Louie, Ep. 3.09: “Looking for Liz / Lilly Changes” wracked with fear and anxiety

Louie, Season 3, Episode 9: “Looking for Liz / Lilly Changes”
Written by Louis CK
Directed by Louis CK
Airs Thursdays at 10:30pm ET on FX

If you keep up with Louie timeslot neighbor Wilfred, you’ll know that it tends to stick to one-word descriptors for its episodes, like “Control,” “Avoidance,” and “Guilt.” It’s too bad that it already had one called “Fear,” because that would have been a perfect umbrella title for the most nerve-wracking Louie episode yet; despite the return of the stand-up segments – which are as funny and sharp as ever – this is very intently not an episode in heavy pursuit of laughs.

The first segment, a brief standup tag that sets up Louie at his most gleefully despairing, noting the shift from fretting over the length and value of your life to the acceptance and even embrace of one’s mortality, is immediately followed by a scene of Louie trying to sleep. That is, until subliminal images of Liz (Parker Posey) begin to splice themselves into his dreams. The sublime music from the end of “Daddy’s Girlfriend, Pt. 2″ (we may as well call it “Love Theme From Louie” at this point) returns, and it becomes clear that, for all of her eccentricities and deep-seated issues, Liz remains permanently embedded in Louie’s poor subconscious.

So he returns to the bookshop she worked at; the scene of the crime. There, he finds a new quirky female employee (Chloe Sevigny), who takes an immediate interest in Louie’s plight – so immediate an interest, in fact, that Louie probably should have taken the hint early and been on his way without this newly interested party in tow; but this is Louie, and that means no cringe-worthy stone can go unturned. This means, of course, that Sevigny’s character quickly turns out to be even more obviously loopy than Liz.

CLICK HERE TO EXPAND THE ARTICLE