird friendships with Evanka, the older lady he'd helped. But no: instead, he develops an infatuation with Amia, Evanka's niece. He takes her out for a nice day -- eating fish at Russ & Daughters, walking through the park, considering taking her hand as he had with Vanessa and then not quite working up the nerve. When Pamela unexpectedly returns from Europe in "Part 3" and tells Louie she's finally ready to start a romantic relationship with him, he tells her he's with someone -- meaning Amia -- even though he has no way of knowing what she thinks of him because she does not speak English. For their so-called relationship even to progress to the point where Amia can inform Louie that she has a son and she's going back to Hungary in a few weeks requires Evanka to translate.
The contrast between Pamela and Amia is stark: where Pamela is prickly and mean and "jokes" about how unappealing it would be to have sex with Louie, Amia is constantly smiling, and up for whatever Louie wants to do. But like, maybe she smiles so that she can convey nonverbally that she's no threat to the Americans around her, and maybe she goes along with all of Louie's activities because she can't suggest anything else? I forget if I've mentioned it, but Amia speaks no English. None.
And while I can understand that the point of this whole storyline is to show that Louie is trying a different kind of woman than the assertive, confident women we've seen him attracted to before -- Pamela, of course, but also his ex-wife Janet -- we've already seen that this season when he went out with Vanessa. If Louie wants to date a woman who's going to break his balls slightly less than he's used to, he already met her, and she's more than capable of being in a relationship of equals with him. Amia's not. Louie doesn't know anything about her other than what he sees; she can't communicate anything about her life or thoughts, so he can turn her into a symbol of womanhood -- a lady-shaped bucket he can fill with whatever ideas he may have formed, entirely on his own and without any input from her. And he's so in love with the idea of her that he's invented that when he does hear that she's permanently leaving the country soon, he's so enraged that he smashes up his piano with a baseball bat. Granted, this may partly be because it turns the face-saving claim he made to Pamela a lie. But I think the rest of it is romantic ideas based on nothing but Amia's silent smiles.
It's not that people who don't speak English are undeserving of love. If the show were called Amia, I'd be talking about how dumb it is for her to have found a boyfriend who speaks no Hungarian. Either way, if Amia and Louie can't communicate on the most basic level, what is the foundation for this relationship he's so excited about? Maybe this whole thing is headed toward Louie figuring out exactly what I'm saying, and that though he might have thought he wanted a nice, complaisant lady who never sasses him back, what he actually wants is a woman who challenges him on his level, like Pamela. Better yet, he could "try" a woman like Vanessa who's interesting and salty but basically kind -- but then again, I guess if Vanessa already had her shot as a stand-in for all unconventionally attractive women, then her usefulness to Louie was already exhausted when she got him to hold her hand.