Parker Posey delivered in the second part of "Daddy’s Girlfriend" in a big way. We pick up right where we left off last week. Louie has asked out this mysterious book store employee who is cute and charming and seems to understand Louie’s kids without ever having met them. She seems perfect. What we learn in part two is that she is so far from perfect and how little we know about someone we may think we know from just a couple of casual conversations or, in Louie’s case, casual flirting.

The date starts off as Posey suggests they go to this nice bar she knows. As she goes ahead of Louie to grab him and herself a drink, we find out she’s known there to drink a bit too much. The bartender offers up a condescending (though understandable) alternative to her desired two shots of Jaegermeister. Posey quickly decides to leave the bar and take Louie somewhere else. At this point, I think maybe she’s got a drinking problem, not too unusual. She quickly spins the direction of the date and leads Louie to another destination. On the way, she tells Louie an upsetting story about how she had cancer as a girl and lost her hair and teeth. CK’s almost always at his best when he is left reacting to the things coming out of his character’s mouths and this instance is no exception. OK, so she’s possibly an alcoholic and she may have shown part of the reason why. Maybe five minutes into the episode, Posey has exposed herself in such an unusually raw way. Is this a date or a therapy session?

Posey leads CK to a vintage clothing store and dares Louie to try on a dress. CK is taken aback, but agrees to this test of whether he likes her. This is manic pixie dream girl territory, which left me worried. Is Posey supposed to be the cool, creative type to liberate the frustrated sensitive Louie? Of course this show is better than that. Yes, Louie puts on the dress and has yet another bizarre conversation about each other’s names with Posey (she tells him her name is “tape recorder” and he believes her before she spills the beans).

They head to a local joint called Russ and Daughters, which is famous for its smoked fish. As a side note, I’ve heard of this place and it looks and sounds like heaven. CK films the sequence like food pornography at its best. They have fish, fish roe, bagels with white fish smeared on it and some chocolate bobka. It’s a nice interlude in one of the best/worst/strangest dates ever recorded.

The couple walks past a homeless man and after CK leaves a sandwich with the homeless man, Posey asks why he doesn’t actually help him. She goes over and talks to the man. We learn he sees snakes, and we also learn that Posey is particularly helpful and understanding with a man that clearly has mental health problems. CK and Posey go to a drugstore and refill the man’s medication so he can stop his hallucinations, then buy him a hotel room.

Posey then takes Louie to the roof of a tall apartment building. After she screams at him to make the exhausting trek to the top of the building, they enjoy the beautiful view. Posey sits on the edge of the building to enjoy the view. This puts Louie into a panic. He begs her to get off the edge of the building perhaps just being neurotic, perhaps sensing something that we the viewer have had in the back of our mind ever since that bartender denied her drinks.

Posey asks, “Do you know why you’re scared?” CK bumbles some answer about the danger of falling and that whole gravity thing. “The only way I’d fall is if I jumped,” she says. That’s really the fear and maybe it’s the fear we all have watching Posey because she isn’t a manic pixie dream girl, she’s just manic. She’s had a tough life and understands the struggles of the homeless man, who just needs his pills to function. Maybe it’s not explicitly said, but the implication is that Posey is unbalanced, not in a fun movie way but in a real-life way. However this doesn’t make her less desirable, it just makes her more complicated, like people actually are. Posey quickly stops enjoying the view and just wants to go home. The fun was over for her. I don’t know enough about manic depression to say whether her portrayal is accurate at all.  Regardless, it was a great performance worthy of multiple viewings.

I’d love to see Posey come back as Louie’s girlfriend because I think he does have a great night, even if it was a bit unusual. In addition to seeing how this relationship plays out, I’d love to see more of Parker Posey who was absolutely fantastic and made this episode one of the most memorable episodes of Louie in the series’ run thus far. To those saying she’s just a manic pixie dream girl, I’d say CK found a way this type of character trope can exist in the real world. And guess what, it turns about to be much more interesting than what we see on the big screen.