Looking, Ep. 2.03: “Looking Top to Bottom” goes full frontal
In Looking’s first season, the show’s creators opted against showing much explicit sex or nudity on screen. While its HBO brethren Girls and Game of Thrones pull no punches in their depiction of naked (mainly female) flesh, Looking mostly opts to cut away from its characters at their most intimate moments. Some have accused the show of soft-balling its gay content in order to make comfortable a large mainstream audience that isn’t tuning in anyway. Looking Top to Bottom changes course and lets it all hang out, showing gay male nudity in both sexual and non-sexual contexts. This neither enhances nor detracts from this particular episode, but it’s a tonal shift worth noting, and adds one more tool (pun intended) to the show’s arsenal.