Jonathan Groff

All relationships involve compromises. No one is 100 percent compatible with his or her partner, and so there must be some give and take when building a life together. Typically, the big discussions – about having children, what city to live in, and, yes, whether to be completely monogamous – occur before a couple moves in together, but not so with Looking’s Patrick and Kevin. By this time, the show’s season (and probable series) finale, these two have accelerated the pace of their relationship for different reasons. Kevin needs an excuse to break up with John, and he would never have done so if there were the possibility of him being alone. Patrick wants to prove to himself (also his friends, family, and maybe most importantly, Richie) that he can be in a relationship that doesn’t end disastrously. So they both need each other at this point in their lives, but give not a moment of thought to what the relationship will look like a year, let alone ten or twenty years, down the road.

In Looking for Gordon Freeman, Agustin continually compares Patrick to Clarissa Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s seminal neurotic hostess. This is not an obscure reference for anyone with a cursory knowledge of American literature. Even if someone’s never read the book, they’ve probably heard the name before and know it has something to do with parties and flowers and tragedy. But, the reference is completely lost on Patrick. For Agustin – and perhaps for the liberal arts educated Looking viewership – this gap in knowledge is a bit surprising, but it says more about Patrick’s interests than his intelligence. So he’s not a reader. He knows a ton about obscure video game characters, and is shocked when no one recognizes his Gordon Freeman Halloween costume. Maybe Gordon Freeman is as basic a reference to programmers as Clarissa Dalloway is to English majors.

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 that 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. My 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, I didn’t really know much about Patrick, Augustín, or Dom, and knew nothing about why they were friends with each other.

Emmy nominations will be announced on Thursday, July 10 by Mindy Kaling and Carson Daly. The pundits and critics have come to a consensus on the most likely nominees out of the numerous television shows on the air: a showdown between Breaking Bad and True Detective in Best Drama Series, Modern Family accruing a number …

When Looking premiered five weeks ago it was purportedly the story of Patrick, Dom, and Agustín’s friendship. This bottle episode, following Patrick’s day-long date with Richie, posits that this burgeoning romance is actually the central relationship of the show. “Looking for the Future” shows the awkwardness and passion of new love and all of its flirting, disclosing, playing it cool, and wanting to spend every minute with the new person in your life.

The first scene in the pilot of Looking is a clever fake-out. Two guys anonymously hooking up in a park is the most clichéd signifier of gay male sexuality out there. Here it is for the hundredth time – the awkward fumbling, the perfunctory kissing, the premature interruption. But it turns out that Patrick, the recipient of this sad outdoor handjob, has wandered into the woods as a sort of joke. He and his friends wonder if gay dudes still do stuff like that, and he decides to find out. The characters in HBO’s new half-hour are both self-conscious of the old stereotypes and confident enough to be unembarrassed when they occasionally fall into them.

Walt Disney Animation Studios has become, in its relative old age, both charmingly and cripplingly self-conscious. Each new entry seems to quiver in the shadow of the greats, the vaunted classics that have become untouchable for many.