A week ago, Louie C.K. told ”The Tonight Show” that the storyline from that night’s episode would continue for six more episodes of “Louie.”
I was probably like a lot of people in assuming he must have been referring to the episode with Sarah Baker and her challenging, truth-telling “fat girl” speech that had people talking all last week.
But, as it turned out, he was referring to the other episode that was on that evening, about helping out an elderly woman played by Ellen Burstyn in stuck elevator in his apartment building, and meeting her Hungarian niece.
“Elevator, Part Two” and “Elevator, Part Three” were the two new episodes showing this Monday, and his character on the show, true to form, did not pursue a relationship with the girl bursting with personality and need played so well by Baker. Instead, the episodes begin with him shopping in a specialty supermarket for nice cheeses and coffees to make a basket for his new Hungarian-speaking acquaintance.
The woman, Amia, doesn’t happen to be home, but Louie is invited in and talks with Burstyn’s character Evanka and leans that she was from a show business family as well. Their chat is interrupted by a call from Jane’s school – the little girl who jumped out of the subway to test the family find-eachother plan last week, was in trouble for doing something even crazier this week: pulling down the skirt of a teacher who wouldn’t listen to her complaints about sharing injustice on the playground’s spring horse.
Little Ursula Parker may be the best, most natural child actress on TV and it’s been fun watching her test both her psychosis and her daddy in these episodes as Jane. But anything wrong with Jane is rooted in their parents’ relationship and so Louie and his ex wife Janet talk about whether to put her in private school.
Putting her in that artificial environment would make her unprepared for the people of real life, Louie argues; the ex says since she can afford it, why not give her a better education and environment? She goes a little off the deep end, though, when she says bluntly because she’s making more money, her decisions hold more weight.
Louie has a cute date with Amia, though she can’t speak a word of English. The Hungarian actress Eszter Balint is very engaging in the role as she plays out a charming pantomime with Louie in a grocery and drug store, where she has to play out an entire pretend shower sequence to indicate she needs a new hairdryer.
Mostly a musician these days, Balint made her memorable film debut in Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 “Stranger Than Paradise” and appeared in films from Woody Allen’s “Shadows and Fog” and Steve Buscemi’s “Trees Lounge.”
Her very appearance seems to bolster Louis C.K.’s seeming desire to have his comedy play out like nothing else on TV but an independent film from the 70s or 80s. Certainly it has as much surprise and even delight.
“Elevator Part Two” begins with the sudden return of Pamela Adlon, who hadn’t been seen since she was going off with a boyfriend in season two. Adlon, a producer of Louie who played his wife in that weird HBO studio audience sitcom Lucky Louie and has largely been seen on cable as Marcy Runkle on “Californication” (and is heard on syndication as the voice of Bobby Hill on “King of the Hill”) greets Louie here, back at a grocery store, with a literal kick in the butt.
Over coffee he stares as blankly at her admission that her last relationship is done and she’s interested in him again – he’s as unresponsive as he was to Sarah Baker. Then he blurts out his reason, “I’m with somebody now.”
Are we missing an episode? No, he’s just exaggerating the possibilities he has with this Hungarian woman with whom he can barely communicate. He goes over to Amia’s house to catch up in reality what’s in his mind, only to learn that Amia will be going back to Hungary soon, where she has a son, and is not interested in getting entangled in the U.S.
Louie does not take this well and goes home to smash his piano with a baseball bat. The mother and daughter return to his door however to explain that while she is still here she would still like to go out with him, so Louie is so happy he forgets for the moment about costs of piano repair.
He blurts out that he too has kids, but says they are 8 and 13 when in the preceding episode it was stated that Jane was 10. Is he showing himself to be a bad father or a bad continuity man?
At any rate, Jane is back in the picture when she apologizes to the teacher she assaulted, and when the principal suggests the two divorced parents also in the office come up with their “plan for Jane” by discussing things between them privately, they mostly turn to checking messages on their phones – the half hour’s best visual gag.
When Louie takes Jane back to his apartment, he is eager to introduce his daughter to his “friend” Amia whom they run into in the hall. Amia indicates that they wait a minute, so she can duck in and gets her violin with which she plays a lovely melody. In a splendid moment, suddenly Jane has her violin out and they are doing a wonderful duet together – a wordless, wondrous moment that has Louie utterly charmed. But how did they both know this song? Had they played violins together before? Were they teacher and student? It’s never made clear.
Nor are things clear in the next scene when Louie runs into the gruff doctor played by Charles Grodin who was in the season’s first episode. Louie catches him in the lobby and has to explain who he was before he asks for advice about what to do about this woman. Grodin can hardly be bothered with something so trivial and talks about how if you’re not suffering or in constant pain, everything is good, pointing as an example his three footed dog, who is just as happy to go out and get air and doesn’t fret about the foot he lost to a coyote in Poughkeepsie.
All of this will continue next week, we presume, with “Elevator” parts four and five. Just don’t expect Sarah Baker to show up at the door.