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.
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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