'TV: All the feels as 'Looking' says farewell'

This review was originally published on SameSame.com.au, on the 28th of July 2016, available here.

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Warning: This review contains spoilers for Looking seasons one, two, and the movie-length finale. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

When I first heard about Looking two years ago, the show about a group of gay men living in San Francisco, a kind of bearded-hipster reimagining of the iconic Queer As Folk concept, I was a tad dubious. One might call me a Brady.

Everybody wants to see themselves represented in popular culture, and gays have been starkly underrepresented on television for years. I feared that I might not relate to the characters in front of me, and that this show would tell a story I didn’t recognise.

It turned out to be excellent television, delivered by masterfully tender director Andrew Haigh – responsible for one of my personal favourite gay cinematic vignettes, Weekend (2011) – and I was hooked from the first episode.

Two years later, and we have reached an end to a charming piece of queer television. Two seasons, concluding with a feature-length finale, to see Looking off.

In Looking: The Movie, we return to wrap up the stories of Patrick (Jonathan Groff), Agustín (Frankie J. Alvarez), Dom (Daddy… sorry, I mean Murray Bartlett), and the utterly ineffable Doris (Lauren Weedman).

In the first half of the film, we are shown again the locations that made the first two seasons so memorable. Not mere setting, but real reflections of San Francisco, and oftentimes evoking its bustling community. So much of it feels familiar; particularly the gay bars and clubs, and they carry me away with the spirit of the queer haunts in my own city.

Even the title, Looking, graphically emblazoned across our screens in neon lights, feels wink-nudge familiar: neon lights of gay bars, our nightlife, the dim historical underground of queer culture – embodied in a scene, a city, a deftly depicted word.

In the second half, our characters’ arcs come to an end. Dom, after separating from his lover and business partner by the end of season two, decides to put himself out there again. Agustín overcomes his own insecurities and fears of self-sabotage, and marries the love of his life. And Doris, beautiful, untamed Doris, settles into her own relationship with her partner, and admits that they’re thinking about having a baby – while always “living in sin”.

Yet the most satisfying story to come to a close is that of Patrick, the lens through which we have always viewed these characters.

Patrick starts out in the beginning of Season One inexperienced, and is almost frustratingly immature. He often displays a total lack of self-awareness, and is generally apprehensive about pursuing his own desires.

Whether those desires are a committed relationship with the now-taken, now-moving-on Kevin (Russell Tovey) – or his past Season One love, the subdued and stoic Richie (Raúl Castillo), who spent much of Season Two involved with the insufferably self-absorbed journalist Brady (Chris Perfetti), Patrick’s neuroticism taints their potential, leaving him in a tragically depressed bind.

There’s a scene near the end of the film, where Brady accuses Patrick of being a ‘bad gay’ – but Patrick barks back, saying that he should be able to live how he chooses, without feeling like he’s letting the team down. It’s a volatile redemption for an otherwise peaceful Patrick, one that exemplifies his transformation from fragile and uncertain, to confident and self-assured. Brady and Richie both exit, leaving him rattled in their wake.

Shortly after, we see a lone Patrick looking out at his friends, all wrapped in loving embraces on the gay bar-cum-wedding reception dance-floor, their stories at an end.

Then, in a testament to Andrew Haighs’ skill for poignant vignettes, Richie returns.

Reflected in the glass behind Patrick, he treads over – and they share a kiss. All the whilePerfume Genius’ ‘Hood’ plays in the background, a far-too-meaningful track, as two seasons’ of Patrick’s childlike fear of embracing Richie and his own happiness finally melts away – Boy, I wish I grew up the second / I first held you in my arms – and he is reunited with the man he loves. The one who nearly got away.

It was after the conclusion of Patrick’s narrative that I understood my earlier fears were misplaced: Our gay stories don’t always need to feel so concretely told. For all the dissatisfied harrumphs our “gay thought police” dish out – as Patrick describes them – these televised representations of our lives, while never encompassing us completely, present characters that we can connect with.

This wasn’t a story about “all of us”. This was about complicated humans navigating chapters of their lives, in a world that perhaps you and I grew up in. These were modern gay anecdotes narrated against the backdrop of gay culture; a formula that has been missing from the small screen for years. In an unfamiliar desert of heterosexual excess, this was an oasis of television navel-gazing made solely for us.

Looking is about seeking something greater than what you’ve seemingly settled with.

It’s about being bold, taking leaps, and reaching forward from the grip of your own self-doubt, to pursue something more – whether that’s love, a career ambition, or sheer self-acceptance under the lights of gay nightlife.

But it’s also about finding solace in your own situation, and realising that sometimes, an escape isn’t what you need.

Sometimes our own carved-out corner of the dance-floor is perfectly good enough, as we get busy changing, busy growing, and looking for our happiness.