Ya, I think you're mostly right ("drumming up sympathy" was def an exaggeration), but the moment of crying catharsis/weird fraternal bonding when Louie gives him back the gun suggests something more complicated happening in Louie's attitude than just 'ok, whatever, you're not my problem, get out'. I don't think you…

I'm surprised no one is talking about what seemed to me to be semi-allegorical stuff going on in the episode with attitudes towards police. Maybe I'm just hypersensitive to it now after all the news stories about bad cops, but it seemed like this episode was pretty directly commenting on the recent stuff with cops…