Louie Season 2 : Ep. 12

For the past couple of months, I’ve been studying comedy. Growing up comedy was just about my favorite thing. I loved sit-coms, SNL, stand-up and late night talk. I kind of dropped it as an interest, until I started listening to Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. Where we were with tech and podcasting in 2005, the comedy world is now and it’s awesome to see that passion flowing again in a fresh way.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the podcast I was listing to the other day when they were talking about Louie C.K.’s TV show called Louie. I was driving. It could have been WTF or one of the other podcasts I’ve added too my Stitcher list. The guys talking were talking about the show, Louie, in a very reverential way that made me want to check it out.

Today, I saw it was on Hulu and I watched Ep. 12 from Season 2 called The Duckling. In this episode, Louie picks up his daughters from school the afternoon before he is going to travel to Afganistan to do some USO performances. The teacher tells him it’s his turn to take home the ducklings the class has been raising. Louie tries to get out of it, but the teacher won’t accept Afganistan is an excuse. It’s only for one night. One of his girls begs him to let them keep just one duckling. He says, “NO!” and the girls go to sleep.

When he gets to Afganistan, he discovers that his daughter packed one of the ducklings in his suitcase to keep him safe. He takes care of the duckling as he travels around entertaining troops and then at the end, the duckling ends up taking care of him.

I’ve only seen one episode, and I don’t know if it’s a typical example, but this one episode is one of the most beautifully real and human things I’ve ever seen packaged as a TV show. It has some comedy, but more than anything, it has heart. The episode is embedded below and if you have 30 minutes to have your heart warmed, I think you’ll be glad you did.