Bud is the straight man. Serious. Clear. Doesn’t crack a smile or lose composure.
Lou is the real comedy here, never catching on, always befuddled and guessing. Always working to understand. He’s hearing the words and he knows they should make sense, but they don’t. How is he supposed to know?
Watching this, we start out on Bud’s side, with his point of view. That’s the role of the straight man, the Everyman. He’s the one we are supposed to see ourselves in: sensible, grounded, reasonable. We understand more quickly than Lou that "Who" is the guy’s name.
But we change perspecitives. We remember all the times in our life we were Lou, when we asked and asked again, only to make things more confusing rather than less. We reworded the question and the answer got worse. We painted whole scenarios in which surely, when the blanks are filled in, the situation will make sense, but no.
When it happened to us, we usually weren’t laughing. Something was at stake and figuring it out was urgent. The computer was broken. The map was wrong. The diagnosis just didn’t seem like it could match these symptoms. Say that again. Say that again. Say it one more time, please. Could you write that down for me? What am I supposed to do exactly?
We’ve all been swimming in that disorientation. We’ve had to dive deep and forced our way up for air. So we know. And when Lou bangs the bat and throws his hat, we remember and now, we can laugh. We are Lou.
Naturally.
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