Looking for a Gay Audience...and a Third Season

As of this writing we're still waiting to see if Looking, which just ended its second season this past Sunday, will get a third such season on HBO next year.  The ratings were not on-par with something like Game of Thrones or even Girls, so the question mark hangs there quite nervously for fans, though we can take comfort in knowing that HBO is not entirely about the ratings, but about the overall branding of the channel in order to entice subscriptions, so quality does occasionally trump quantity (that's what we tell ourselves potentially in vain...just ask Enlightened fans).

That being said, I think it's worth discussing the season at hand and how Looking Season 2 was even better than the first season, and how it really became one of the biggest event shows on TV this past year.  The show smartly tried to acquiesce to some of the complaints (that Agustin was the worst human this side of Marnie Michaels, that the show's supporting characters frequently overshadowed the leads) while still saying "shove it" to other concerns (that gay viewers didn't see themselves in the characters).

That sort of bridging to the gay community has been one of the more fascinating wars to see offscreen in regard to Looking.  For starters, I didn't get it, since I saw myself in many, very uncomfortable ways with Patrick, played by Jonathan Groff.  While we don't look at all alike (actually we might a little bit if I lost thirty pounds and gave a damn about my hair), Patrick was weirdly reflective of my single, antsy, Type-A but occasionally self-destructive self.  But secondly, I also was wondering why this was such an important aspect of a show about gay people.  We don't go into Game of Thrones or Mad Men or The Walking Dead demanding that the show give us characters "just like us," because by-and-large they don't, and if you're like Joffrey Baratheon you probably should take a cold, hard look at yourselves and start therapy immediately.  Why is it that we demand so much from gay characters on television?  Is it simply because there are so few of them on TV?

Jack Falahee as Connor Walsh
in How to Get Away with Murder

This may be part of it.  The reality is that while gay characters have come a long way in TV, it's a rare day when they are a major character on TV or when they are anything other than a sassy gay friend.  Connor Walsh has made such a stir on How to Get Away with Murder precisely because he's more than a token cliche gay-he frequently gets not only the sex scenes on the show, but the sexiest scenes, indulging in scenes that wouldn't make us blink twice if it were a straight couple but since it's a gay couple the entire social media-sphere gets lit on fire.  By-and-large, though, most shows with gay characters turn them into Will Truman.

I bag on Will & Grace so much that I want to point out that at the time I was a fan (a closeted fan where I would watch the show away from my parents for fear they heard me watching it, only discussing it with my brother in hushed circles of our house's upstairs), but if you watch it now you know that it has aged terribly.  It was incredibly important in its day and along with Ellen probably did more to move the gay rights movement than a thousand marches and petitions possibly could do, so we should be forever grateful in that regard, but Will Truman in hindsight seems obnoxiously neutered as a character.  Most of the jokes are either of the mincing variety or him opining for a boyfriend, despite him being a successful and handsome lawyer in Manhattan (where meeting a guy would be ridiculously easy, even 15 years ago).  Years later we should be better, but now the gayest characters on television frequently won't even admit to being gay, like Raj on The Big Bang Theory.

And so part of expanding gay culture is going to be to see gay characters that aren't all Connor Walsh, because I've got news for you-not all of us are Connor Walsh.  Not all of us are gorgeous, constantly having sex with Abercrombie extras, and consistently spouting urbane quips, and I say this not to straight audiences but to gay audiences who complain about not enough representation within gay TV.  Even the people who think they are Connor Walsh are not (believe me, I've been on OKCupid enough to know that there is a lot of variety in the gay community, and almost none of it looks like Jack Falahee).  Looking is a lens into a certain subsection of gay culture: those who are in their 30's and 40's but still trying to figure out what they want.  They're established in a traditional sense (well, at least Patrick, Kevin, and Richie are), but they haven't found "the one" yet and they have different attitudes toward sex, trying to jive what traditional society wants of them with the insane pressure not to conform to social norms.  It's a cool idea for a show, and Andrew Haigh has made it seem insanely relevant-we see aspects of single culture we don't oftentimes see (how we become reliant on what is comfortable, like Dom and Doris's relationship, even when it's unhealthy or the specter that our parents cast long after we leave the nest, like Patrick's constant need for his mother's approval even when he says he can't stand her ideals) and makes it insanely human.  People on Looking make bad choices, and like real life no one is a Manic Pixie Dream Guy (part of why I'm on Team Kevin even though Team Richie is clearly the saner choice is that Kevin and Patrick have more in common and if they set aside their issues, that's what marriage is about).  It's also insanely interesting-every episode I can leave and have something meaningful to say about the series.  There's few shows on television worthy of that sort of time (for all of the talk about the Golden Age of Television, it seems like most of the interesting commentary is relegated to a select set of shows, and not always the ones that dominate the zeitgeist).  This is thoughtful and fascinating, and worthy of renewal, but more to the point, it's worthy of the praise of the gay community and awards bodies at large.  We should be thankful that such a show showed up and on HBO, the Grand Teton of quality television.  And while television desperately needs to be more inclusive of gay characters and programming, we're not helping our cause by ignoring what may be not just the best gay show on television, but perhaps the best show on TV period.  If HBO can offer something as special as Looking and the collective gay male audience ignores it, despite the fact the number of gay guys with HBO subscriptions should easily equal renewal for the network, then why should we expect any better from the other networks?