Letting Go of "Looking" Has Not Been Easy
Monday, March 30, 2015 at 11:02PM 
This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with minor adjustments.
The first Sunday night without HBO's "Looking" came and went. Of course there would have been no "Looking" this past Sunday night even had the show been renewed, since the second much improved season had just wrapped. One of the funniest things I heard after the cancellation was this:
Well, yes. Those are almost at an end, too.
The autopsy reports have to run their course and so does the mourning process. And if HBO makes good on its promise of a wrap-up movie (believe it when you see it), the cycle starts all over again in miniature even if the end point is still goodbye. Given all this finality, it's strangely apt that the second season's finest episode "Looking for a Plot" took places at a funeral (Doris's father) and sent Dom, Doris and Patrick spinning emotionally, even if they didn't quite realize it at first. But the mourning is real. At least for those of us who loved the show for what it actually was. More...
Right from the start "Looking" had been the target of weird vitriol from some members of the LGBT community, some of it easy to understand (internalized homophobia) some more complicated but no less true (it was not a TV show for those who love, say, plot) but some of the negative reactions were far more peculiar and contradictory in nature. It became very obvious, especially in its second season, that Looking was one of those shows that people had trouble seeing as it was rather than how they wanted it to be or what they believed it was. Which was...what exactly? It was never clear what the people who disdained it wanted it to be and one suspects this varied considerably from person to person and was inconsistent from week to week.
It was sex-negative, it was too obsessed with sex, there was not enough sex. We've heard it all. But how could all of these things be true? What's more the show's sex scenes actually affected the characters emotionally and narratively. It wasn't just empty soft core titillation like [shudder] "Queer as Folk".
The major clue that "Looking" was never treated fairly critically was the frequent vicious attacks on its (perceived) lack of diversity. This for a show that subtly gave a side-eye to men whose social circle was not diverse and the way it endorsed suspicion of gay couples who looked too much alike (consider that great takedown of Patrick & Kevin by the disabled gamer in "Looking for Glory"), the way it was clear through the entire arc of the second season but especially in its final complex and richly directed episode "Looking for Home" that Kevin pulling Patrick away from his far more diverse world of San Francisco into a much smaller interior world of all white, all wealthy, all hot sculpted men of roughly the same age was not healthy for him.
The diversity topic was always a sore spot in the media for reasons that didn't actually have much to do with the content of the show itself. Sure the majority of the characters were white (as they are on most shows on television) but within its two seasons the show also featured in recurring or prominent roles: a straight woman, two Hispanic gay men, a black straight man, a black gay man, an Asian straight man, and we have every reason to believe that the third season would have expanded the cast further still since the central characters lives were also expanding as their initially tight circle was opening up (albeit not Patrick's whose life was shrinking) probably to include trans characters since Agustin was now working with them. We were beginning to meet the leads' families, too. Just about the only glaring omission from the show was no lesbian characters but then lesbian and gay social circles don't always overlap as much as they should post-college.
But the truly devastating thing about Looking's loss was the rare topics it explored that are otherwise almost entirely absent from television. There's more to diversity than skin color and the series presented all kinds of usually invisible relationships and topics, romantic and otherwise, with something like true purpose. Think about it: It paired people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, different generations, different races, different body types and even different HIV statuses and often commented, sometimes very subtly but sometimes in more on-the-nose dialogue, the ways in which these differences mattered... and/or didn't.
Where else can you find any of that on television?
In truth, I can't even wrap my head around the complaints about its lack of diversity. Unless of course the people complaining were a) not actually watching the show b) watched it a couple of times only and didn't emotionally process it or c) watched it or didn't watch it but either way preferred to be outraged or annoyed rather than engaged in the more complicated process of thinking about what the show was conveying.
It's okay not to like any show or movie or play or book or whatever. Aesthetic taste is personal and should be. But it's important to know why you don't like something and to make sure that that thing you don't like actually jives with what it is outside of your own head.
I loved reading what Adam Barin wrote about this show recently as shared on Boy Culture and co-sign many of the points including these:
There's literally no pleasing all gay people as a monolithic bloc. Working at Outfest and NewFest for three years taught me that. Some people will look at a wonderful gay movie that has sex in it and hate that there's sex. Some people will lament that there's a sissy character. Some people will say there's not enough sex. Some people will watch the worst piece of shit and say it's wonderful because there are shirtless guys or topless gals in it. Most people don't want to see anything that's challenging...
And so when Looking was cancelled today, and I started seeing reactions on my feed like, "Good!" "At last" I felt sick, and I felt like I finally understood what my subtly homophobic screenwriting teacher at NYU meant when she told me that if I wrote about gay people it would be "limiting" - a note I have spent years proudly ignoring. It's not that I didn't have my own feelings about Looking's strengths and weaknesses. I would have loved to have written for it, but I wasn't hired. Still, I watched. And I think it really is the ghost of the generations of homophobia that forced our own stories to be squashed, hidden, and coded or put unwholesome characters in our films that caused us to react the way we reacted to Looking.Better no representation than imperfect representation!
Instead of protesting a blatantly homophobic film like GET HARD, we are cheering the demise of a piece of film by a great gay filmmaker which starred all openly gay actors giving moving and powerful performances. Nowadays we criticize every single bit of representation or lack thereof and shun the films and media by not watching. I'm not saying those conversations were wrong, and shouldn't have happened, but the failure of Looking to make it past two seasons is a bad thing for gay filmmakers, and a bad thing for people trying to put gay characters on the small screen.
It's terribly sad because it's true.
As for fans of the show, we'll have to let it go now. Though HBO has promised a wrap-up movie which could revive this whole sad process again the end result will still be in goodbye. And, really, a wrap-up movie could be a curse. When shows end prematurely, particular shows that are not plot but character driven, there is an ambiguity that opens up a melancholy afterlife. You're always free to wonder and fantasize about them, free of the kind of too neat bow-wrapping which often dulls their afterlife. Consider the separate cases of My So Called Life and Sex & The City. The former ended on a cliffhanger of sorts as to which direction (and boy) Angela Chase's life would go in. It was agonizing but years later you can still think of Angela in the same way, this emblem of teenage possibility and confusion rather than settled and decisive. Sex & The City used its end game for a "happily ever after" pairing each woman with her Prince Sometimes Charming. It might have been satisfying in the moment but felt, in retrospect, like a betrayal of the show's central themes, preoccupations and characterizations.
I already miss Doris, Dom, and Patrick a lot. I'll miss Richie sometimes too in the way I already missed Frank and Lynn (the other chief ex-boyfriends of the show, a blue collar hispanic guy, an older white guy, a black guy - how is this show not diverse again?). I'll mourn not getting to know the side players a little better like Doris' new man Malik, HIV positive bear Eddie, the crusading ginger dating Richie, Patrick's favorite co-worker Owen (who hadn't taken well to the Kevin situation), to Patrick's imploding family. Hell, I'll even miss Agustín and Kevin a little though they sure were maddening at times.
So a final thank you to Michael Lannan (series creator) and Andrew Haigh (the principle director, who we already owed so much for the exquisite film Weekend). Thanks for making a beautiful series, with its own unique voice, that was getting better all the time. We'll say goodbye with this tweet from the fine filmmaker Zal Batmanglij (The East, Sound of My Voice) who incisively tweeted about this sad moment in LGBT television and our collective loss...
Looking was a colt. Shedding its youth, about to emerge a stallion. That last ep was like the gears of an emotional watch clickin into place
P.S. Update: a petition has started at Care2 asking HBO to "honor our stories" reconsider its decision to cancel the show. Sign it!
LGBT, Looking, RIP, TV, racial politics, sex scenes
Reader Comments (24)
This is inspired writing.
You have expressed much of what I feel about the show and the misplaced backlash it received.
Well done, Nathaniel. I never understood the lack of diversity arguments either. Were these critics even watching Looking? Or was it just more convenient for them to ignore the facts in their agenda to take down the show?
I love how on the Towleroad site for your article Looking's production designer, Todd Fjelsted, really let those bastards in the talkback section have it. This was my favorite comment by Mr. Fjelsted:
"No one said you had to like it. I don't like a lot of shows. But I don't go on various threads about those shows to trash the efforts of the filmmakers. Especially when they're my gay brothers. Especially when we make up such a small percentage of characterization on TV and there's a dedicated team of people busting their asses to change that. The whole thing is sad on so many levels. I loved this article. Thank you towleroad for an intelligent, thought provoking response that goes beyond "I'm bored" or "I want it to be this way and it's not my way" Maybe next time gay filmmakers put their necks, careers, and years of their lives on the line we can be a little more generous? God I hope so."
Bravo! Well said. Maybe one day HBO will revive it, a la The Comeback?
Looking is canceled. Meanwhile Modern Family, which buries its asexual gay couple in a cast of mostly straight (and mostly white) characters is primed to win Emmys for the next decade. I am taking hope in the chance that some of Looking's excellent actors or crew take advantage of the show's untimely demise and do something else big and wonderful.
It's ironic that Looking was accused of lack of diversity during its tenure when its absence will actually make HBO's Sunday night block of television LESS diverse (and now completely white).
Also Nathaniel, I love what you wrote about the kind of nostalgic melancholia that seals a TV show's legendary status when they end abruptly rather than given a whole final season to wrap things up too neatly. Another good example is Glee, which recently limped off the air unloved, with a final season that gave everyone what they wanted. Had that show been canceled suddenly after Season 2 (the last time it was great), I really believe its reputation would've entered that realm of wistfulness and fondness.
This was the great piece and echoes my sentiments exactly.
I never understood the diversity claims either, but furthermore I never understood why people got so angry about a program that didn't "represent them". It rather hypocritically implies that all gay people ARE the same and that this show wasn't accurately presenting that, but gay people are no all the same and people saying the say should go away because of reasons like that suggest that the people in life that the show does reflect aren't worth noticing or making art about. Like, hello, you're doing exactly what the homophobes want. It was also funny since Patrick was criticized for being too white and too upper class and yet the show was criticized for portraying gay people as too sex obsessed and not at all like "real" gay people who just go to work and wanna live life without causing a fuss. It's the same people who liked The Case Against 8 despite *that* film presenting the most conservative view of gay lives imaginable (and very cynical in its doing acknowledging yet never challenging that they did that because everyday people would respond better to picket fences white folk.
Your insight into the finale, that Patrick didn't want to be around a world of all affluent, all gym bunny, all superficial world of men is so spot on. I'll miss a show in which characters like Patty and Kevin can have a protracted argument about the things that they had their argument about and see it on national TV. I guess we'll go back now to gay shows about flamboyant characters (the likes of Billy Eichener who I enjoy, but who has a shtick and which will be odd to see go by unscathed if he's ever the sole lead of TV show).
Internalized homophobia is a bottomless pit. I'll miss the show too. Groff and Weedman were brilliant. Let's hope we don't have to wait a whole decade to get a similar one.
Stan -- thanks for sharing that. I actually never read the comments over there because they're often vicious so I like hearing the occasional comment that's interesting / thoughtful and supportive of the article.
Peggy Sue - agreed on the MVP actors of the show and the 'bottomless pit' too true.
BRAVO! This is a wonderful piece of writing. I fully admit to not particularly liking the first few episodes of Looking - the characters were "not like anyone I know", and "annoying", and the show was "too quiet", etc. But I kept watching for God knows what reason - a desire to support gay shows? Belief in Andrew Haigh's talent after the brilliant Weekend? A hope that the show would get better? - and the small moments that I loved slowly began to outweigh the things I didn't. And then, BAM, Looking for the Future happened, and it was everything; Weekend in miniature, a gay version of Before Sunrise, everything the show WASN'T "supposed" to be as "the gay 'Girls'". And I was sold. The second season was a marked improvement on the first in every way, and more and more I didn't understand any of the criticisms the show was getting. Especially that damn diversity thing. As I've said before, that argument was boring when it was lobbed at Friends, Sex & The City, Girls, and a million other shows before Looking, and it was even worse now, since unlike those other shows, Looking actually HAD a diverse cast, including an Hispanic lead (Augustin) and two major multi-culti supporting characters (Frank and Richie). Again, compare it to Queer As Folk - was there ever even a non-white boyfriend for any of the main characters who lasted more than a single episode?
Looking was basically a short film every week - the artistry on display was of a ridiculously high quality, especially in the second season, and that quality should be the headline story for any show. Instead, Looking got thrown under the bus by the very people who should have been lauding it. It's a shame, and it's even more of a shame that HBO deigned to cancel their most diverse, most artistically successful half-hour show.
100% agreement here - I'm going to miss this show a lot. As a straight woman, I didn't see this so much as a "gay show" as a show that happened to be about gay people. What I loved was how it managed to capture with such nuance both issues that were specific to being gay AND issues that anyone, straight or gay (or, yes, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or anything else), could relate to, i.e., anxieties about sex, relationships, friendships, family, career success, class, the whole shebang.
Not much "happened" on the show. So what? You could say the same of any Richard Linklater film. And like Linklater's films, it had an emotional truth that transcended any lack of overt "drama." It really felt, more than any other TV show I can think of (except maybe, in a different way, HBO's "Treme"), like *real life*.
All this reminds me I really need to see "Weekend." If this show is representative of its MO, I think I'll like it.
It's probably obvious at this point but we're clearly on the same page on the show and I'm sad to see it go for precisely the very complicated issues you outline here.
It was hard to dissociate the show itself from the conversations it engendered, but then I think it was precisely the noise around it that pushed me to understand how keenly observant the show was and how acutely sensitive it was to how it might come off; it really is a show that rewarded close watching in ways that contemporary twitter-trigger happy viewers tend to disdain. As you say, it never really was about mere plot, which made all its subtle choices that much easier to misrepresent.
Sad that it's become a two-season wonder, but then there's plenty of good company there (Pushing Daisies, Enlightened, Party Down, Twin Peaks...)
Great piece. Now I am inclined to go with the feel of No Wrap Up Movie. Best to let it go - if we have to - as is, with things messy, unresolved, a little haunted.
I really like this piece. I liked "Looking" with reservation. I'm glad it exists. I think the TV landscape will be worse off without it. I do agree with the whole "you can't please everyone" hypothesis, although I caution that sometimes it's used to dismiss legitimate concerns.
A lot of non-white queer people look at the general racial homogeneity that goes on in queer narratives and feel disheartened. Is that something that needs to be laid at "Looking's" doorstep? Absolutely not. There's the key. Michael Lannan is writing to his own experience. Statistics show that most core social groups are pretty racially homogenous, even in diverse metropolitan centers. I think you can point to "Looking" as an example of how when queer narratives are greenlit in film or television, they're usually about white people, but that's not a problem unique to queer narratives. It's very much an American problem.
I'm rambling, but my point is it's RIDICULOUS to celebrate the cancellation of "Looking" if you're a queer person of any walk of life who felt betrayed or underrepresented by the series. I hope this isn't the case, but I fear "Looking's" quiet death will make it that much harder to get thoughtful queer stories on television, be they about white characters, non-white character, all of the above. Did I feel represented by "Looking"? No. But I will miss it. It was well-written, thoughtful, believable and it reminded me of little else (maybe nothing else) on television. That's something to mourn the loss of. I don't need to see myself in every story I watch.
Stan- Sadly the Towleroad commenters are more vile than most.
Another good post-mortem from the same blog that I thought had some good points: http://www.towleroad.com/2015/03/a-smarter-take-on-sex-could-have-saved-looking.html
One of the beautiful things about Looking was its stylistic and narrative commitment to realism. It had characters who made mistakes and didn't get punished for them. Patrick, Augustin and Dom could be incredibly endearing one moment and terribly frustrating the next. Their stories were delivered with comedy but it wasn't the broad outrageousness of Girls or Louie. They were anti-heroes but not in a sexy criminal way like Walter White or Tony Soprano. Their continual fuck-ups didn't have the retro-glamour of Don Draper's.
Looking was closest in tone to Orange is the New Black, without the benefit of an hour each week to develop its storylines. (Also, straight viewers can handle lesbian sex more than gay male sex.)
TV is full of fantasy right now -- Game of Thrones, House of Cards. We get to feel a comfortable TV-distance from these shows. Looking gave us something much more like life, which opened it up to the endless stupid analyses that from the start decided the show didn't measure up to what life is supposed to be.
I miss Looking. A lot. And I'm pissed off about how it was received by both the mainstream media and the gay viewers who took great sport in bullying it every week.
First you criticize gay men for attacking Looking, then you turn around and attack Queer As Folk (shudder!) Guess you're no different than the rest of them. If there is another gay show, it'll be torn apart as well. Some things never change. Starting with the gay haters. They managed to kill Looking. No doubt they'll be laying in wait for their next well-intentioned victim.
I had problems with diversity in the first season, yes. But I didn't realize how intelligent the show was. And I don't think most people do. Or rather, I don't think the first season was as rich. The second season really stepped it up and that's when I really saw them addressing diversity in subtle ways. Slowly unveiling Richie's backstory, introducing the HIV-positive character, and Malik. By the end of the season, Patrick is the one actually noticing how "white" his new neighborhood is, whereas he wouldn't have had a clue before. I think this show is just too intelligent for the average viewers. If they really paid attention, they would notice the protagonist coming out of his comfort zone and changing. But this show is true to life in that it happens slowly, and in subtle ways. Would people have been more happy if it had been like Glee? Bringing in new characters and storylines all willy-nilly just to fill a trope and check off the diversity boxes? I admit I had qualms in the beginning, but I actually paid attention and noticed the change of the characters and how much more they were setting them up to change even more in the future. I'll miss the show. It felt like it was just about to go somewhere great.
Looking was always artful and some times brilliant. It takes any show a season (sometimes two) to hit it's groove, that was certainly the case with this one.
I think most viewers were too impatient with this show-- they watched it with a checklist in mind, and turned it off when there weren't enough boxes checked off. Instead, they should have been paying attention to see what it was doing-- watching the characters as real people who make real choices, rather than representatives or role models.
I was already familiar with the work of Haigh, as well as Groff and Tovey, so the real discoveries for me were Murray Bartlett and Lauren Weedman. I wanted to see so much more of those two characters.
I hope that Lauren Weedman can still pick up an Emmy nom (or win!) for Looking for a Plot. (Hey, it happened for Kristin Chenoweth on Pushing Daisies). She's a damned good actress. I can see her having a brilliant career in indie films, doing the kind of parts Amy Ryan does.
While I agree that the show was never as homogenous as the critics pretended, I did feel a time or two that new "diverse" characters were only added as a response to that criticism. Take, for instance, the KKK orgy in the last episode. I got severe "Okay, you wanted us to tackle this issue" vibes from that mini storyline.
Still, you're absolutely right that the very nature of the show-- that it features a mostly gay cast-- and the main arc of the show-- Patrick choosing between his comfort zone mate Kevin and the lower-class Richie-- should never have triggered the diversity argument.
Peter - touche. But i found Queer as Folk wildly offensive, like within every episode and inauthentic, too. and it lasted so long. I guess i am just hurt that this quiet gem couldn't find a large enough fanbase but maybe the LGBT community needs more glitz (sigh). But at least QaF gave us (indirectly) "The Fosters" via Peter Paige so I guess I should be thankful for that.
Evan, that feeling of Looking ticking off issues was definitely there and wasn't helped by the 25-min runtime that meant they couldn't dwell on them too much. I think all things considered they did a pretty good job of covering the cases - how rarely do you see characters actually putting on condoms. Not just buying them, but actually taking the time to use them. It was those little things that made the show so refreshing.
Love or hate the show, it was certainly one of the best *made* on television. Such beautiful cinematography and editing - all those long takes that let the actors work through a scene of dialogue were just so wonderful to watch and see unfold. Music was always on point, too.
Really. Coming from a gay white man. As a gay black man, I was not represented well. The two black men were used to prop up the other gay guys on the show. I'm tried of gay black men not being validated and respected on these type of shows. If you are Latino , you were represented well on the show. I am not Latino. I refuse to champion a show that disrespects me. The two black and one Asian guy were put on the show solely to prove it was not a closed minded type of show.
Looking treated gay black men like the wider gay community treats gay black men, which is like we are disposable and unimportant. I refuse to champion and respect a show like that. Its fun that white gay men love the show. You love it because you are on it and represented. I am not going to fall for this crap.
The mentality of this show was, just put black faces on the show. They don't have to be complicated or complex.We just need black faces.
I'm sorry, everything is not fine. I want the show to respect me and other gay black men. Just like regular TV, gay black men were not important to this show. So I hope gay black men didn't support this show.