‘Looking’ Recap, Season Two, Episode Four: “Looking Down the Road”

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Everything happens to everybody on this week's episode of Looking. Please forgive the hyperbole, but I'm still recovering from the blunt force trauma of getting hit over the head with this week's bag full of plot points, clunky cliché dialogue, and tired TV tropes. HBO's famous slogan of yesteryear — "It's Not TV. It's HBO." — about breaking the network television mold certainly does not apply here; this is very much TV, in the more formulaic and predictable sense of the word. And it's a shame. One of the strongest things about Season One was the fact that it was so comfortable in how quiet it was, that it was so confident in taking its time. This was the show that was willing to devote an entire episode (still the best in the series) to Patrick and Richie walking around the city getting to know each other. It was groundbreaking television, lacking the whiplash-inducing plot turns of anything coming out of Shondaland, having more DNA in common with one of Richard Linklater's "walking and talking" movies (a friend referred to the episode as Before Happy Hour) and Looking writer-director Andrew Haigh's marvelous film, Weekend (another friend referred to that episode as Weekday). Season Two has been much louder and brighter (and, as a result, more overwhelmingly formulaic) than its predecessor — some of it for the better, though not in this episode. Let's jump in: there's a lot of ground to cover.

First, everybody wakes up: Patrick and Kevin, standing dangerously close to an open flame (Looking writers, insert joke here) in nothing but an apron and undies; Agustín, still sexiled at Eddie's, drinking out of a mug that says "I Heart Anal" while Eddie looks on wearing a leopard print muumuu, because Eddie, you'll remember, is The Edgy One; and Dom and Doris waking up in their double across the quad.

As Kevin attempts to fatten Patrick up Hansel and Gretel-style, Patrick brings up Jon, Kevin's actual boyfriend. Patrick can't help but notice that Kevin spoke to him on the phone the night before, and he's jealous. Kevin assures Patrick that what he has with him is so much more than what he has with Jon (something no one has ever said to another person outside of a TV show). He promises to sort it out.

Eddie is understandably hesitant to let Agustín stay is his house alone while he goes to work. He tells Agustín to go to the library or, better yet, just come along with him to work, seeing as Agustín still has no job of his own other than giving terrible advice to his friends and perfectly trimming his beard.

Doris wants Dom to launch a Kickstarter to raise the rent money for his chicken window. Dom is too proud, decries Kickstarter as being too desperate, then runs off to Lynn's house to beg for love.

Richie woke up that morning, too! And for reasons that are never made clear, but function perfectly in advancing the plot of this television show forward, calls Patrick to see if he wants to meet up. He does. They talk about harmless topics — Bi-Rite Ice Cream, Esta Noche closing (it seems that this week the writers really felt the need to remind us that the show takes place in San Francisco) — until Richie tells Patrick that he lied to him the other night. He is seeing somebody. Patrick, never one to be outdone, tells Richie all about Kevin. Patrick laughs off Richie's question of whether or not he's a home wrecker. "It's not like that," he says. "They're having a lot of issues right now. It kind of caught us both by surprise. We're figuring it out." Is anyone ever "figuring it out" as much and as frequently as TV protagonists?

Meanwhile, at the LGBT youth shelter, a group of rabid tweens descends on Agustín. Eddie fends them off, explaining that he's not his boyfriend, but rather just some guy who is just going to sit in on their group therapy session today, that cool? Agustín, who hasn't received this much attention since everyone at school mistook him for Elian Gonzalez during his childhood in Florida, decides he could get used to this. He asks Eddie to get him a job at the shelter, setting up the potential for another workplace romance, which is just what we need.

Later that night, Dom is startled when Hot Matthew From Rugby answers Lynn's door, shirtless and dripping wet. He leads Dom back to the hot tub, where Lynn is lounging and hitting the vape. We learn that Dom's situation with Lynn is not so unique — Lynn has previously picked Matthew out of the chorus line and financed a production of Angels in America for him back in the day. Instead of politely removing himself from the conversation, asking Lynn if they could speak alone for a moment, or generally reacting the way a rational adult human might, Dom decides to go the Vanderpump Rules route of dealing with a situation, which is to say he starts making out with Matthew right in front of Lynn.

Determined to be the bigger person, Patrick decides he will attend the closing party for Esta Noche, the bar where Richie used to work. He makes a Tales of the City reference that almost certainly made Armistead Maupin turn over in his Queen Anne four-poster bed and the scene ends.

Dom tells Patrick the next morning at the farmer's market that he and Lynn both topped Hot Matthew From Rugby the night before. Before Patrick can get all preachy, he stops dead in his tracks. He sees Kevin and Jon a few stalls down. Again, instead of handling the situation like a normal human being, Patrick, like all the Carrie Bradshaws and Hannah Horvaths before him, makes an exaggerated attempt to hide behind an object not large enough to actually hide him, therefore drawing even more attention to himself.

The next day at work, Patrick storms into Kevin's office and demands that they talk. Seeing Kevin and his long-term, live-in boyfriend together at the farmer's market was just too much for this little Hester Prynne to handle. They recite some lines ripped directly out of a "Dramatic Two Person Scenes for Teens" drama class textbook. (Most of the dialogue in this episode feels borrowed from scenes we've seen a million times before). Patrick confesses that he has spent a lot of time building a life for them in his head, which is pretty foolish seeing that Kevin has clearly spent more time into building a life for him and Jon here in the land of reality. But Kevin feeds into Patrick's downward spiral, saying that he's building a life for the two of them in his head, too. "I will talk to Jon today," Kevin assures Patrick. "I will make this right."

Agustín got the job at the LGBT Center! We know this because he's wearing a lanyard and holding a file folder up to the light, trying to divine what it could be used for. Instead of getting over his break-up by sobbing while dancing around his room to Robyn songs like the rest of us, he's decided he needs to do some good in the community. He's trying to get his life on the right track, so he naturally decided to get a job where he will be directly reporting to the guy that he met at the faerie rave party in the woods who he has been heavily lusting after this entire season. God save those poor trans teens.

Dom confronts Lynn at the flower shop, literally asking him, "what am I to you?" Dom, who didn't have too much of a problem with the nature of their open relationship when that guy at Russian River was going down on him, suddenly finds himself a little uncool with it when it means finding Hot Matthew Drom Rugby in Lynn's hot tub. He then decides to take a page from Agustín's How to Be Terrible handbook and bring up Lynn's dead former lover, suggesting that maybe he's to blame for Lynn's emotional coldness. Lynn tells Dom he's always been open about what he was and was not looking for in a relationship. Dom tells him, "You really won't let yourself be surprised," which is almost certainly something Drew Barrymore has said in more than one feature film, landing hard each time on that sibilant S.

At the RIP Esta Noche party, Dom, still steaming from his break-up with Lynn, tells Doris he wants to try her Kickstarter idea, given the fact that he's just severed ties with the only person he knows who has any money, any affinity for him, and any idea what the fuck peri-peri chicken is.

Patrick meets Brady, the bearded leprechaun that Richie is dating now. Before he can give in to his rage and rip out all three of this kid's ear piercings out of his head, he sees Kevin across the crowded bar. Did he do it? Did he finally come clean to Jon? Did he finally tell his boyfriend about the inter-office love that dare not speak its name? He did not. He couldn't do it. He keeps trying to kiss Patrick, who pushes him aside as he walks out into the night, the way people do in TV shows.

Brett Barbour is a writer who lives in Brooklyn and is prone to binge-watching.

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Photos: HBO

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