Louie Season 3 Episode 3 Recap – ‘Miami’

Louie and Ramon in Miami

Louietook us with him to Miami last night, in a funnily uncomfortable episode. My review follows…

What just happened (episode summary): Louie goes on a working trip to Miami, where he meets a guy he likes.

How it happened (the chatty TV critic): Miami was another episode in the third season of Louie that made me think about Seinfeld for a moment while watching it. Like George that met a guy he liked so much that he tried to copy, Louie also enjoyed the company of a younger, cooler man this week. A man that almost made him feel comfortable with himself, if only it could be that simple.

Going to Miami to work, Louie meets Ramon – a young Cuban-American life guard, that jumps into the water when he thinks Louie is drowning (in fact Louie only tries to indicate another employee on the beach not to take his chair away – with the phone and towel, but as always he’s too out-of-words to explain the exact situation to his new best friend). Louie tells Ramon that his father is Mexican, and Ramon takes him to see the “real Miami” – where the people are not all young, pretty and rude – but warm, welcoming, and diverse.

That side of Miami Louie finds comforting, and he starts to enjoy Ramon’s company a little too much. He decides to stay in Miami for acouple of days longer – calling his ex-wife for making sure she can take care of the girls instead of him. She guesses he has met “someone” and is happy for him, and he is again out of words – and enjoys the outcome.

Based on the first time we met the ex on the show, when Louie had a motorcycle accident, I’m pretty sure that if she knew that someone was not a woman but a younger guy, and that Louie is not trying to find love but to find himself – she would be less supportive. I guess Louie understod that as well. That is the best of continuity on TV – when it’s so subtle, you can’t even know if you missed it. But those of you know what Louie knows when he talks with his ex, and this is another reason why Louie is the best comedy on TV right now.

Another continuity moment was when Louie told Ramon his father is Mexican. Based on how Louie looks like, you’d wonder if this was even possible, same as you could wonder about the fact that the mother of his daughters is black. For the second time this season (we’re only in the third episode) Louis CK tries to establish the world of Louie as one with no interest in what seem real: it feels real, and that what matters.

The love story between Louie and Ramon can’t end well. When Ramon understands Louie stayed longer for his company, it makes him feel uncomfortable. “We’re the only sexual group that gives a shit that we are not mistaken for anything else”. Being a hetero-sexual man has its rules, and the final scene, when Ramon tried to tell Louie this cannot go on – and Louie tries to explain him what he’s there for, and what that was for him – that scene was just wonderful, as Louie would say if he wasn’t afraid sounding so gay. The way both of them didn’t find the words was great, and that was the first time I honestly couldn’t think of anything Louie could say. When you take a trip outside the social boundaries, there are no words.

What are we left with: Another brilliant episode of Louie, that didn’t have to be so funny to say something funny about the world we live in. I was happy to see Louie’s ex showing us how she looks when she’s not mad or busy, which is much better, for example, than the way Matt’s ex in Episodes is presented.