Louie (Louis C.K.'s show on FX)

1) the apartment was entirely empty, 2) she went through the whole effort of hiring movers, without telling him, as if it wouldn't cost him any money or upset him to completely fuck with his personal space this way, and 3) all of this from someone who is afraid to say "I love you"

I dunno how you could see this as not being psychopathic. Like, consider if someone did this to you, how immensely disruptive it would be.

Pamela pointing out Louie's shortcomings to his daughters to comedic effect was really about teaching them a lesson in acceptance and how we are all the same inside.

1) the apartment was entirely empty, 2) she went through the whole effort of hiring movers, without telling him, as if it wouldn't cost him any money or upset him to completely fuck with his personal space this way, and 3) all of this from someone who is afraid to say "I love you"

I dunno how you could see this as not being psychopathic. Like, consider if someone did this to you, how immensely disruptive it would be.

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 23, 2014 2:32 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Can't believe this scenario could happen on a show whose first episode opened with a bunch of garbage men literally breaking Louie's window and banging garbage can lids in his face

1) the apartment was entirely empty, 2) she went through the whole effort of hiring movers, without telling him, as if it wouldn't cost him any money or upset him to completely fuck with his personal space this way, and 3) all of this from someone who is afraid to say "I love you"

I dunno how you could see this as not being psychopathic. Like, consider if someone did this to you, how immensely disruptive it would be.

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 23, 2014 2:32 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is _exactly_ how she was showing him affection. of course it fucked with his personal space, but that's on thing the whole setup raised -- the idea that when you bring someone into your life they then point out your flaws and disrupt your personal space and its not always just comfortable.

are you gonna argue that the furniture selling thing didn't actually happen cuz the garbage man thing pretty obviously was not real (altho it was the best laugh of the entire show)

xp

Pamela pointing out Louie's shortcomings to his daughters to comedic effect was really about teaching them a lesson in acceptance and how we are all the same inside.

hmm yeah that all makes sense. btw don't feel bad if sometime in the future I belittle your physical appearance and feelings, I am really just teaching you a valuable lesson

Would Pamela's behavior would be at all acceptable if the genders were swapped in this scenario? People have different needs and different levels of bullshit they can handle, but I think Louie is fooling himself into believing he can deal with that particular level of bullshit because he's finally snagged his illusory perfect woman.

I don't think Pamela is a terrible person but she's definitely a type of person I'm highly allergic to. I still love the show.

Can't believe Pamela Adlon sold all of Louie's furniture irl. Where is Louie gonna eat his dinner now

xxpost Sarcasm, bro.

can't believe 龜 thinks being willfully obtuse is valuable cool story bro

"Would Pamela's behavior would be at all acceptable if the genders were swapped in this scenario?"

A guy saying "That fat fuck?" pointing to a mother in front of her kids?

Would Pamela's behavior would be at all acceptable if the genders were swapped in this scenario?

― Surprise, It's My Butt (Old Lunch), Monday, June 23, 2014 2:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thread for considering important issues raised by the mens rights movement

Yes, that's what that's about. Men's rights. Golf clap for you.

pamela's a fucking nut
louis falls for fucking nuts
many of us do
the nutty ones are difficult because they're kinda nuts and they're also awesome because they're kind of nuts
louie is having problems finding equilibrium in his relationship with pamela and i thought louis did a good job of capturing the high and low points of being engaged in a relationship with a nut

so far my favorite of his manic pixie dream girls was definitely Chloe Svegniy

the whole Pamela dynamic on this show is just odd to begin with. they had a really powerful and interesting chemistry as a married couple based on his real marriage on "Lucky Louie," then he got divorced and started this show and clearly wanted to give her a non-wife role that maintained that spark but her delivering certain kinds of lines to her comes out very different depending on if she's his wife, his platonic friend he's pining for or his girlfriend.

the 'louie as prequel to lucky louie and the wire' theory just needs a richard belzer cameo to solidify.

you are insane

you are not a psychiatrist!

I play one on tv

http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/actor-allan-arbus.jpg

pamela is clearly awful you guys. i think it's sad but believable that louie is putting up with her behavior in the hope of getting some real affection from her.

still don't know what to make of him assaulting her that one episode. it's a weird moment because it is clearly unforgivable but so incongruous with the rest of his behavior that most of the time, watching the show, it's as if it didn't happen.

like, it doesn't seem to loom over his interactions with pamela the way that i would expect. he is so intimidated by her and she does not seem wary around him at all.

i am so confused by everyone who thinks pamela is awful. its like you've never met actually awful people.

next season should have louie falling for a long sequence of ever more heinous women, until he marries an emotionally abusive kkk member.

pamela is openly rude; janet is covertly rude. he likes the honesty. it's going to end badly and it's going to be his fault so what's the point quibbling about the interim.

I think the whole sexual assault thing was just showing that Louie doesn't have what it takes to be your stereotypical alpha-male that he feels he needs to be. You see the whole time how forced it is, like he's trying to make himself do this because it's as if this is what he needs to do for Pamela to like him. It seems to have a messy point about what living up to made up expectations can possibly lead to.

I have a feeling this post reeks of unintentional rape-sympathy, but I'm going to post it anyway (don't hurt me ilxor, pls).

louis is so morrisey with pamela. i just can't, i just can't, i need you, why do you hate me so. i tried and it came to no good, why are we together, why are you leaving, why did you stay.

historically louie is crap at making his move and pamela understands that with a caveat. if it weren't you and if it weren't me this situation would be unforgivable. i think she's stronger than he is and trusts him more than he trusts himself or her and he has to navigate that somehow.

also i figure louis ck is in love with pamela adlon but w/e.

You guys, you've got some good points.

i mispelled morrissey.

he's dancing with tears in his eyes. he is the son and the heir of nothing in particular.

he is human and he needs to be loved; why you gotta make a blog post 'bout it.

he's dancing with tears in his eyes.

wasn't that midge ure?

yeah, i'm just integrating what's steaming right now. kroq2. seemed appropriate. my sharona.

As an English I can totally identify with Pamela's struggles with icky feelings and I think she's cool and funny, if too mean often. Thought these episodes were lovely actually, the two of them seemed very happy in their own deeply weird ways.

also i figure louis ck is in love with pamela adlon but w/e.

― slugbuggy, Tuesday, June 24, 2014 1:50 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol flashback to the "louie and pamela must be getting married irl!" shit itt circa 2011

Shit, Pamela is the voice of Bobby Hill!

yeah that cracks me up

1) the apartment was entirely empty, 2) she went through the whole effort of hiring movers, without telling him, as if it wouldn't cost him any money or upset him to completely fuck with his personal space this way, and 3) all of this from someone who is afraid to say "I love you"

I dunno how you could see this as not being psychopathic. Like, consider if someone did this to you, how immensely disruptive it would be.

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 23, 2014 2:32 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Can't believe this scenario could happen on a show whose first episode opened with a bunch of garbage men literally breaking Louie's window and banging garbage can lids in his face

― 龜, Monday, June 23, 2014 1:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i think you have to make allowances for the fact that "louie" is a work of fiction which often relies of stereotype and hyperbole and all the other things fiction does.

i mean, sure, in real life if someone did that it'd be cause for serious alarm, but the show itself helps dictate the terms on which we're supposed to take it, and after a few hours louie himself wasn't all that upset so that's a cue to the audience not to be either.

that's a really really bad example because louis switches back and forth cleanly between magical realism and somewhat sardonic television "reality" with real skill and discretion. The garbage man bit is not meant to be taken as something that's actually happening so much as it's the sense of what-it-feels-like made concrete. the sequence with pam selling all his furniture is NOT A DREAM! NOT AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE! It's sold as someone you care about coming into your house and selling all your shit because they think it is time to move on from the things that are holding you back. Pam can be read as a controlling and overreaching psychopath for doing this but she could also be seen as someone who is taking a risk and helping louie move past his past, get rid of all the old shit from his marriage that even his kids are finding kind of pathetic for him to keep around. both views are possible and not too far from the truth and that duality of vision, fuzzy morality and stubborn insistence that there is not a "point" to these interactions any more than there is a person in the right for many of the things people do as couples is one of the big selling factors for me of louie as easily one of the best shows on television. it's closer to g.m. marquez than g.r.r. martin and i'm super happy that a cable broadened dial allows for both.

but even in the context of the first-order "reality" of the show, I think we witness hyperbolic, exaggerated actions/reactions by characters all the time--things that are accepted more easily in fiction than in reality-reality.

and of course one of the things the show does, sometimes (and I agree the garbagemen thing isn't a good example), is to make the boundaries between the show's ostensible "reality" and some kind of sur- or hyper-reality indefinite. that hasn't happened as much this season as it had in previous seasons, but it's still a part of the show.

i love that ilx is swarming with dainty flowers that would run screaming from a woman who told dirty jokes and breaks balls

Your Reese's-esque melding of the ad hominem attack and the strawman argument never grows any less breathtaking to behold.

The othering of ILX

can the subsandwich speak

Watching CK's special Shameless, it's funny how with the Pamela Part 1 controversy no one mentioned that half the jokes in this hour-long special mention rape of one kind or another.

i love that ilx is swarming with dainty flowers that would run screaming from a woman who told dirty jokes and breaks balls

― am0n alb4rn (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, June 26, 2014 10:00 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't run screaming, and i don't necessarily care about shows having "likable characters," but a lot of her actions seem more like passive-aggressive meanspiritedness than your normal joshing around.

which is fine, for the show that is. IRL if a guy kept coming back to a woman that abused him like that it would seem... dysfunctional. maybe that's the point. or maybe they are just exaggerating her ball-busting-ness for effect. who knows? i certainly don't. i'm going to sleep.

honestly don't see anything unbelievable about his behavior - wrongheaded, sure, but there are lots of folks like him IRL. he's convinced himself she is his soul-mate for some reason and her spurning him just makes him desire her more, because he doesn't really want her, he's after the elusive Pamela-totem. so any of her negative behavior towards him doesn't really dissuade him at all. maybe the passive aggression is her way of trying to hope she finally makes him give up?

I remember having a period like this in my own life when I was 19, lonely, naïve, and depressed, and there was a friend of mine who I thought I was in love with who kept clearly telling me "it won't happen" and I kept hearing "maybe" anyway, and kept telling her how I felt for a period of two years, until I alienated her so much that we drifted apart. she wasn't pass-agg like Pamela, but she could have been and it wouldn't have mattered.

it doesn't seem like pamela is trying to spurn louie anymore, but she's still being a dick

i'm not quite done w/ season 2 yet so I'm still a bit behind