Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Quit Looking

.
I'm sure you guys have heard by now that Looking has been cancelled - there will be no third season, but they will apparently get to make a movie to wrap things up (show-creator Michael Lannon confirmed it on Twitter)... so there's that. 

I seem to've gone off reservation with my dislike of the second season - all the reviews I've been reading keep talking about the show coming into its own this year but I vastly preferred the delicate and purposeful first season, while I spent a hefty chunk of the past ten episodes grinding my teeth down in frustration.

Looking might've had the smarts to make meta-jokes about how everybody wanted it to be Queer as Folk, but I still often felt as if I was watching something as dunder-headed as Queer as Folk this year as it tried and tried to drum up fake drama with too many excruciating question mark scenes. If I'm never reminded of the scene where Patrick got drunk at a party and was allowed to make a spectacle of himself in front of everybody it will still be too soon. Or when he crammed himself along to the funeral of a person he didn't know. Or really 90% of everything having to do with Patrick this year. (I'm still on-board with The Dom & Doris Show though.)

And I hope you know that it's not that I'm against characters being unlikable or doing dumb things - The Comeback and Enlightened are two of my favorites shows, for god's sake. So much of where Looking went this year just felt inorganic and false to me. Tacked on to fight the "boring" tag that got last year but ending up in some in-between zone, neither nor.

Point being I would've been sad to see it go ten episodes ago, but Looking has just became a chore for me and I'd been contemplating not watching it anymore anyway. So I'm glad to be off the hook, basically! I mean, I'd grown to dislike the characters so much that I actually found myself recoiling from the screen when Jonathan Groff and Russell Tovey were half-naked and making out. What even IS that? How does that happen? So... sorry, Russell Tovey's Butt. We'll find something for you to do.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is, lots of people didn't like Looking because the show didn't have ENOUGH drama.

Anonymous said...

I thought we needed more sex but my future husbands character "Patrick" acted like SJP in sex and the city. Drama Queen and Seriously Mental Ill person. The character was very poorly written and acted more like a 12yearold girl than a 20smt man.
Still... sad it ended. It was fun having them around.
Sal

Rob K. said...

Good assessment, JA. It did often feel inorganic to me. And not enough Dom. But I still liked it enough to go w/ a third season and thought there was a lot of good stuff in the finale.

Anonymous said...

Guess I'm a dunderhead because I loved Queer As Folk. I found it to be brave, daring, unapologetic. I respected its honesty. I loved its over the top, bigger than life style. The dialog was witty, many of the stories were hilarious. It was a true comedy-drama. But underneath, harsh truths were being told. I found the stories compelling. I cared about the characters. I respected them for placing a priority on safe sex and showing the horror of crystal meth addiction. Good work.