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Friday, March 27, 2015

Looking for Goodbye

WordMaster

             HBO confirmed Wednesday morning that it had canceled Looking, Michael Lannan’s dramedy series about three gay men searching for purpose and love in San Francisco. This news did not come as a surprise: the show had dismal ratings, even for premium cable, and there were ominous whispers long before the official announcement. Yet seeing this tweet from executive producer Andrew Haigh still sent a surge of despair and frustration through me:




I’m not alone. After a promising but somewhat forgettable freshman season, Looking emerged as a legitimate triumph this year, presenting ten confident, all-around sublime episodes that culminated in Sunday’s gut-punch of a finale. With the threat of cancellation looming, critics started to rally around the show, which had been more or less nonexistent in the cultural conversation aside from a smattering of controversy and contention that accompanied its debut; I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more people talk about it this week than I saw all last year. Needless to say, it was too little, too late.

             Don’t get me wrong: I’m hardly guilt-free in this regard; to be honest, I barely thought about, let alone talked about, Looking at all between the end of season one and the beginning of season two. It wasn’t until sometime around the middle of season two that I realized I didn’t just enjoy the show in the fleeting way I enjoy most comedies – I genuinely loved it. I spent a good deal of each week looking forward to the next episode. It may not have been the best show on TV, and it certainly wasn’t the most influential, but its absence leaves me feeling strangely empty.  I guess like so many of life’s greatest joys, I didn’t really appreciate it until it was gone.

             Here are just a few of the reasons Looking made the TV world a better place:

             It was about gay people. Crude, but true nonetheless. Even in our era of “too much of a good thing”, this is a rare phenomenon. Plenty of shows have LGBTQ characters, but few are about LGBTQ characters; even Transparent is as much about Maura’s mostly straight, cisgender children as it is about her. As AVClub’s Brandon Nowalk points out, Looking was the only current American TV show centered exclusively on the gay community, presenting them as a majority rather than a minority, insiders rather than outsiders. Although it stirred understandable discontent among some LGBTQ individuals due to its narrow focus on cisgender, predominantly white men and its normalization of homosexuality, the fact is that one show can’t be expected to represent all queer people and was never intended to. Also, the charges of homonormativity elide the nuanced, rigorous ways in which Looking examined self-acceptance, privilege, HIV and marriage as an institution, among other relevant issues; just this week, it featured a startlingly pointed conversation that challenged the legitimacy of monogamy. In a big sense, Looking was a show expressly concerned with the anxieties of progress and assimilation, subversive in its own right.



             It understood that universality demands specificity. As much as I wish it included lesbian and bisexual characters or fleshed out the trans kids that Eddie and Agustín worked with, I believe the narrow focus was precisely what made Looking successful. Especially with Patrick, who struggled to reconcile his sexual orientation with his decidedly conservative upbringing and had an unfortunate tendency to make offhand remarks like “I’m super into trans issues right now”, the show demonstrated a keen awareness of the effect class and social status have on people’s values, perceptions and behavior, never shying away from exposing its protagonists’ less-palatable qualities. Plus, even if it isn’t representative of the gay community, it felt, at least to some extent, representative of a certain generation, gracefully capturing the mood of ennui and uncertainty that has come to define American youth culture since the 1980s.

The more I look at it, the sadder and more perfect this poster seems.

             It had a knack for human interaction. Of course, abundant credit must be given to the wonderful cast led by Jonathan Groff, Frankie J. Alvarez and Murray Bartlett, whose already vibrant chemistry skyrocketed in the second season. The expanded roles for supporting players like Lauren Weedman, Raúl Castillo and Russell Tovey were a major factor in this season’s jump in quality (thanks to the latter two, Looking is possibly the only show I’ve ever seen pull off a love triangle plotline). Their exchanges have a lively, spontaneous rhythm reminiscent of Jesse and Celine’s conversations in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, creating the illusion that we’re watching ordinary people simply living out their lives rather than professional actors performing. At the same time, though, they don’t feel aimless; every word and remark belongs. Particularly striking is the way characters constantly deploy humor as a defense mechanism, using jokes and sarcastic quips to avoid sensitive subjects and mask their true feelings (the episode “Looking for a Plot”, my personal favorite of the season, is a master class in this area).

             The cinematography was quietly excellent. It’s easy to dismiss Looking’s visuals as workmanlike because they lack the audacious scope of True Detective or the meticulous beauty of Breaking Bad, but their simplicity is deceptive. Adopting the naturalism of indie film with none of the self-consciousness, Looking generates a sense of delicate intimacy, often confined to close spaces and shooting conversations in long, steady takes, while simultaneously conveying the underlying loneliness that plagues the characters. To use a rather obvious example, take the tracking shot in “Looking for Home”, the season two finale, which stalks Patrick and Kevin as they wander into the parking garage of their new apartment, engaged in a heated argument. As far as tracking shots go, it’s nothing flashy (I might not have noticed it if I hadn’t been alerted to its presence beforehand), but the slightly off-center camera position and strategic use of shadows infuse the sequence with the urgency of a cat-and-mouse chase. It’s the only time I remember the show violating its façade of absolute realism, transforming Patrick’s surroundings into a manifestation of his inner turmoil.

My heart hurts.

             It was about life, not death. There are plenty of dark, violent shows that I love (Justified and The Americans each had among the strongest episodes of their respective seasons this week), but it’s refreshing to encounter one in which the climactic twist is that one character discovers another is on Grindr. Without murder or action set-pieces to ratchet up the tension, Looking is forced to create drama purely out of people talking, generally about nothing more momentous than their love lives or career options. When half the shows on TV seem intent on recreating the Red Wedding (with predictably little success), hours like “Looking to the Future”, a season one episode that consisted entirely of two characters strolling and chatting, are tiny miracles.

             It had so much love for its characters. Patrick, Agustín and Dom aren’t the most likable people – they’re frequently self-absorbed, petty and ignorant. But whereas many shows would’ve treated them with disdain, as objects of satire or ridicule, Looking strives to understand and perhaps redeem them; it wants us to want them to find whatever they’re looking for. It critiques without condemning, an honest yet compassionate portrait of people fumbling toward some hazy notion of ecstasy that allows them to, even at their lowest, maintain their humanity, if not their dignity.

             As someone who craves closure, I’m glad we’re getting a “special episode” to wrap up the show, which has no shortage of dangling threads. In my ideal world, it would be essentially Weekend, Haigh’s sweet, similarly meandering 2011 film about two men falling in love, except with the Looking characters. Still, to a small part of me, it feels misguided. After all, what better way to conclude a story about people and a society in limbo than with a cliffhanger? I can’t imagine a more fitting resolution (or lack thereof) than the image of Dom and Doris sitting on a hill, gazing at the glittering San Francisco vista – a Her shot, as I’ve dubbed it. Two people not quite together, awaiting an uncertain future with hope.

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