White Christmas
Louie (New York City)
Chopsticks penetrate her eye sockets. Two hollow eyes peer back into his — an invasive, blank stare. Louie has bought a doll for his daughter’s Christmas gift, but after unwrapping the box, he finds her eyeballs missing. They must be somewhere inside her head. Frantically, he draws an eye on parchment paper to see if it’ll pass as an eyeball. A half-hearted attempt. He rips off her wig until she is bald and power-drills a hole in the back of her head. With a scissor inserted in the cavity, he probes for her scattered eyeballs with the end of a lollipop stick. Try harder, Louie; it’s the Season 3 finale, and you need to deliver the goods for your daughter.
He then drills a hole in her neck and decapitates a quarter of her cranium, poking a flashlight through. It’s a success. The eyeballs are out. As a reward, he wipes his sweaty forehead with the doll’s dress. While super-gluing the dismembered parts of her head back, some of the glue drops down into his own eyes. He curses. Eventually, her face gets super-glued and stuck on the couch. Louie breaks down, sobbing in defeat. But he refuses to give up. He runs to the sink and starts aggressively scrubbing the glue off of her face with Comet powder and a rough, copper sponge. Not good enough. As an act of defiance, he submerges her head into the toilet, flushes it and pisses on her. She looks okay, but she seems a bit discolored. Louie goes back to the kitchen, melts Crayons in a cast-iron skillet and hastily attempts to paint her peachy face back to life with a silicone BBQ brush.
Four minutes of the show have finally passed. The next day, his daughter Jane opens up her present, and the doll stares back at Jane — eyes both intact. It’s a Christmas miracle. “Daddy, she’s beautiful.”
Louie weakly smiles back from the couch, hugging the blanket closer to him and massaging his temples.
At what age will the holidays seem like an agonizing ritual beaten (or power-drilled) to death?
Me (age 10 — Los Angeles)
My eyes are glued to the TV. I alternate between Channel 33 and 73 — Full House and the Food Network, respectively. After a taxing day of fractions, I am bundled up in blankets and sitting next to the heater. I find myself again wishing that my family was like the Tanners. I have a craving for lively dinner conversations, a Golden Retriever, cheesy music and hopefully a helping of morals instilled in me by the end of the day. This desire is amplified every holiday season when Christmas specials and candy canes are constantly shoved in my face. The Food Network shows are filled with Giada, Paula and Emeril instructing me how to make the most perfectly tart cranberry sauce, the juiciest turkey, the creamiest mashed potatoes, and the most aesthetically appropriate table-setting for the Big Day. I’m all amped up.
I demand that we buy a Christmas tree for once this year, but my parents don’t understand why they have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for something that shits pine needles all over the house. But we have to. It’s what the Tanners, my friends and everybody else does.
My parents reluctantly buy me my first, real-life Christmas tree, and I admire it in all of its bare, verdant nakedness before decorating it. I stand back and smile. This is it. I inform my parents that Christmas is a special day where I have to wake up and act surprised that a bearded, rotund man has left me presents under this tree even if they have shattered the myth of Santa at age 3. And we have to be happy all day long, no matter what. They look at me strangely, but I wake up Christmas Day to find presents for me and my brother. We get new socks and underwear. I feign surprise and pleasure.
Louie (New York City)
There are subtle moments where Louie seems to risk his child’s innocence in exchange for his own happiness. When it’s the turn of his younger daughter, Jane, to open her present, she grins widely and exclaims: “Look what Santa brought me!” It’s a book about Ping, a duck who lives on a boat with two eyes on the Yangzte River. In the midst of massaging his temples on the couch, he makes sure to chime in: “That’s actually from me.” He’s not lying for the sake of Santa. Louie — like other dads, other parents — is still human; he wants to be validated for his strenuous efforts to be the “Good Father.” Why should the credit always go to the imaginary, fat and bearded man?
It’s the first moment when Louie begins to say “fuck it” and take agency of his own happiness. If he doesn’t, his misery will not only be destructive to himself, but also bleed into the lives of other people, such as his daughters. But wallowing in self-pity and loneliness is the crux of the show, and central to Louie’s comedic arc. It becomes comfortable, familiar and addicting. However, there comes a point where wallowing morphs into an extreme form of selfishness. Louie is a father (and one who tries his damn hardest to be a good one, too), and so he cannot afford to continue to feed his misery in isolation. He flashes to a nightmare, in which his daughters are grown-up and worry about how alone and sad he must be, eating pinwheel cookies all day in his rocking chair. Something clicks in him: his semi-obsessive-compulsive drive to be a good father also means creating a life worth living for himself, too.
Me (age 10 — Los Angeles, CA)
I run into the kitchen, pull out the frozen turkey, mashed potatoes and pre-packaged cranberry sauce that I bought the day before for The Christmas Dinner. It’s 70 degrees outside and I’m blasting “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Dean Martin, busily preparing a meal that will rival those I saw on the Food Network. Meanwhile, my dad is rustling the hell out of the newspaper, my mom is out on a run, and my brother is holed up in his room playing Counter-Strike online. “Boom! Headshot!” rings in between Dean’s buttery voice.
Dinner is ready and I insist that we eat together at the dinner table for once with the TV off. I light some candles to set the mood. The wax creeps down onto the table and my mom instinctively blows them out. Tough, overcooked turkey alongside grainy, mealy mashed potatoes. Bon appétit. My parents and brother poke at their dishes in uncomfortable silence and exchange foreign smiles. Midway through, my dad walks over to the fridge and takes out the tub of kimchi. This wasn’t what I imagined it to be. I make my mom do the dishes and slump on the couch, diving back into the channels that obnoxiously air what was supposed to happen at my home.
Louie (New York City)
The kids leave for an international holiday trip with his ex-wife and new husband. As soon as he sadly waves good-bye them on the elevator, he rushes back to the living room, tears down the tree in a Grinch-esque manner, and heads straight to bed for the remainder of Christmas Day. He seems to welcome rest and sleep.
His sister calls, worried: “Are you all by yourself?”
Louie replies, “Well, do you have to say ‘all…?’ I mean, can I just be by myself?”
In between his days of rest and sleep, Louie turns on the news and eats Twinkies off his stomach. The news anchor reports that the rate of suicide is highest during New Year’s Eve, especially for those spending it by themselves. This prompts him to take a cold shower, grab his passport, and head to the airport towards an unknown and undecided destination.
Me (age 17 — Los Angeles)
Holiday season is approaching again and I hear Ina Garten on the TV: “Make sure you get really good quality chicken stock. If not, store-bought works fine.” Okay, Ina. Whatever you say. After several years of trying to create mock Christmas dinners, I have finally given up. I think my family is relieved, but it is me who is most relieved. This Christmas, we eat KFC with kimchi and call it a night. I am slightly upset at the lack of holiday spirit, but we are all enjoying our hot wings.
Louie (New York City)
On the way to the airport, Louie runs into Liz, his former flame from a few episodes back whom he had desperately tried to find. They are about to embrace when blood spurts suddenly and profusely out of her nose. Louie accompanies her to the hospital where she abruptly dies on 11:59pm — just seconds before the New Year; the ball drops and everybody in the hospital is celebrating. He walks the corridor in a state of discomforted stupor at the joy that surrounds him. It feels wrong, undeserved.
Louie grabs his bags and spends the night at the airport, awkwardly wedging his limbs through various arm rests to make himself comfortable.
He wakes up on the floor, free from the shackles of the armrests.
Me (age 21, Berkeley)
How lonely the world feels when everyone around you is celebrating in a context you can’t share.
My parents were raised in Korea in an environment of frugality and duty. Nothing was wasted or of excess. Imagination was a luxury — a double-edged enjoyment that quickly led them to anxiety. They couldn’t see the productive profit from carving out hours to cook elaborate meals, decorate a tree and meticulously wrap dozens of presents. Perhaps I was being selfish in forcing such a foreign culture onto them. The dishes I so desperately tried to recreate had no history, love, tradition or taste. I’d thought the holidays could, magically, suspend time, pain and suffering. But I realized that this is not the case. Holidays are no different from any other days. Shitty things, like death and feelings of loneliness, still exist, if not in amplified form, on Christmas or New Year’s.
Louie (Beijing, China)
The season finale ends with Louie in China, asking the locals where the Yangtze River is. It is the only time in the entire episode where Louie is filmed outside of New York. The locals look at him in confusion, and one woman tells him politely in broken English to “please go away.” Attempting to pantomime the word “river,” Louie undulates his arms in a parabolic fashion, leading one man to think Louie is failing horrifically at tai-chi. He jumps in to teach Louie, and they calmly dance amidst the bustling streets of Beijing.
Louie eventually hitches a ride with a farmer who drives a three-wheeled, rickety truck full of ducks. They are heading home, supposedly for the Yangtze River. However, the man leads him to a little stream instead, mistaking Louie’s broken attempt at pronouncing Yangtze as jiangha, or “stream,” in Chinese. Louie looks slightly disappointed, but indifferent.
“That’s it? Okay,” he says, then heads back to share a meal with a group of Chinese farmers. They pull him into a shack and immediately fill his hands with bowls of food. Though they cannot communicate, Louie tries to repeat the words spoken by one of the Chinese farmers. He mimics their language with emphasis and genuine effort, evoking a loud laughter that fills the small room. This is the most dialect we’ve heard in this episode. And after losing the Tonight Show slot and his love, Liz, this is the happiest we’ve seen Louie all season. It’s a holiday without the trappings of The Holidays — no family, no presents, no familiar words even — and that’s the unexpected path to what, in the universe of Louie, passes for joy.
