Louie season 4 just continued with episode 2 of the night and the season, titled “Model.” Our recap breaks down the events of the guest star studded second episode!
This recap will be filled with spoilers, so don’t read on unless you’ve seen the episode or just want to be spoiled.
Did the events in episode 2 even happen or were they all a dream? This could, of course, be asked in almost any episode of Louie, and that gives Louis C.K. extremely unusual freedom. Rarely does one episode affect the next. This can, at times, be frustrating, but it also allows us to see unusual things that we wouldn’t get to if C.K. was forced to stick to a more traditional show format.
Episode 2 sees the return of the mean Jerry Seinfeld who, when we last saw him at the end of season 3, attempted to trick Louie into thinking he had lost out on taking over The Late Show. Ultimately, Letterman ended up resigning his contract, but it showed us a back-stabbing Seinfeld that we never see in the public eye. This time Seinfeld set Louie up for failure at a Hamptons charity event.
Is the real Seinfeld like the one in the show? No, his Jerry Seinfeld in the show is a parody of Jerry Seinfeld in real life, much like how Louie is a fictional version of Louis C.K. Still, it is interesting to see how Seinfeld in the public eye in the show is close to the Seinfeld we see in the public eye in real life. It’s true that celebrities have to get a leg up on one another in real life, too, so the parody is likely coming from a place of truth, as all good parody does.
When Seinfeld asks Louie to open for him at the benefit, he asks him, “Can you not say dirty sex poop dogs having sex with vagina dirt?” which is a clever reference to the fact that real life Seinfeld doesn’t do dirty humor because he finds it cheap. Louie agrees and says he can do that, but in reality it doesn’t work out very well. Dirty humor is even more of a staple in Louie’s stand up as it is in Louis C.K.’s, and he bombs at the event. Seinfeld gives him no help; Louie doesn’t realize to dress up and Seinfeld won’t give him the name of the charity, two things that Seinfeld then uses against Louie to get laughs in front of the Hamptons crowd.
Louie did make one person laugh: a beautiful model and daughter of an astronaut played by Yvonne Strahovski, who doesn’t like the other stiff millionaires, billionaires, and trillionaires in that room. “You were awful; that’s why it was so funny,” she tells Louie, who is instantly put off, but then she takes him home with her.
From here Louie’s out of his element, as he doesn’t usually go home with beautiful models who are daughters of astronauts. She tells him that she likes him because he makes her laugh, and after much awkward resistance from Louie, they apparently reach a point where they have sex. She then says she wants to make him laugh like he makes her, so she starts tickling him. He tells her to stop and when she doesn’t, he has a violent reaction that causes him to punch her in the face and knock her out cold. Louie calls for an ambulance, but is in big trouble.
Seinfeld then points Louie in the direction of a lawyer, played by Victor Garber. He’s a good lawyer that is able to get the model’s family down to a $5 million charge against Louie, something Louie says he’ll never be able to pay. The lawyer says this is Louie’s only option, and he’ll have to pay them $5,000 a month.
Upon hearing this, the waitress Louie was attempting to ask out before being told “stop asking everybody out” finally gives him attention. The message: knock out a model who is the daughter of an astronaut and have to pay the family a lot of money and then you’ll get the attention from the woman you wanted in the first place.
Will Louie ever again in the series face having to pay a large, monthly sum of money that he can’t afford? Did this even happen?