Looking - The Complete First Season

Forget the one-line hype. "Looking" is not a male version of "Girls," nor of "Sex and the City." The three fellows at the heart of this show -- sweet, anxiety-ridden Patrick (Jonathan Groff), aimless art wannabe Agust�n (Frankie J. �lvarez), and stifled, aging Dom (Aussie hunk Murray Bartlett, playing American here) -- may be wandering around in a funk, but they're not airy, spoiled fashionistas, and neither are they stupid and obnoxious. If anything, they might be a little too smart, sensitive, and decent for their own good. The world isn't especially kind to their brand of good guy; it's no wonder that in just about every episode you get the sense that they should be looking not only for an authentic love connection, but a scrip for an effective anti-depressant.

That said, there's a rich vein of comedy in this series that, while not sparing our heroes, doesn't mock them, either. Patrick (29 and younger than his years) sets out in search of a blowjob in a park as the first episode begins; by the end of Season One, he's entangled in complicated relationships with two suitors, each very different from the other, and each delectable in his own right. Kevin (Russell Tovey, "Being Human") is the boss with whom Patrick shares a sizzling spark of attraction, even though Kevin is partnered; Richie (Ra�l Castillo) is a Latin guy with some serious internal conflicts between being gay and staying macho.

Dom, meantime, summons his courage to leave his dead-end waiter job and strike out on his own. (He owes a lot of his motivation not only to the midlife anxieties of turning 40, but also to his roommate, Doris (Lauren Weedman), who is probably fiction's best-ever fag hag.) He pulls off a pop-up restaurant with the financial backing of unloader gay man named Lynn (Scott Bakula), and discovers to his own shock that the young guys who have started ignoring him aren't the only ones to whom he's attracted.

As for Agust�n, he's so addled by drugs and sexual confusion that he can't actually bring himself to create any art -- even though the emotional and psychic miasma he's navigating is sure to provide him plentiful raw material whenever he does pull himself together. He's a hot mess, in every sense of the words, managing in short order to wreck his relationship with boyfriend Frank (O.T. Fegbenle)... though how permanently is a question as open as their sputtering relationship.

"Looking - The Complete First Season" comprises only eight episodes, but each one is like a little indie film, especially an installment in which Patrick plays hooky from work to spend the day with Richie. Some viewers have complained that "Looking" is slow, but they miss the point; the show's deliberate pace and naturalistic storytelling resists glitz and gratuitousness for a reason. We don't need another "Sex and the City." We're not spoiled brats, and sleeping your way through Manhattan's male population is so '90s, anyway. ("Looking" is set in San Francisco, a solid, off-the-bat repudiation of the show's early buzz as a male version of "SATC.") No, we need "Looking": Gay men finally have a show that does, at least in some respects, resemble and reflect their lives.

This Blu-ray set has no special features outside of audio commentaries on selected episodes, but the tracks are as raw, unfiltered, and to the quick as the episodes themselves. (Where else are you going to hear actors talk about donning "cock socks" and "anal covers" for their nude scenes?) If you devoured this show the first time around, you're going to find it's just as satisfying as a Blu-ray binge.

"Looking - The Complete First Season"
Blu-ray
$38.98
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