Horace and Pete: Some Final Thoughts
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The last time I wrote about Horace and Pete, I said that I wouldn’t write about it anymore. But two things happened since then. First, my curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see the rest of the episodes. Second, I still get people coming to my blog to read those first four posts. So, for the sake of the clicks, once more unto the breach, dear friends!

Spoilers below.

The series is now over and I watched episodes five through ten. Here’s a quick catch up of the very major points in the show.

Uncle Pete kills himself. Marcia leaves the bar. Sylvia goes through chemo but survives her breast cancer. Pete has a promising date but his hopes are crushed. He later finds out that Probitol is actually doing more harm to his body than good, so, he has to go off of it and be committed. He goes off with the Tricia, the Tourette’s girl he knew from previous hospital stays, but he quickly descends into madness. He puts her in a hospital and then disappears. Horace starts a budding relationship with a woman who is either transgender or enjoys intense discussion about the topic and is also a drunk. Pete returns to the bar, looking like a feral animal. In his madness, he picks up a knife from the bar and kills Horace. Finally, Horace’s son, Horace the ninth, comes to the bar to see where the father he never met spent his life.

Are we up to speed? Good.

The Sad = Real Fallacy

A friend of mine who likes the show read my most recent Horace and Pete post and disagreed with my take. He was essentially saying, “look, this show isn’t Cheers, if you stop into a bar like this on a weekday, you’re going to find people like the ones in Horace and Pete.” I understood what he was saying but, frankly, I knew it wasn’t Cheers and I wasn’t looking for Cheers but the defense of the show is telling. Is a dramatic show that piles tragedy upon tragedy somehow more real than an upbeat, jokey sitcom? I say no.

Cheers is clearly performative, from Carla’s well timed one-liners to Norm’s repeated entrance jokes. Horace and Pete is just as performative, though. It’s just that it’s tragic rather than comedic. Ultimately, I could never enjoy the show because it was so absurd in its tragedy. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Horace gets killed by his mentally ill brother who was failed by an inefficient health care system while “America” by Simon and Garfunkel plays. You can’t even parody that.

Look, people have to deal with the problems dealt with in this show. Strained family relationships, domestic violence, cancer, mental illness, suicide. When things like that happen to people it is tragic but simply including those things in a dramatic narrative does not absolve the creator from making me believe it.

I could tell you a story about a pregnant woman who’s fetus overdoses on cocaine in the womb and she is so distraught that she commits suicide by shooting herself in the head twice. There is no question that a drug overdose and suicide are tragic but when presented in a story, they still must be grounded in reality to make me care. Make me believe it. In Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides made me believe that a brother and sister would fall in love and have children. It can be done. Horace and Pete never made me believe it.

There was an overall lack of clarity in the spine of the show and I’ve been trying to figure it out the whole time.

The Unnecessary Cruelty of Episode Six

Episode six truly made me want to ask for my money back and not just because I had to watch Steve Buscemi put Vaseline on his nipples before a date. This episode was like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown and then pulling it away only the football is innocent, idyllic love and the pulling away is your family callously stomping on your happiness.

Pete has a date with a beautiful twenty-something girl who just happens to be into older guys, like, guys in their fifties. Okay. I’ll suspend my disbelief just to see where this is going. So, Pete invites his date to meet his family and then, they are awful both to Pete’s girlfriend and to Pete. Sylvia is unapologetically mean and then Horace tells Pete’s date in stark detail about his mental illness. So, this episode gave Pete a fantasy woman and then ripped her away from him like stitches from an unhealed wound. And then we saw Sylvia and Horace just sit at the table and go on eating like nothing had happened.

Perhaps Sylvia’s cruelty could be explained by her going through chemo but then she sits down to a big plate of pasta at the end because if there’s one thing cancer patients have, it’s a big appetite. Horace’s cruelty, however, renders all the care he shows when Pete goes missing in later episodes completely meaningless. If he cares about Pete at all, it seems to be in a George and Lenny in Of Mice and Men kind of way.

Horace’s Children

We know in episode one that Horace has a daughter and then we come to find out that he has a son from whom he is estranged. Okay. In episode one, we also see a girlfriend who is not the mother of his children. Okay. So, there’s an ex-wife somewhere. In episode three, we meet the ex-wife and find out that Horace had an affair with his wife’s sister. Ah, okay, and he got married really young to a woman a decade his senior and he screwed it all up. That explains his regret.

But, wait, we find out in episode seven that he impregnated the sister and his wife at the same time? And then his wife raised both children when the sister just sort of left? Um, okay, I’ll still go with this, albeit reluctantly.

Then, in the final moments of the show, after Horace has been murdered by Pete, Horace the ninth comes into the bar. It was one of those moments that both surprised and made total sense. He greets his aunt Sylvia and says, “I’m your nephew” but then says about his dad, “I never met him.”

And that’s where you lost me. They never met? No. Sorry but no. That’s too far.

I’m supposed to believe that this kid who was the ninth in line of Horace’s never met his father? Even when that father was eager to have some kind of relationship with his kids? Even when his sister has a relationship with their father and the crumbling of the family took place before this kid even understood object permanence?

Uncle Pete and Pete

Episode five finds the family coming back from Uncle Pete’s wake and we find out that Uncle Pete killed himself. Why? Perhaps because of his tortured life? I don’t buy it. All of the pain and guilt and resentments he had in his life, he had had them for a very very long time. So, why did he, on that day, pick up a gun and shoot himself?

I might have an idea. Louis CK spoke about running out of money after episode four and he wasn’t recouping it from episode sales. So, it’s interesting that after episode four both Alan Alda, who plays Uncle Pete, and Jessica Lange – the shows biggest stars – were both in the series for about five minutes more each.

One thing that never stopped bothering me was that Uncle Pete being Pete’s father was treated as a shocking revelation to this dysfunctional family, especially since we can clearly see in the finale’s flashback that Uncle Pete and Pete look exactly the same at the same age. (I’ll admit that this is a weak point as it could merely have been done for the convenience of casting but still.) We also get to see Uncle Pete live under the same roof with his son and watch over him and take pride in his baseball skills but we still have to believe he gave that son away because he doesn’t like kids. If you say so.

What Mental Illness does Pete Have?

I had assumed Pete was schizophrenic but in the finale’s flashback, we see the bourgeoning mental illness in young Pete. He says he has to fill all the glasses with water before the sun comes up. Well, that’s not schizophrenia, that’s OCD. So, perhaps it’s just a non-specific though still debilitating mental illness?

What bothers me more is Pete’s dependence on the fictional drug Probitol. So, Pete takes Probitol and then shows no signs of his illness and can, in fact, be a pretty capable person. But if he doesn’t take it the Probitol, the mental illness comes back and there’s no other option but to commit Pete. That part of the show had a sort of Flowers For Algernon/Awakenings vibe to it and made psychotropic drugs seem like allergy medication.

My cousin is schizophrenic. She’s in her early sixties now but has lived in a home since her early thirties. There’s no drug that enables independent living or a glimpse at her former self but also, at the same time, she isn’t in a haze of bad acid trip hallucinations.

I’ve heard the theory that this is a commentary on the state of our country’s health care industry. The problem is that there’s not much commentary. It strikes me more as a presentation of the problem. People rely on drugs and our health care system makes them hard to get. I knew that before.

The True Heart of Brooklyn

Towards the end of the finale, as the bar is being packed up, Sylvia’s new boyfriend says to a mover, “This, this, my friend, is Horace and Pete’s, the true heart of Brooklyn, owned for a hundred years by two brothers, Horace and Pete until one day Pete killed Horace and had to go away. And that’s what happened to Horace and Pete.” It makes it all sound like a horrible fairy tale, which I suppose it is.

Only someone who doesn’t live in Brooklyn could describe anything as the true heart of Brooklyn. I go to a bar on my corner that looks much like the interior of Horace and Pete’s. It opened in 1997. The bar, the backdrop of the entire show, struck me as the romantic creation of someone who has never lived in Brooklyn, which I think is literally true of CK. No mixed drinks and only Budweiser. Is the notion of this place’s existence romantic or fetishization of the working class and of a New York gone by? I’m not a fan of such things.

Bright Spots

A recent New Yorker article calls the show talky, which it was, and that’s when the show thrived. I enjoyed the show when it just let the characters behave, especially the tangential ones. I liked all of the conversations of random customers. I liked the vulnerability of Rick Shapiro approaching Sylvia while she was still going through chemo. I liked Karen Pittman’s performance as a mysterious alcoholic in the bar who might provide Horace with some temporary happiness. I liked Alice bringing her boyfriend to meet Horace and giving her the only happy ending in this show.

In the flashback episode, we saw Uncle Pete telling the Horace peeing his pants at little league story forty years earlier than we had heard it originally. So, he’s been coasting on the same stories for his entire life. And if the bar had a soul, it was Leon, played by Stephen Wright. It was intriguing that in the flashback, he looked no different, no younger, he was just always there. When Pete went missing, it was Leon’s blank stare that caused Horace to feel guilty.

I’m not immune to the good things in this show.

You have to respect a group of people making something.
You have to respect a group of people making something.

On Me Being a Dick About This Show

I admit that I’m being extremely nit-picky in my criticism of the show but, well, you are currently on the internet reading a blog. This is kind of what this arena is for. I’ve heard the sentiment that if you don’t like a show, you should just not watch it and focus on the things you do like. I see that point but, well, I’m clearly ignoring it. I paid for each episode (my conscience is clean regarding Louis’s debt, which truly does suck) and I took time out of my life to watch each one and, frankly, I just want to talk about this.

I have an obsessive need to pick apart things that I don’t get. I had a similar experience with Stella, the sketch comedy trio of State alums Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black and David Wain. I worshipped The State in high school and when I found out that three of the members were doing this show, I was excited. Then I watched one of the online shorts and it was just the three of them playing with dildos. Well, it’s just that one, right? Nope. All of them featured a dildo. But surely no one else likes this, right? Wrong again. Not only do comedy geeks love it, they revere it. If you’re around a comedy aficionado and you say, “Stella kinda sucks, right?” you get, “uh, well, I guess you can look forward to seeing Carrot Top in Vegas and the new season of Mind of Mencia.” I racked my brain just trying to understand what the appeal was.

Horace and Pete is similar. I’ve loved everything Louis CK has done to this point. I love his stand up. I love Louie. So, what is this? I have friends whose opinions I respect who get this show and I just don’t.

He Was Nothing, Really

There is one thing that I’m holding on to with regards to this show. When Horace the ninth asks Sylvia about his father, she says, “He was nothing, really. He was no kind of man. He wasn’t particularly funny or smart or kind. He was just some guy.” It was a harsh appraisal of her brother and you could see it was armor for the emotions she kept hidden when she broke down and cried right after saying it. It was supposed to pack an emotional punch but it didn’t really work for me but you knew that already.

It sounded kind of familiar, though. I remembered the episode of Louie where he meets a producer who has the power to greenlight anything. So, he pitches to her. This is the pitch: “You know how in movies there’s always a guy and his life is, you know, okay and then something happens like a conflict and he has to resolve it and then his life gets better? Well I always wanted to make a movie where a guy’s life is really bad and then something happens and it makes it worse but instead of resolving it he just makes bad choices and then it goes from worse to really bad and things just keep happening to him and he keeps doing dumb things so his life just gets worse and worse and like darker and like like he lives in a little one room apartment and he’s not a good looking guy he has no friends…”

That’s Horace.

I read an article once defending I’m Still Here, the Jaoquin Pheonix faux documentary about his pursuit of a transition into a career in hip hop. The article praised Pheonix and brother-in-law and director Casey Affleck with “taking a big swing.” The failure of the project was acknowledged but, man, there’s something about swinging for the fences. You’re only here once, so, if you ever get the opportunity, do it your way. Make no excuses or compromises. Do the thing you want to do and do it one hundred percent. I might never have the balls to do what he did, to put all of my chips on the table and go for it. A recent New York Times article “How Horace and Pete Made the Network Suits Look Good” argues that maybe a little input from the outside could push you in the right direction. “Horace and Pete might have been one meddling suit away from a masterpiece.”

We only tell the stories where someone takes a big swing and it’s a home run. We never talk about the times people took their swing and struck out. But both swings are important.

Louis CK took a big fuckin’ swing.

6 thoughts on “Horace and Pete: Some Final Thoughts

  1. had to comment on your disbelief on a couple things
    1) would be possible for two siblings to have different takes on how to approach their resentment towards their parents
    2) older white men have the highest prevalence of suicide rate so it would be feasible that uncle pete would kill himself at that age after a lifetime of misery for many factors that are seen in these high rates
    3) mental illness is not as simple as a diagnoses of one or even two things. in fact many service providers are moving towards more person-centered language that focuses more on the individual and the symptoms they are exhibiting rather than a diagnoses. in this example pete would be pete… a man with symptoms of schizophrenia, OCD, and maybe other things; not pete has schizophrenia or ocd. in terms of the “drug” that helps with schizophrenia people are all different. you can’t base on your personal experience because there are other cases where one drug has helped tremendously with people experiencing schizophrenic symptoms to allow them to come to greater touch with “reality”
    4) the cruelty of episode 6 is not unnecessary it shows how toxic and caring the relationships in the family are. there is no straight acceptance that any one family member entirely cares for another but moreso that all the relationships are fucked up and complex. there is good and bad, but mostly bad. that’s the heart of the show. it’s not as simple as either horace cares about pete or not. they interact through different transactions one at a time. some show they care for each other and others show a more abusive relationship between the two, reflective of their lives growing up.
    5)

    1. Hey, thanks for the thoughtful response. Here are a few things I think.
      2) Yeah, that’s true. I think one of my main problems with this show is what’s feasible vs. what’s believable. Yeah, it’s feasible but it also felt really out of nowhere for me.
      3) True. I was being binary. I know that there’s overlap. What I found unbelievable about the portrayal of Pete’s mental illness is that there is one and only one (fictional) drug that makes his symptoms subside. When this one (fictional) drug runs out there is no other option than to commit Pete. Much like I was incorrect to say Schizophrenia OR OCD, I think that that is not believable to say Probitol OR committed. Further, look into whether or not schizophrenics are actually violent. (I truly don’t mean that in a “look it up!” or “do your research” asshole internet way, promise) Violence in schizophrenia seems to be greatly exaggerated in entertainment. I mean, Pete went off Probitol and went on a rampage. He just walked right in and killed Horace. I thought that Louis went for capital D drama over anything like reality, I just didn’t buy it.
      4) I hear you. This point was made to me by a friend. I guess I just didn’t like the set-up. Pete was given a totally unrealistic manic pixie dream girl. I don’t believe that there’s a girl that’s that pretty who’s into guys who are in their 50’s who live in a bedroom off the side of a bar. I don’t buy that they would be serious enough to meet family and Pete would not bring up his illness or that he would be able to hide it from her. The cruelty for me was in giving Pete a dream girl just to have that dream girl ripped away from him. Why didn’t Pete get serious was a woman who was in her 50’s as well and with a whole bunch of baggage who could perhaps have hung in with all of that crazy? Why not the Tourette’s girl who knew all this about him already?

      1. On #4, it was all gratuitous. It happened so fast that clearly the only reason it was there was the shock value of it. Like BOOM young hot chick into much older guys BOOM they’re in love BOOM Horace’s sister plays the aggrieved jealous old lady BOOM Horace drops the mental illness bomb. It was basically that fast and it was poorly done. It really stood out as bad in a series that carefully crafted the characters and took a pretty damn methodical approach.

        TBH it felt like it was thrown in simply to have some eye candy to look at. Like Louie just wanted another reason to throw a pretty young girl on the set…for reasons which have become more clear.

        1. True that. I look at everything Louis CK did on a different level now that he has been revealed as a predator. The forays about weird sex fantasies, the way women are presented…it all makes sence.

  2. I wouldn’t given this any of my time if i didn’t see that you obviously have something to say, which is why i am sorry you missed the point of the show, but that happens in critique often, the thing is tou can’t understand something unless you put it in context, in the case of a series like this, in the context of the creator,
    Louis CK is a comedian with a unique approach to his stand-up, the jokes, or ‘bits’ as they are called in the stand-up world, that he performs are more like stories, anecdotes, that concern his everyday life more than anything else, his has a sort of existential humor, which is why he is praised by other comedians, he got a part in a show wich was a shitty sit com, beacause of his truthful existential style of comedy, he hated it, for using unintelligent, fake punchline humor that he hates, which is the reason he made the series Louie, that is the most important part to my point here, thats the show that’s truthful, believable, still humorous, but not bynway of punchlines or deliberate humor, that was his true, real project, tha point you wanted Horace and Pete to have is in Louie, and CK said that he doesnt want to repeat himself, he wont make another Louie type series, that is it, that is the only realistic show of that kind he was about to do, one that deals with his life, he is a stand up comic see, he tells stories about him and his beliefs and thoughts,
    Horace and Pete on the other hand, had nothing to do with that, Horace and Pete is a tragic parody of sit coms, yes Petes mental illnes isn’t portrayed well, the cancer is more like an annoyance and a dramatical tool to have the caracter affect the others more etc, thats the point, the show deals with tragedy in a way that a sit com deals with its dramatical issues, of course the dialogue is richer and realer (the ex wife weekend house conversation was amazing for example) but non of it has punchlines, thats the parody, it becomes pretty obvious in the details, like Louie walks from the bar to a table and the phone rings, he answers “no you got the wrong number” and ends the call, a classic sit com situation that always breeds a stupid moronic punchline, here its just and absurd action with no purpose, the biggest hint of course is the three camera set up, a classic sit com way of filming, used for it’s effectiveness and speed,
    To try to summarize Horace and Pete is a show that works in a way that it does everything a sit com does, which makes it dramaticaly shit, but it deals with real subjects nad also shows the idiocy of classic sit coms like Full house and the like, it’s common for this show to be misunderstood and it only works if you know the context of it, just like with Louie, this was amproject that dealt with one of the things that CK has to offer and wanted to say, it’s not trying to be anything more than that,
    I hope i changed your view at least enough to go and reconsider and think about it in a different way
    P.S. Have you done any research on the people that louie surrounds himself with, like the cast of Louie etc, he truly used the fact that he entered the realm of the “famous” in the best way he could, he is house friends with Lynch for christ sake, he is aquainted with many interesting artists, actors, comedians… do you really think that he just didn’t know how to portray mental illnes the way it is, or that cancer patients have no appetite, or he did it in the way that fits the premise of the show, even if you think of him as just ‘dumb’, but at peast give credit to the artists that he showed the creenplay before going filming, suits are not the only ones to give advice, you dont go into something like this without talking to anyone and not exepting advice, which he did openly,
    This wasn’t ment to be a masterpiece, this was meant to be just what it is, if he wanted it to be a thrilling drama about mental illnes, gentrification and family disfunction im sure he would make it that, but that is not his personal story, the sit com critique on the other hand is what he is good at

  3. But is he really good at it?
    CK was a phenom and got to do whatever he wanted because he was the critics darling at the time.
    I was never impressed.

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