Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Looking: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

If You're Going to San Francisco

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 5, 2015

HBO routinely refers to its series Looking as a "dramedy", and the show has been compared to two of the premium channel's other hits, Sex and the City and Girls, but none of these descriptions is apt, at least based on the eight-episode first season that aired from January 19 through March 9, 2014. Looking creator and chief writer Michael Lannan (whose 2011 short Lorimer inspired the series) and show runner Andrew Haigh (Weekend) emphasize drama much more than comedy. The latter appears just enough to prevent bitter truth from sinking their storylines into despair. And while Looking is a sexually frank series about a group of friends living in a major American city, it differs from Sex and the City and Girls not only because the friends in Looking happen to be gay men, but also in another respect that is even more important. None of the characters in Looking is a writer (failed or otherwise) supplying would-be intellectual perspective on the group's experiences, constantly stepping outside the story to provide commentary, as Carrie Bradshaw's columns did for Sex and the City and Hannah Horvath's whining does for Girls.

One of the subversively original elements of Looking is how little its lead characters conform to stereotypes about urban gay men. They're not especially witty or articulate, they don't dress fashionably and not one of them has an exquisitely decorated apartment (which they couldn't afford anyway). Like most people of their 20- and 30-something age groups, they have average skills and jobs, are trying to get ahead in life, trying to enjoy their spare time, and always on the lookout for that elusive someone to love, who will also love them back.

The main character in Looking is Patrick Murray (Broadway star Jonathan Groff, who is also the voice of Kristoff in Disney's Frozen). A 29-year-old programmer for a video game business, Patrick recently ended a long-term relationship with a man who, he has just learned, is getting married. This development has made Patrick feel even more of a failure for his inability to find a life partner. Though a gentle soul blessed with a boyishly open face, Patrick will have to confront the fact that, underneath the skin, he is full of prejudice and harsh judgments, many of them exaggerated versions of how he believes his family judges him both before and after he revealed his sexual identity to them many years ago. Because he's so anxious about how he's being perceived, Patrick routinely sabotages first dates by saying the wrong thing.

Patrick's issues become particularly acute when he finds himself at the threshold of a relationship with Richie Ventura (Raúl Castillo), a Mexican-American barber and part-time club bouncer, who didn't go to college and takes a more relaxed approach to life, which is exactly the quality that Patrick finds attractive—but then voices begin whispering in his head that Richie isn't the sort of boy he can bring home to meet his parents. (Class prejudice isn't limited to the straight world.) Complicating the equation is Patrick's new boss, Kevin Matheson (Russell Tovey), a hotshot video game designer. British, highly educated and professionally ambitious, Kevin is the model of everything Patrick wishes to be, and Patrick is instantly intrigued. But aside from the usual risks of a workplace romance, Kevin has a long-term boyfriend. Then again, he keeps giving off mixed signals and having Patrick work long hours with him.

Patrick's best friend from college, Agustín (Frankie J. Alvarez), is one of the first to feed Patrick's doubts about Richie, when he accuses Patrick of "slumming". But Agustín has his own issues. Having shared an apartment with Patrick for many years, he decides at the end of the pilot episode to move in with his boyfriend, Frank (O-T Fagbenle), who believes in Agustín's dream of becoming a graphic artist. The problem is that Agustín hasn't produced any work in years. He earns a meager living as an assistant to a modernist sculptor named Stina (Ann Magnuson), about whom he complains incessantly. When Agustín become judgmental with Patrick, it's a product of his own frustration at his failed ambitions. Over the course of the first season, that frustration prompts the stymied artist to grasp at a risky notion for a project that involves exploiting his relationship with Frank.

The third member of the group, Dom (Murray Bartlett), is the oldest. Indeed, his 40th birthday party is the subject of one episode. A sommelier at the fashionable Zuni Cafe, Dom has long dreamed of opening his own establishment, and the arrival of this milestone birthday makes him feel a failure for having accomplished so little. It doesn't help that his former boyfriend, Ethan (Derek Ray), suddenly pops up, doing the "amends" step of the recovering addict/alcoholic, and looking suspiciously prosperous. (As far as Dom's roommate and close friend, Doris (Lauren Weedman), is concerned, Ethan's apology is meaningless, for reasons that Dom finds hard to dispute.) Ever since his breakup with Ethan, Dom's romantic preference has been for one-night stands with younger men, but a chance meeting introduces him to Lynn (Scott Bakula), a former banker and well-connected businessman, who co-owns a thriving florist shop. Through Lynn, Dom may be able to find financial backers. But are the feelings he begins to experience for the older man gratitude or something more?

Because Haigh and Lannan completed Season One without knowing whether HBO would pick up Looking for a second season (which it did shortly before the Season One finale aired), these eight episodes were conceived as a whole. The tentative and barely resolved note on which they end is deliberate. Haigh and Lannan obviously wanted their protagonists to seem less like heroes of a traditional narrative and more like their audience members: struggling to get through the day, not always knowing what to say, leading lives filled with loose ends and unanswered questions, without the clearly delineated three-act structure that writers typically provide. This is yet one more way in which their work distinguishes itself from its predecessors, including such gay-themed shows as Showtime's Queer as Folk and The L Word.

Visually, too, Looking departs from the usual approach taken by previous episodic TV shows portraying urban environments. I cannot think of another filmed depiction of San Francisco in which the city looked less appealing. It's as if the production team deliberately chose the foggiest and most overcast days on which to film, then leached out even more color in post-production. An urban environment distinguished by its blue bay, rust-red Golden Gate Bridge and numerous colorful locales becomes almost monochromatic in Looking, as if some generalized blue funk had settled over the Bay Area. That the characters continue their struggle for happiness is a tribute to their spirit, but it's an uphill battle, because the environment doesn't encourage them. Whatever inspiration they find has to come from within.

Looking: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Although Looking's director of photography, Reed Morano (The Skeleton Twins) participates in one of the episode commentaries, she supplies no information about the shooting format or photographic style. Whatever form the original photography may have taken, the results have been extensively manipulated in post-production to cast a bluish tone (with a slightly green cast) over almost every scene, which has the odd effect of establishing a sense of continuity between indoors and out, between work and home, and between straight locations and gay. It's all one vast emotional wilderness for the show's protagonists.

HBO has released the eight episodes of Season One on two 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray discs, with an image that is reasonably detailed thought not always supersharp. The post-processing has given the image a kind of rough texture that sometimes resembles film grain (although I suspect that the photography was digital). As noted in the feature discussion, colors have been desaturated throughout, so that many scenes are almost monochromatic, and even those colors that do survive are undersaturated and mild by comparison to most TV or film images. Many scenes, especially indoors, are quite dark, and blacks often overwhelm shadow detail, but this too appears to be a deliberate effect of the image's retinting. Whether or not one likes Morano's choices is a matter of taste, but there is nothing to suggest that the Blu-ray's reproduction is anything other than accurate.

The average bitrate of each episode hovers around 20.71 Mbps, which is on the low side, especially for a show with so much handheld camerawork. Still, I did not observe any noticeable compression issues, and it may be that the absence of strong colors proved to be an aid to compression.

Looking: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Looking's 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, supplies appropriate ambiance in crowded surroundings like Dom's birthday party or the street scene during the annual Folsom Street Fair, but it does its best with the rhythmic and often thematically relevant musical selections that play either as source music during the episodes or over the closing titles. (There is no original scoring.) These include "Spring Breeze", "Party in the Hague" and "Start Me Up" by DJ Roc; "A Little Respect" by Vince Clarke, Andy Bell and Erasure; "The Stars Are for You" by Life of Bianca; and "Everyday Is Like Sunday" by Morrissey. Dialogue is generally clear, although it often overlaps, so that one must pay close attention.

Looking: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The sole extra is commentaries on six of the eight episodes, which adds up to nearly three hours of commentary. That may sound like a lot, but unfortunately every commentary involves a group of 4-6 participants, and the effect is to leave the listener in the position of a stranger being ignored by friends having a reunion. Executive producers Haigh and Lannan and a revolving roster of actors, writers and crew laugh, joke, compliment each other (and absent colleagues) and point out their favorite moments, but they avoid any discussion of the show's history, development, themes or even its aesthetic choices. Tracks like these are Exhibit A for the case that just because a disc has commentary doesn't mean the extras are worthwhile.

• Commentaries


• Episode 1, with Executive Producer/Director Andrew Haigh, Creator/Co-Executive Producer/Writer Michael Lannan, Jonathan Groff (Patrick), Frankie J.Alvarez (Augustín) and Murray Bartlett (Dom)


• Episode 2, with Executive Producer/Writer/Director Andrew Haigh, Creator/Co-Executive Producer Michael Lannan & Jonathan Groff (Patrick)


• Episode 4, with Executive Producer/Director Andrew Haigh, Creator/Co-Executive Producer Michael Lannan, Writer JC Lee, Writer/Consulting Producer John Hoffman & Frankie J. Alvarez (Agustín)


• Episode 5, with Executive Producer/Director/Writer Andrew Haigh, Creator/Co-Executive Producer Michael Lannan, Director of Photography Reed Morano, Raúl Castillo (Richie) & Jonathan Groff (Patrick)


• Episode 7, with Executive Producer Andrew Haigh, Creator/Co-Executive Producer Michael Lannan, Director Jamie Bobbitt, Writer/Consulting Producer John Hoffman, Lauren Weedman (Doris) & Murray Bartlett (Dom)


• Episode 8, with Executive Producer/Director Andrew Haigh, Creator/Co-Executive Producer/Writer Michael Lannan, Writer Tanya Saracho & Jonathan Groff (Patrick)

Looking: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The second season of Looking begins on January 11 and will reportedly introduce several new characters. Whatever Lannan and Haigh have planned, they have already made it apparent that even preconceptions and stereotypes about gay characters that survived previous TV portrayals will not make it through Looking. Their characters aren't wittier, flashier, more fashionable or more in touch with their feelings than the straight world. They're people trying to figure it all out, just like everyone else. If you're prepared for Haigh's and Lannan's downbeat approach to storytelling, Looking may be worth a look, but I certainly wouldn't recommend a blind buy.