Looking, Season 2, Episode 1: “Looking for the Promised Land”
Directed by Andrew Haigh
Written by Andrew Haigh
Airs Sundays at 10 PM on HBO
Looking is back for a second season on HBO after its uneven but promising initial run last year. A lot of the criticism directed towards the show’s first season was unfair, particularly the complaint that it focused solely on a group of upwardly mobile, educated, mostly white, young gay men from San Francisco, at the expense of less affluent, more diverse LGBT communities everywhere. This is a totally valid grievance, but it should be directed at HBO and Hollywood in general. Shows about older, poorer people of color rarely make it to series, especially on pay cable. But Looking is a story about these specific characters, and was never trying to be representative of any larger community. To ask anything more of any one show is unrealistic. The biggest problems with the first season were that it lacked much of an arc, the stakes for the characters remained low, and the initial premise (the friendship between the three leads) was largely unexplored in favor of following their divergent romantic exploits. By the end of the season, the viewers didn’t really know much about Patrick, Augustín, or Dom, and knew nothing about why they were friends with each other.
The season two premiere, “Looking for the Promised Land,” lays a lot of groundwork to remedy some of this. It picks up soon after last season’s finale, and follows the boys as they share a weekend up in Sonoma county at Lynn’s (an absent Scott Bakula, currently starring on NCIS: New Orleans) country home. Patrick (Jonathan Groff, settling comfortably into his role) is insistent that they spend time together without using drugs and alcohol, and equally adamant that they don’t look for guys to hook up with while they’re there. He’s still getting over his breakup with Richie, and is looking to channel his heartache in healthy, PG-rated ways. Augustín is having none of this, and with a little encouragement from Doris – who delightfully shows up unexpectedly — and a few hits of Molly, they are back to their debaucherous ways.
The Molly/Ecstasy fueled emotional breakthrough has become a bit of a cliché, and one was afraid Looking would go down that road. But instead, Patrick and Augustín have a short, realistic conversation, proving that the writers are more perceptive about their friendship than they’d been given credit for. Augustín wears his messiness on his sleeve, being open about his somewhat self-destructive sexual habits and possible substance abuse problems. When he says to Patrick “I deal with feeling like a shitty person by being bad, you do it by being good”, it’s clear that he sees Patrick as having it a little more together than he does, and he values the friendship as being a good influence on him. In reality, Patrick takes just as many drugs and is having just as unhealthy a sex life (an affair with the coupled Kevin) as Augustín, but he doesn’t admit it in that moment. He pretends to have his life together, and as long as Augustín is a little drunker and a little more depressed than he his, Patrick will never have to admit his own failings to either of them.
This is a nice start to Looking’s sophomore season, planting seeds for possible storylines to explore in the next ten weeks. Dom’s ambivalence towards his relationship with Lynn, Augustín’s increasing dependence on alcohol and drugs, and Patrick’s newfound honesty with himself and his friends all seem like rich areas to mine. Hopefully there is not too much of an emphasis on a Patrick/Kevin/Richie love triangle down the road. Patrick’s boy problems are the least interesting and original aspects of Looking, though the actors playing Kevin and Richie are likable. Hopefully they can either be integrated into the group, or stay on the sidelines. Andrew Haigh directed one of the most visually beautiful shows on television last year, and it would be a fantastic achievement if the content starts consistently living up to the camerawork.
Other thoughts:
Lauren Weedman (Doris) is a series regular this year! Hopefully she’ll finally get laid.
Patrick awkwardly hugging that redwood might have been the funniest moment in the series so far.
Lynn is 59?!? Dude looks GOOD.
“House in Virginia” is a euphemism for HIV positive. Patrick and I both learned something today.
“Blind” by Hercules and Love Affair is the greatest song of the past decade. I know it, you know it, and Looking’s music supervisor knows it.
“Does anyone know where I can score some Molly?”