How should he have handled this bullying situation?

I sense that this was done as part of a television show, right? So it’s a dramatic scene, not part of anyone’s real life.

Because I generally agree with Louis C.K.‘s schtick, which seems to be more reality-based, and this seems out of character for him.

My response to this situation would be more on the lines of, “If you come at me, you’d better be sure I don’t get up, because when I get up I will come at you and put you down for good. Are we clear on that? One of us won’t be getting back up when we’re done.” I’d be slowly wrapping my hand around whatever weapon was available at the table then, even a butter knife in his throat would slow him down pretty well, and I can put that butter knife in his throat, I think.

Very interesting question. I personally feel he should have bopped them on the nose. I feel that way whether we are speaking male or female. I didn’t watch the video, but I get the idea. I think! If someone came into a restaurant and started to bully me, I’d fight back. I expect the same of a male. I would try and be ladylike though and throw my dinner over their heads, slosh them in the face with my drink and kick them in the knacks. :P

Yes. This is a TV show but I can picture it happening in real life. The scene and discussion are very well done.
The bully is a sports jock (football player?) and a wild kid. He would have beaten Louis to a pulp. In the scene he shows off his bruised knuckles and boasts how he had just beaten up another kid and “smashed his face like 40 times”.

As I was watching the scene I, too, was wondering if there was a fork or glass mug on the table and could Louis jam it into the kid’s face. That would have been a huge, life altering mistake – for Louis.

Frankly it bothers me that there are girls/women out there who find the bully attractive.
When they see that behavior why are they surprised when the bully shows violence to them? Don’t date/mate with them.

While it was happening I noticed the woman just sat there. Why didn’t she take out her phone and dial 911?

I love that show – and that episode was great.

The “point” (if there was one) to that episode was that it is complicated. There is no “winning”, and to some extent we are slaves to our biology. We are attracted to what we’re attracted to, regardless of what our minds tell us.

Talk to honest women about their attraction to men or honest men about their attraction to women, and you’ll often find threads of attraction or turnoffs that don’t cleanly match up with our intellectual concepts of what we find to be attractive qualities in the opposite sex.

Additionally, this episode really addressed what it feels like to be a male and forced with the choice of either humiliating yourself or potentially getting very hurt. The reality is that if Louie decided to attack this kid, he would likely be hospitalized or killed. And for what?

Like much of this series, Louie packs a ton into this “comedy”. This particular episode really hit home when I saw it. I have experienced something similar, and the honest among us have all had these discussions with the opposite sex – things that we feel that we have little control over, or that we’re embarrassed about, but drive our sexual attraction.

@tom_g He sure is clever. That short scene really grabbed me.
Would I have been foolish enough to reach down and slide the safety to “F”? I don’t think so. The “kid” had the look of a psychopath but he was still a kid. If this got violent Louis’s only chance would be to strike swiftly and viciously. and then he would be accused of being the aggressor. His life would be over. It was a lose-lose situation.
And the woman he was dating made it into a lose-lose-lose. It is just as well he found out what she was like now. She likely would have dumped him later for not earning enough money or not driving a fancy car.

He did do something. I’ll wait before I spill the beans.

Actually, even for a guy as peaceful as I am – and I am; I’ve never been in a fight in my life – “bruised knuckles” are a dead giveaway to me that the kid knows nothing about real fighting. Elbows and knees are where it’s at, and thumbs to the eyes. Hitting with your hands is more likely to break your own hand.

His coffee cup and saucer on the table could have been weaponized pretty effectively. I wear glasses, and so would those; I might cut my palms as I did the deed, but the deed would be did. Bullies don’t seem to like the sight of their own blood. And though I may not have been in any fights, I’ve shed plenty of blood, and that doesn’t particularly bother me.

The one thing that I know is that I can be knocked down, but if I can stay conscious I can keep coming at him – and I will until he kills me or I convince him to stay down – however that happens.

If I were his date, I would have left him if he’d gotten aggressive with that kid. No question. As to “sliding the safety to F”, I would have left you for having carrying a gun. I’m not dating a guy who comes to a restaurant armed.

If I were Louis CK in this situation, I would leave the date after that reaction – just as he did.

I think there are other ways that Louis could have reacted without cowtowing to the bully and without fighting. He begged the guy not to beat him up. I’d have no respect for anyone who did that. I don’t think that it is a choice between violence and peace at all. It is a choice between pride and humiliation. The bully really beat him with words and Louis just sat there and allowed it to happen. That is where she lost respect, IMO. Not that he wasn’t a chest pounding macho man who jumped up and kicked the bully’s ass.

I’ve never seen the show, so I don’t know if acting differently would have not gone with his character. I’m just answering from a life experience and not a fan of the show point of view.

^^ See, @bkcunningham is showing us how honest this whole thing is.

@bkcunningham: “I’d have no respect for anyone who did that.”

Many of us would not admit to that – but it’s honest, and explains much of what we see when it comes to human mating, gender roles, and violence. But in her case, she wasn’t necessarily reasoning herself into a “this is what he should have done” scenario. Rather, she was highly caught off guard by her own biology. I believe she said something like, “I wouldn’t want to be with a guy who would get in a fight. My mind is telling me you’re a great guy, but my chemistry is telling me you’re a loser.” (or something like this). She was really caught off guard and seemed very much a slave to her biology – and was just facing up to it.

And for the record, I completely disagree with much of your post (” I don’t think that it is a choice between violence and peace at all. . It is a choice between pride and humiliation.”), but I believe that what you are expressing is honest, common, and therefore a GA.

@tom_g So, a woman is only being honest if she says what you expect her to? ~
For the record, my answer was 100% honest.

I would have respected him if he had called the police. I’d have respected him if he’d laughed at the guy and said something along the lines of, “I don’t want any trouble.” I would have respected him if he’d gotten up and left. But to just sit there and say something along the lines of please don’t beat me up because that is what the bully told him to say was really sort of pathetic and sad. I see it as he was taking orders from someone who was more pathetic than him and he became a follower of this loser.

Does that make sense, @tom_g? For me, it isn’t about being bigger and badder than the other guy. It is about, maybe, confidence and standing up for right and not allowing wrong to flourish. That is a real turnoff to me.

“I don’t know. It’s like a primitive thing or something. I mean, you see this guy totally debase himself…and it’s like, just to be safe or something? It’s a turnoff.”

True.

Is the whole point of the episode trying to make women the bad guys or not?
As if to say: “Women say one thing but they want the opposite, they are attracted to bad guys, so if men get violent don’t blame men.”

@bkcunningham is absolutely right. That’s the basis of my response: You can kill me, and you’re welcome to the first swing if you want to try, but I will not get on my knees and beg you for my life. I don’t want to fight; I want to live in an honorable peace. If you start something, I will also finish it. What happens now is up to you.

I think my point is that he could have defended himself without turning to violence and without being a bad guy. I’m not attracted to the bad boys. @CWOTUS, says it perfectly. Plus, I’m a little turned on by his response.

BTW, the video doesn’t have any of the usual 5 or so features: closed caption, translate etc. That is the first time I see that

Is Louis C.K the excusist for a so called comedian who made the news with a rape joke?

This is a great discussion. We have to keep in mind that the whole incident was started by the bully. Louis is the victim. It could just as easily have been a mugging or robbery with the perp saying “I won’t shoot you or your wife, if you beg.”

@flo I don’t know about that. I had not heard of the guy until this weekend when my 30+ son told me about the show on NetFlix. I’ve been going through a couple a night.

If @CWOTUS had somehow, magically, overcome the reaction time and speed advantage of youth and hit the kid with some object he’d be fluthering with us from the prison library. It’s not worth it. Adults have too much to lose for something so stupid.

@glacial Like the Clairol commercial – Does he or doesn’t he? Only his hairdresser knows for sure. – You’d never know.

@LuckyGuy Ok, but why would you hide something that important from someone you are dating? Keeping that a secret is very, very serious. Unless you think she might be a physical threat to you, why wouldn’t you tell her?

@LuckyGuy which post of mine are you referring to?

@flo You mentioned something about a rape joke. I have no idea if he was the guy.

@glacial Personal protection is just that – personal. I would never ask a woman I was dating if she was carrying mace, or a handgun or even a hat pin. That is not a point of discussion. We will talk about the movie we just saw, while enjoying a nice dinner. What she has in her purse or I have in my pocket is personal.

@glacial: “tom_g So, a woman is only being honest if she says what you expect her to? ~
For the record, my answer was 100% honest.”

…hence the GA from me. But it’s obvious. It’s the reasonable response. All I was pointing out is that @bkcunningham had the nerve to state something very uncool – but something I have spent a considerable amount of time hearing about from women.

@flo: “Is the whole point of the episode trying to make women the bad guys or not?
As if to say: “Women say one thing but they want the opposite, they are attracted to bad guys, so if men get violent don’t blame men.””

Far from it. It is way deeper than that. And frankly, to assume that this is what is being said here is why this type of show is important. It’s about a ton of things that I already described – and how the reason we see what we see is not because we’re deciding logically what we are attracted to. We attracted to things (as a result of evolution, or cultural conditioning if you like), and then we have to respond to it. And often, they are in stark contrast to our values and our expressed desires. Also, men are fucking assholes.

@flo: “Is Louis C.K the excusist for a so called comedian who made the news with a rape joke?”

Nope. And extremely nope. Here is his response if you are interested.

Just for the record only once in 30+ years has any person I was with ever asked if I was armed. My answer was: “Do you want me to be?”. She said “Yes”.
(We were in a dangerous place.)
Wait! My father-in-law asked once when we were out in the woods and was relieved when I said Yes.

@LuckyGuy Interesting. That would not have been my response.

I guess if I ever start dating in the US, I’ll have to add one more question to the vetting process.

Is my response uncool? I must be so out of touch and very, very uncool.

I don’t have much time for people who won’t stand up for themselves and I don’t care whether they are female or male. If I had been that woman, I would have said to my mate, let’s take this asshole outside and teach him a lesson, you go high, I’ll go low. I am sure the 2 of us could take on any one young punk because as @CWOTUS he apparently doesn’t know much about fighting. If I had been that man there is no way I would sit there and take it. This peaceful pc approach is really sad. I feel the same thing if I were confronted with a rapist. I might end up dead but I would be aiming to castrate the guy any way I could. He might win in the end, but he wouldn’t win easily.

I don’t think I’d be in prison, @LuckyGuy. That’s why I would want it to be very clear to everyone within eyesight and earshot that:
– I didn’t get out of that seat;
– I didn’t provoke him;
– I didn’t take the first shot;
– I didn’t even raise my voice until he started something.

And after that it was a fight for my life. My record would speak pretty well for me; I don’t even think the prosecutor would arraign or indict me. And if he did, I wouldn’t plea bargain or beg for mercy from that individual, either.

Heh…well…in my current state of mind and my usual extra fast and sharp wit, I would have said..” save the posturing and puffed up ego shit…here, just stick your over inflated bratwurst in the shop vac for some engorgement.”
Pffft….bullies….let them take on Coloma. They would be speechless by the time I was done with them! lol

OK..It’s time to say what he did. As he was saying goodbye to his date (most likely permanently) he notices the bully with his friends heading home for the night. He stalks the kid by following him down the street, on the subway, across the Staten Island Ferry and finally to the kid’s house. Two minutes after the kid goes inside he rings the doorbell and talks to the bully’s parents. They are outraged and call the kid downstairs and immediately start smacking him around. Louis tries to stop it and the mother begins to slap him. He runs out of the house. A few seconds later the father comes out and they start talking and sharing a quiet moment.while sitting on the front steps of the house sharing a smoke. Those 2 minutes of conversation explain it all.
The conversation solves nothing. It just explains it.

But what if he was alone in the restaurant? That would have been better and less debatable, as to what it is about. This clip shows that the focus is all about her reaction to it.

@tom_g
But the writers are putting the blame on the female. Women are like that, and we have no choice as men.
From your 1st post:

”...this episode really addressed what it feels like to be a male and forced with the choice of either humiliating yourself or potentially getting very hurt. The reality is that if Louie decided to attack this kid, he would likely be hospitalized or killed. And for what?”

“She yelled out from the audience, Actually, rape is never funny.” Tosh said something to the effect of “Wouldn’t if be funny if she were raped by five guys right now?”
If someone who is not a comedian had said that, they would be…what do you think?

Whatever expalanations those comedians give about disguisting jokes is whatever they want you to eat up. They are just doing whatever shocking ads do, they cheat to be remembered.