Review: 'Louie' - 'Country Drive': Who the (bleep) are you?
Louie takes the girls on an ill-advised road trip
"Louie" went for a drive last night.
Credit: FX
As I've said, the busy schedule of Comic-Con and then press tour is going to put a lot of regular reviewing on hold for a while. But I did get a chance to watch last night's "Louie" this morning, and while there's no time for a full review, I have a couple of thoughts on it, after which you can discuss, coming up just as soon as I suddenly find myself doing a Bill Cosby impression...
And even if the episode had been just Louie rocking out to The Who, followed by 15 minutes of test pattern, I'd have been happy, in part because the "Who Are You" sequence seemed like the first time in the entire series that Louie seemed genuinely happy - not just relieved that things didn't go as badly as he had hoped, or peaceful in the company of his daughters, but genuinely enjoying something he got to do and experience. And that was nice.
What did everybody else think?
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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July 22, 2011 at 11:28AM EST Reply to CommentI think the standup bit was by far the funniest and honest in the series to date
LJA Absolutely.
July 23, 2011 at 2:53AM ESTThis was probably my favorite episode of the series to date.
I wonder how much of the budget they blew to get Who Are You?
marinerschick
July 22, 2011 at 11:56AM EST Reply to CommentI was crying from the stand up. This show is brilliant and hardly ever misses. Even when it does, you have to give Louie props for trying something totally original.
theswanson
July 22, 2011 at 11:58AM EST Reply to CommentThe Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn bit was gold. Absolute brilliance.
Manton
July 22, 2011 at 11:59AM EST Reply to CommentLoved watching Louie try to make the youngest daughter break throughout the entire Who sequence. God I love this show
paullu
July 22, 2011 at 1:02PM EST Reply to CommentI loved it, and was cracking up during The Who segment while at the same time frantically trying to find the video of it on the internet so I could send it to my friend, who's a huge Who fan.
I know this is nitpicky, but did you notice that the guy just off the stage changed midway through the standup bit? I know it's just because he taped the same bit on multiple nights, but I kept thinking "wait, where did that guy's hair go. wait, there it is!".
Even the last segment talking to the aunt was awesome.
greg I noticed that too! and one of the guys looked just like voldemort!
September 11, 2011 at 1:27AM ESTJoseph
July 22, 2011 at 1:09PM EST Reply to CommentThe girls who play his daughters are magical, especially the younger one. The part where she played the "animal game" with Louie made my daughter laugh uncontrollably for about five minutes
Gina
July 22, 2011 at 1:17PM EST Reply to CommentLoved the stand-up more than usual this time around, and my husband and I looked at each other and said, "Who does Mark Twain material?" Definitely unique (and funny)!
ELE
July 22, 2011 at 1:18PM EST Reply to CommentBrilliant tag, cool lady.
odysseuscm
July 22, 2011 at 1:57PM EST Reply to CommentAbsolutely brilliant. The girls are incredible and each scene with Louis CK and them is pure delight. @Alan Spinwall; I'm not quite sure if the old lady is really a racist, I guess it's rather that she grew up at a time when those nuts were simply called like that (where she lives), something that tells more about those times than about her in particular. And that fits well with stand-up bit. So she DOES teach the girls something about the time she grew up in, just not the (nostalgic) way Louis envisioned it.
Probably my favorite episode since last season's "God".
A question on the side: Being from a European country it made me very uncomfortable that the girls were not buckled up, let alone in children's seats. In my country it's mandatory for young children to ride in specially made safe car seats. It strikes me as very odd that a country whose microwave instructions include the note not to dry cats in, allows children to ride without safety belts!
stevehbk We have the same laws here, but it's state-to-state. In NC children must ride in car seats in the back seat until they're eight years old or eighty pounds, whichever comes first.
July 22, 2011 at 2:20PM ESTodysseuscm @stevehbk: Thanks for the info. So it was probably rather to spare the young actresses some discomfort.
July 22, 2011 at 2:30PM ESTWaltEagle The nuts comments weren't the most racist thing she said. She also said New York was "no place to have two young girls. It's nothing but n-----s, and even worse today I hear." That's pretty undeniably a racist comment.
July 22, 2011 at 3:31PM ESTodysseuscm @WALTEAGLE: You're absolutely right. I just watched the episode again and I must have missed the details of her New York rant the first time (English is not my first language...)
July 23, 2011 at 5:27AM ESTGob's Frozen Pigeon
July 22, 2011 at 4:18PM EST Reply to CommentWe called Brazil nuts that, and I grew up in California in the 60s. Weird.
Only Louis would "waste" an entire five minutes of premium TV airtime playing air drums to "Who Are You."
Truck
July 22, 2011 at 4:19PM EST Reply to CommentI hate to admit it, but I got very bored in the 3 minute long The Who singalong. I've never been a fan of the "bonding via car singalong" trope that so many bad buddy comedies use as a crutch.
Truck Shoot, didn't mean to just post that. I still thought it was very fitting for the show and it gave a lot of good screentime to the daughters. Louie knows how to pick em-- remember how awesome Lucy was in Lucky Louie?
July 22, 2011 at 4:24PM ESTKelli Oliver George
July 22, 2011 at 5:16PM EST Reply to CommentMan, I LOVED The Who bit - the girls' expressions in the backseat were priceless. As someone who has kids equally bored by my taste in music, that entire bit was hilarious.
Subversive
July 22, 2011 at 5:18PM EST Reply to CommentI enjoyed the Who singalong immensely, not only because Louie was really enjoying himself, but also because it served to emphasize the generation gap that was the theme of the episode. Here we have a song that Louie loves (deservedly so), and it's a song that clearly comes from his era, but his energy and excitement only serves to make his two girls look at him like he's from Mars.
srpad
July 22, 2011 at 5:35PM EST Reply to CommentI thought for sure that he "F word" in the Who song was going to be a plot point (his kids laughing and/or saying it too etc.) and was waiting for it to come up but while they bleeped it, it didn't seem to matter. And as soon as I saw the Aunt I knew her chances of survival until the end were exactly 0%.
Still another good episode though.
Bo
July 22, 2011 at 8:44PM EST Reply to CommentLoved it. As many have said, the stand up was amazing, and the way the road trip unfolded was great.
Bo Also, maybe this says something bad about the people my parents kept company with when I was a kid, but I had no idea Brazil nuts were called Brazil nuts until I was like 17.
July 22, 2011 at 8:46PM ESTAlex
July 22, 2011 at 10:49PM EST Reply to CommentMaybe the point of that sing-along in this episode dealing with history and bad language was this: the aunt grew up in a time where the n-word was common to say, even in the presence of children. Louie probably in his formative years knew a lot of Who songs. So he, like his great aunt, has no trouble saying a bad word in front of the kids. Of course one is a racist term and one is a garden variety curse word that does no harm, but maybe C.K was exploring language and what we grow up with, and then what intentionally or not we pass on to our children.
Annie
July 25, 2011 at 6:13PM EST Reply to CommentAs a parent, I have to say that song is in another way perfect because these little people we live with are so weird and inscrutable that sometimes it really is like "Who the f are you?" anyway. Loved it.
5
July 26, 2011 at 8:38PM EST Reply to CommentCompletely completely agree with you on the "Who Are You" scene and unpredictability of the visit. I wasn't so enthused up by the standup bit -- it didn't captivate me or have me shaking my head in agreement as it usually does. Regardless, any show that can have me feeling like I do during the "Who" sequence is awesome.
Look, a goose a goose a goose!
Coupe Ferres
July 29, 2011 at 3:36AM EST Reply to CommentWatch the road!
tique 107
July 29, 2011 at 3:02PM EST Reply to CommentAnyone else notice the older daughter's appearing & disappearing eyeglasses during the visit?
I understand Louis C.K. doesn't care much about episode to episode continuity,but within a scene I found it distracting. Was there a point to this I missed? Why give her the glasses at all? She didn't have them on in the car, and she was reading a book.
madara
April 1, 2012 at 4:19AM EST Reply to CommentDoes anyone know the name of that song that plays right after "who are you" scene, its a flute and guitar sountrack, been trying to find it for a long time, or does anyone know where I could look to find it. I tried IMDB, and wiki, various other episode guides.
Cobra I have been looking for that song too. I'll post it if I can find it. As far as the nit fucking picking about the show, god dammit! Get a fucking life! Meeeh, the glasses were distracting. They should be wearing seatbelts. Fuck! It's a fucking television show for fucks sake! Get a fucking life! I'm so sick of the internet and everyones opinions!
July 23, 2012 at 2:04AM ESTI need to stop drinking so much.