i have this really stupid idea in my head that im frankly a little obsessed with and the idea is this: trent crimm doing a drunk history episode on ted lasso's first tenure at richmond. is that how drunk history works? i don't think so. do i care? absolutely not. it's a special episode who cares because this image is not only hysterical to me but treasured. i treasure this image. i hold it close in my heart and also laugh and laugh and laugh.
OKAY OKAY but the way Louis is split in two with both Claudia and Lestat trying to vie for his attention, for his love, but Claudia is able to jump into his mind, to ask him to come with her without Lestat hearing, and that’s the moment Lestat calls him Lou, because he sees him looking towards her and he has no idea what she’s telling him but he knows he’s losing him to her. And how that desperation immediately turns to rage, to blame, to accusation. By turning them both, he’s turned them both against him, he can’t read them, can’t understand them as deeply as they understand each other, and it’s only when Claudia says out loud so he can hear exactly what she wants him to: Come with me. Let’s be vampires worthy of your love. That he truly snaps.
Lestat knows he’s lost. Has known it for all the time Louis had spent searching restlessly for Claudia’s mind.
And the conclusion to this rage, with Lestat and Louis flown out far into the sky, so far away that Lestat hopes no other mind can reach Louis’. So that Claudia can’t hear. So that they’re truly alone. And he finally admits just how deeply his love for Louis reaches, and just how fine a thread he’s been clinging to coming to terms with the fact that perhaps Louis doesn’t love him, may never have loved him, in the way that he loves him.
And yet even in that moment with Louis half drained and gasping the frigid thin air, with Lestat begging him to just admit it, that he doesn’t love him, Louis... doesn’t. Instead he says let go of me. And I wonder, perhaps, what Lestat hears in that, what those words connote for him. Is Louis only asking to be put down, or is he asking Lestat to let go of this obsession with him? That change in Lestat’s eyes, the bitterness of not getting a solid answer but still coming to some sort of conclusion sells it for him. So, when he drops Louis, it’s as performative as any other gesture.
He may want Louis to feel that he is done with him, but that will never be true.
My favorite scene from episode five has got to be this whirlwind of a scene right here. There was so much in this little piece of episode and it blows my mind each time. Firstly, we have Louis and Armand having sex right in front of Daniel as the latter reads off of the kill list Claudia wrote in her diary. Yes, this is sex people. No matter what way you try to flip it down and reverse it, they're having sex. Listen to the sounds emitting from Louis' throat and Armand's face. And then, to get Armand to stop talking, Louis decides this was the perfect time to let the world know just how much the man weighs and what he tastes like. I cackle everytime because why would you tell that man's business like that?! And I love that as he is saying it, his New Orleans accent slips in a bit. Very sick of those two.