LOOKING- Page 42

[BroomstickBoy]

Posted: 3/18/15 at 4:53pm

After that horrible GLEE episode writing I nicknamed him Roberto Aguirre-SaCACA.

I adore Julia Duffy. It was nice to see her play a little dramatic after seeing her on so many sitcoms.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/18/15 at 4:58pm

"Roberto Aguirre-SaCACA" this is the guy who was the central component in Bono and The Edge's "Let's Stab Julie Taymor While Her Back Is Turned" campaign, right?

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 7:22pm

Finale thoughts?

I found it very boring. A blip of screen time for two of the "leads". Dom's cliffhanger is will his chicken window open? Augustin is happy.

There is no momentum for this show. Patrick is presented as one of the most naive people on the planet. Kevin is presented as a completely vacuous a-hole with no forethought. I could care less if they make it.

The gay neighbors and their bougie friends are presented as insatiable queens.

Just give it a mercy killing.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 7:27pm

It certainly didn't FEEL like a finale.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 7:29pm

Patrick was kicked in the head, right? And Kevin is glad his dad made him be masc and not some twirling fairy poofter, right?

Did Patrick finally get to play board games, you know, good old fashioned board games?

Updated On: 3/23/15 at 07:29 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 8:37pm

I thought the finale was a pretty strong episode. If this is the final finale, I wish it had shown some more characters and interactions, but I liked the scene between Dom and Doris a lot.

I've been fairly uninterested in the Kevin/Patrick stuff, but I thought--despite their fight being the main show--it was much better done than I expected, especially acting and directing wise (some of the dialogue was too on the nose--I was thankful at least that they did acknowledge how stupid that bed number metaphor was, but, c'mon.) But yeah, I was happy with it as a season finale (and while obvious, I thought it kinda worked well to have Patrick ending by saying he was ready when last year ended with him saying he was not ready.) So not exactly a rave, but...

Is Wesley Taylor the go to guy now for slightly bitchy gay guy cameos on TV? With Firefly's Sean Maher as his partner, it seems like every out actor now is appearing on the show for 2 minutes of airtime (which I guess is better than Ryan Murphy doing the same but building the episode all around that actor.)

Bettyboy--I'm amazed you stuck through the finale but I guess it's good that you at least enjoyed hate watching enough to bother (?)

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 8:44pm

So no board games? You know, good old fashioned board games?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:05pm

What is a chicken window???

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:15pm

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:17pm

I hope he gets it open!

[Luscious]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:32pm

Thought it was a very good finale, and one of the better episodes of a very good season. It worked for me as a season finale, as well as a series finale, if that's the show's fate. Although, I'd be surprised if HBO didn't bring it back for at least a limited final season.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:59pm

I liked it better after watching the writers talk on the HBO YouTube about how Patrick's line at the end means he knows what he wants now. Whether it's Richie, Kevin or someone else he knows what he wants and that's apparently huge. If there's a third season we might find out what he wants too but if this is it the ambiguity leaves room for each viewer to have their own interpretation.

[Luscious]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 12:18am

To me, it seemed clear that Patrick had come to the realization that what he didn't want was Kevin, and Kevin's idea of what a relationship should or could be. Patrick and Richie appear to be on the same page when it comes to what they want in a relationship, specifically in regards to monogamy and fidelity. The question is, did Patrick come to that realization too late, now that Richie is in a relationship, and, given his moral compass, not likely to step outside of the relationship to rekindle things with Patrick. Of course, by giving Richie's boyfriend a substance abuse problem, the writers have left the door open for that relationship to end at some point (if it hasn't already) and for Patrick and Richie to reconcile. Anyway... that's how I saw it. But I love ambiguous endings that are open to interpretation. Which is why I'm fine with it being the season OR series finale.

Updated On: 3/24/15 at 12:18 AM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 12:52am

While I get where you're coming from--I think that's a soapier take on what happened than is intended (I could be wrong.) I don't think Richie's BF (blanking on name,) is meant to show he has an out of control substance abuse problem--he has been shown to be much better with alcohol than the other characters. I thought that was more just done partly to show that Richie, for all his patience can be pretty judgmental (and he always has been at least a bit when people drink around him a lot ie Patrick early in season 1,) and it was a plot contrivance to get out the fact that Richie and he had been talking about Patrick and Kevin.

I also suspect this doesn't mean Patrick will instantly go back to actively pursuing Richie if we do get a third season. He's ready because he realizes what he doesn't want (wow, maybe his character is growing,) and that he was ignoring lots of things for the sake of what he saw as the relationship he wanted. Not that he wants Richie suddenly (though of course I'm sure there's some of that since Richie, God knows would NEVER suggest it was ok to have a little tug with a stranger in a gym sauna :P )

(Speaking of gyms, while Patrick certainly has a nice body, not for one moment to I believe there's any truth to his line to Kevin that he goes to World Gym or whatever. Though I would believe he regularly buys and renews his membership and still never goes.)

CATS, that's a good point--I do think if this is the end, it left it in a nice, ambiguous but hopeful spot for all of the characters.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 5:35am

Do any of you live in the Mercedes House in Hell's Kitchen? The is-it-or-isn't-it orgy scene reminded me of the last time I was in NY. Got invited to a friend of a friend of a friend's party at a tastefully appointed apartment in the Mercedes House. I've never felt more out of my place in my life. The apartment was packed with ridiculously beautiful, highly successful white men in their 20s-30s. I was, literally, the only person of color. Virtually all of these men were residents of that building. You know the types: 2% body fat, 200k and above salaries, owners of the most perfectly groomed dogs in the history of domesticated canines, going on multiple international vacations every year etc.

Agree with Eric. If you'd told me that a good part of the episode would have been an emotional argument between Patrick and Kevin on the merits of monogamy, I would have thought it was a little too on the nose. But, in execution, I though Groff, Tovey and Haigh handled it really well. I understood where both Kevin and Patrick were coming from and felt sorry for them both.

This was the first time in a while that I agreed with those of you who wish the show were longer than 30 mins. It did feel like the B or C-lines got really rushed, but the Doris and Dom reconciliation and Augustin being happy and well adjusted got a couple of "aws" out of me.

But my absolute favorite part of the ep, was a small moment between Richie and Patrick. When Patrick sits down in the barber's chair, Richie ruffles the back of Patrick's head with his hand. Not something uncommon for a barber/stylist to do, but he did it with the tenderness of a lover. I know my stylist certainly doesn't touch me that way. It wasn't overt. It was a small, subtle blink-and-you-miss-it moment that this show does so well. I dunno, perhaps I'm a softy, but it made my heart flutter a little.

ETA- of course there's already a GIF of this exact moment on Tumblr:







Updated On: 3/24/15 at 05:35 AM

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 6:23am

If Richie had any sense he would have slapped Patrick upside his head, given him a fvcked up crew cut and sent that boy on his way to play old fashioned board games.

UGH @ this show and it's friggin' chicken window drama.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 10:28am

'Do any of you live in the Mercedes House in Hell's Kitchen?'

Oh GOD! That is IT! That is it EXACTLY. I had the same reaction to the fictional party as I did to the actual party I went to at Mercedes House: God, let a tidal wave hit and kill them all. As a very good swimmer, I would have survived.

I thought Groff came a live during that fight in a way that he hasn't in forever. He seemed far less Flowers for Algernon during that. But still...Paddy's moral compass is just so immature. I'm a big believer in 'life is messy' and that sometimes you hurt people along the way to finding your happiness. But the idea that the monogamish relationship being presented by Kevin would be so out of left field is positively naive. How do you not have that conversation before moving in? How do you go from other woman to happy homemaker in the span of an episode? How do you not see that your mother's need of something else in her life is a big f*cking sign that maybe what Kevin is offering is actually an honest, acceptable way forward??

In the end, that's my biggest problem with the show for me...Paddy never was someone I could root for. He has the emotional maturity of a 16 year old, and whatever growth he experienced was so incrementally small that it didn't even matter. Compare that to the rehab given to Augustine and you see what could have been possible. And Dom's Chicken (seriously? They couldn't come up with a cute S&M nickname for the chicken place in San Francisco???) is not high drama.

But what does it say about me that I'm hoping for a third season so we can find some kind of resolution for all these people?

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 11:35am

I have yet to see LOOKING, I'm sorry to say. But I'm glad in a petty way that there are people in the world who don't think Jonathan Groff is the second coming.
Looking, Marriage and the new Gay Sadness

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 11:46am

I absolutely agree that the writing and the nuances were better in the finale than in previous episodes and this stuff should have been happening all along and not just in the finale. Every episode should have a "moment" you remember.

Also, the end felt like the end of an indie film, which I loved. I don't need to know who Patrick picks. It seems like he is finally grounding himself and making his own choices. Augustin is content and Dom and Doris are working things out. I could easily be done here.

I will hate the writers forever for that starting the chicken window storyline.

Updated On: 3/24/15 at 11:46 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 1:05pm

Jeezis. That New Yorker article anoints the show with depth no one knew it had. It makes the show sound like it was Tales of the Goddamn City all over again.

The effect of “Looking” is not, as the National Gay Task Force might have had it, to show straight audiences that gay people deserve to be citizens. It is to show that being a citizen only gets you so far when you have never thought of yourself as one. Plenty of people, straight and gay, are sexually immature and romantically inept; but Patrick seems as little ready to connect to another man, in any fashion and for any length of time, as when he was a closeted fifteen-year-old with no sense of being entitled to any rights, hiding what he had transformed into criminal urges under a blanket in the back of a bus.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 2:23pm

It's the New Yorker--what did ya expect? Someone is paid to blog on their site about tv shows he watches and sohas to come up with something to say. For the record, I agreed with many of its points as to the strength of the show(no surprise to anyone here, I'm sure.) Thanks for posting it Borstal!

Speaking of Tales of the Godamned City I do NOT understand why there are so many comparisons between it and Looking. I've read some intelligent pieces on the show that still insist that Tales of the City and it are linked very closely. I get that both are set in San Francisco, involve friends, etc... But Tales of the City (a series I love deeply,) always mixed the everyday moments of friends being there for each other (or not, as the case may be,) and hanging out with often brilliant moments of over the top soap opera twists and turns. They just feel quite different to me.

Horse--back before I started cutting my own hair or occasionally getting friends to do it, my barber did used to always scrunch up my hair like in that gif when he was asking me how I'd like it cut. Was I missing an obvious come on I shoulda acted on? Sigh (I do agree that it was a sweet, small moment.)

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 2:28pm

It's the New Yorker--what did ya expect? Someone is paid to blog on their site about tv shows he watches and sohas to come up with something to say.

..as opposed to being paid to blog on their site about tv shows he watches and not coming up with something to say?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 2:40pm

Yes.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 3:05pm

"
..as opposed to being paid to blog on their site about tv shows he watches and not coming up with something to say? "

Umm.. I guess? I imagine he then wouldn't get paid. *shrug*

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 10:28pm

"my barber did used to always scrunch up my hair like in that gif when he was asking me how I'd like it cut"

No, he was asking you how you'd like it. That's barber BJ code, believe me, I know.

Are we sure New Yorker bloggers get paid? They might just do it for all that great exposure.