Manuel here, braving a sick day bringing you a short and sweet recap from this week's SanFran shenanigans. Even if this week’s episode of Looking hadn’t ended with one of my favorite college-throwback songs I overplayed during many a heartbreak (that entire EP is to die for!), “Looking Down the Road” would have easily become my favorite season 2 episode so far. I wish I weren't so indisposed otherwise I rattle off an endless valentine to this episode which saw itself resetting (or re-directing) our three main leads lives with Dom and Lynn's relationship seemingly at an end, Kevin and Patrick's affair finally buckling under its own platonic weight and Agustin landing a job alongside Eddie at the trans center.
"You're not fat Patrick" - Easy for Tovey to say, I mean; look at him!
But while the plotting of the episode was excellent, artfully shuttling us between pretty much every character we've met this season and even including a new one -- hey sexy Ginge! -- what drove it home was the way director Ryan Fleck visually echoed the strongest aspects of the show.
- I love that while Kevin & Patrick have their rooftop (public yet private, gorgeous yet necessarily inaccessible), Richie & Patrick have the streets -- and the bars!-- (busy, jostling, open and inviting). It's no surprise Patrick flips when seeing Kevin and John in the light of day; theirs is a relationship kindled in furtive glances and stowaway spaces (the bathroom, the closed office). I want to toss Looking as a Hit Me With Your Best Shot contender as Nat revvs up the new season; so many scenes are so beautifully framed and lit!
- Can we talk about Looking's insistence on the thrillingly mundane details of the boys' sexual history? There's a frankness to the depiction (and discussion) of gay sex in the show that, while not breaking new ground, feels delightfully welcome especially as every sex scene this season has been used as a pointed pivot point: Dom, Lynn & Michael's threesome eventually leads to the implosion of their carefully constructed dynamic while Kevin's insistence that the great sex he had with Patrick is nowhere to be found with John ends up sounding both hollow yet truthful even if he may have finally admitted to himself that that's not enough for him to throw his boyfriend under the bus.
Best line of the episode I wish I could off-handedly use:
"No, I heart anal, too.”
Best gif-worthy moment: Richie’s “are you listening to yourself?” side-eye as Patrick explains his “weird” relationship status with Kevin.
Best Doris moment: “Not me. Was just getting us beers for me and Dom!”
Previously: 2.1 Looking for the Promised Land, 2.2 Looking for Returns, 2.3 Looking Top to Bottom
Did everyone feel they were watching a conscious reset button with new characters taking center stage and old ones being shuffled to the side (here's hoping Bakula will return soon)? Are you excited to see what other gay tropes will crop up next to Eddie Bear, Cute "over average girth" Matthew & Sexy Ginge?