‘Looking’: Episode 6 in-depth recap

Last week, Looking opted to pull away from its expanding cast to focus on Paddy and Richie’s day bunking off work. It was a tender episode, full of knowing looks and smitten look-aways, and it provided a neat way to gradually learn bits and pieces about both men without being slapped across the face with information.

This week, the whole gang are back together, because Dom’s 40th birthday is just around the corner, and although he’s panicking about entering his fifth decade, the moustachioed waiter isn’t adverse to necking a few of those pre-mixed G&T cans and a pipe of Pringles.

Paddy and Richie are having some food the night before Dom’s picnic. Paddy, despite the growth over the last few episodes, is anxious about introducing Richie to his friends, and even though it’s Dom’s birthday, it becomes clear that Paddy’s hung up on Richie meeting his other close friend, Agustin.

Across town, Dom is at Lynn’s place for dinner and drinks with two of Lynn’s friends – influential (and bitchy) San Fran foodies who carry an impressive reputation on their shoulders. Lynn wants to line them up as potential investors for Dom’s peri-peri chicken venture, and it sounds like they might be on board.

Washing dishes once their guests have gone, Dom bemoans his state as a fossil-in-waiting as his friends start sending him happy birthday messages, but he is saying this to Lynn who is, you know, older than him. His mildly passive-aggressive hang-ups about his age might work around Paddy and the rest, but Lynn is older than Dom so you have to wonder why Dom is bemoaning the end of his personal, professional and sexual life in the company of someone who is past 40 (and is causing Dom’s heart to beat a little faster than usual to boot).

Previously Dom’s insistence that Lynn and he were good friends, potential lovers and business partners – all at the same time – sent the grey-haired florist some pretty mixed signals, and this isn’t doing anything to alleviate that. So Lynn wisely tells Dom to pipe down and stop imposing a death certificate on himself. All hail Lynn, the most sensible man in San Francisco!

The next day, Agustin and Frank are shopping for appropriately-stereotyped snacks to take to the picnic, and it’s clear that the couple’s already tenuous relationship is falling apart like wet bread.

Agustin doesn’t want to talk about his work, because, like, he doesn’t want to be defined by his work (or something) – although the underlying pretext seems to be: “This hooker I am paying to hang around with us is bleeding me dry and being in this pretentious supermarket is only making me feel worse.”

So since we last saw them, Agustin and Frank have been pervi- sorry, documenting CJ’s trips to his various clients, be they fat guys who want to be humiliated in the bedroom or men who want a hand job while they watch TV. Only it’s costing Agustin $220 an hour, something Frank doesn’t know about, and given the vast number of photos on the wall, I’m guessing CJ has probably got enough cash in his leather chaps to afford one of those penthouse flats Dom’s douchebag ex-boyfriend sells for a living.

Paddy and Richie get to the park, but Dom isn’t here yet, only Agustin and Frank, so Paddy starts introducing them to Richie. You can almost taste the sourness in the air when the word ‘boyfriend’ is used – compared to earlier in the episode when it accidentally rolled off Paddy’s tongue and the two men awkwardly laughed it off. Comparatively, Agustin looks like he’s suffered whiplash when he hears that Paddy – naive, neurotic, adorably bad-at-dating Paddy – has a boyfriend.

It doesn’t take long for Agustin’s bubbling self-loathing to start spewing around the place. When more people arrive and the bigger group start laughing together, Paddy’s colleague Owen points out how gay Paddy sounds in his voicemail, and soon Paddy, comfortable around his nearest and dearest, plays his voicemail for the group’s consideration.

Paddy is just one of the characters on Looking who has been criticised for being heteronormative. But passing as straight comes with its own problems, and there’s a part of Paddy who seems conflicted with how relatively low-key (and therefore uncomplicated) his sexuality has been so far.

For gay men like Paddy, not being a stereotypically effeminate man may have its perks, but there is a deep-seated self-loathing underneath it all, and all it takes is for Paddy to hear his own voice for those feelings to come flooding back.

Agustin knows this, too. Agustin knows Paddy inside and out, and he quickly swoops in with his critique of Paddy to the whole group: “He spends all his time pretending to be a power top because that’s what all men are supposed to be.” That doesn’t go down well with Richie who, after last week’s soul-and-sex-position-searching, understands Paddy’s inner conflicts about holding himself back sexually.

“Who says he’s pretending?” Richie retorts, surprising Agustin. He might have known Paddy for a long time, but he’s never going to know Paddy intimately, not like Richie does. And it suddenly becomes apparent that Agustin’s not happy he’s losing his grip on Paddy.

As Paddy is parading around, showing off his best camp, limp-wristed, hip-twisting strut, Kevin wanders over, and Paddy instantly twitches back into his usual posture. It’s funny seeing Paddy flicker between who he is with his closest friends and who he is at work (see also: his pantomime horror at Kevin coming back to work while he was in his leather vest from the street fair). Everyone is guilty of being different people to different people, but apparently in San Francisco it’s harder to keep these things apart.

Kevin is with his typically macho boyfriend, Jon, who explains he’s a sports therapist for the Giants. He’s also tall, which is a nice bonus, really, and while Kevin and Jon chat about ice cream (it has olive oil in it, which sounds weird but hip enough to probably taste amazing), Paddy introduces Richie to them.

“I cut hair,” Richie says.

“Like, for a living?” Kevin says, mildly bewildered.

While that might sound like a dig coming from anyone else, goofy Kevin sounds more adorably confused than scathing, which isn’t helped when Paddy leaps in and offers up Richie’s potentially lucrative career options further down the line.

Richie doesn’t have a problem with cutting hair for a living, but Paddy speaking out on his boyfriend’s behalf suggests Paddy is worried that Richie isn’t impressive enough to other people. I don’t think he’s ashamed or anything – that’s too strong a word. But Paddy is a man who frets and gets boiled up about what other people could be thinking about him, especially around someone like Kevin, whose staunch masculinity sets the bar high for what being a modern gay man should entail. Clearly Paddy thinks his boyfriend is missing the mark a little.

Shortly after Dom beats up a giant piñata of his younger self, which is a pretty self-explanatory metaphor, everyone’s favourite long-lost Hemsworth hooker CJ turns up, and finally meets Agustin’s better half, Frank.

It would have been easy for Agustin’s boyfriend and his hooker to clash, but instead they get on, like, genuinely, and it makes Agustin uncomfortable. Agustin can’t actually build a very good rapport with CJ because their whole relationship is founded on a cash transaction, it’s a commodity. But Frank, being blissfully ignorant of this fact, manages to naturally click with the beardy, muscular one.

Agustin does what most people do when they’re bristling with self-hatred, and he starts projecting it outwards, taking Paddy to one side and berating him for his relationship with Richie. “What are you doing,” he says bluntly, doling out advice he assumes Paddy has been desperately starved of since he moved out. “Why are you letting him walk around pretending he’s your boyfriend? Leading him on, wearing those hideous matching charm necklaces.”

Paddy rightly points out that Agustin doesn’t get to make snap judgements like that when he’s brought (and bought) a hooker to hang out at Dom’s birthday. Agustin’s assertion that Paddy is so relaxed he’s just letting this relationship play out before him without actively wanting to be in it clearly hurts Pad, who is probably feeling satisfied, excited and a bit soppy about his new, relatively problem-free relationship.

“It would be shitty if you’re using this guy just to prove a point,” Agustin continues. “You’re slumming, and it ain’t cute.”

Thankfully Richie comes to Paddy’s side and calls out Agustin, who slinks away with his tail between his legs. Paddy looks impressed at Richie’s outburst, maybe even a little turned on at his fella putting Agustin in his place.

Meanwhile, as Doris makes out with someone on a beach chair (amazing), Dom is approached by a guy who saw his Grindr profile, and even though the guy suggests he head over later, Dom is too preoccupied with the flowers Lynn couriered to him earlier, a nice nod to the scene where Dom ditched his convo with Lynn in a steam room to go and fuck some random guy.

Later, Paddy and Richie are walking through the streets and it’s clear Richie’s pissed – with the way Paddy tried to up-sell him to Kevin and Jon and the way he didn’t take Agustin to task for being such a dick.

Richie thinks Paddy is embarrassed with him, which is a harsh way of putting it, because so far Paddy seems like the kind of guy who is so bad at confrontation that he’d rather internalise everything and let it quietly eat him up instead.

Last week, these two were so different that they complimented each other, but at this stage in the relationship, seeing things from two completely conflicting viewpoints doesn’t help anyone see anything very clearly.

Richie thinks Paddy isn’t taking this seriously enough, too, and that maybe their relationship has just sped up way too fast.

“It’s not too fast,” Paddy said. “I’m just too slow, I’ve been slow all my life”.

Paddy has been too slow, too content with laying back and letting things wash over him, because that way, how can he ever be accused of doing anything wrong?

Paddy decides to invite Richie to his sister’s wedding in two weeks’ time, which surely is just a more extreme, more tense, more stressful version of inviting your new boyfriend to your friend’s picnic, but Paddy holds his family in incredibly high regard, so bringing his boyfriend into that is one of the biggest decisions he could make. That doesn’t mean it’s a good one, though.

Across town, Dom visits Lynn, because he hasn’t been answering his phone. Lynn, coolly: “Not all of us keep our phones on 24/7”. He’s so cool. So laid back. He was probably a hippy in the good old days.

They watch cartoons and smoke weed, and Lynn breaks the news that Randy isn’t on board with the chicken idea. Dom seems deflated, but Lynn has another idea. They do a pop-up, for one night, and they invite every queen with a cheque book and show them what they can do. Financing a pop-up won’t be a problem, because Lynn has the kind of money for that (selling flowers in a recession is obviously a thriving business). Dom is so excited he kisses Lynn, but quickly gets shot down. “If we’re going to be in business together, I mean… that’s hard enough.”

Poor Dom. Like Agustin and Paddy, most of this episode for him revolves around using intimacy to solve problems that intimacy just doesn’t solve. Agustin’s whole schtick of having CJ the hooker involved in his personal and professional space isn’t really addressing the fact that he’s emotionally and physically distant from everyone around him; Dom can’t (or won’t) understand that he can’t have Lynn The Business Partner and Lynn The Boyfriend at the same time without one or both of those things suffering; and Paddy’s insistence that the incident in the park will be smoothed over by his sister’s wedding is glossing over the fact that his family are probably going to be A) More Paddy-Like Than Paddy Himself B) Full Of White Middle Class Awfulness That Will Highlight Just How Different Richie Is To Paddy C) Something Else Awful, Because Paddy Has Hinted At, But Not Gone Into Detail About His Family Being Some Kind Of Awful. Or D) All Of The Above.

Later, Paddy fiddles with the necklace Richie gave him. He tries to alter the length, so it looks better draped down his chest. But just like Agustin’s earlier assertion that the necklace was cheap and tacky, changing how it looks is futile. Richie admitted earlier how crappy it was, but the wearing of it establishes commitment, so Paddy can fiddle with it all night if he wants, but it’s not going to change whether the necklace (and, to an extent, Richie) is a good fit for him.

Other Thoughts On The Episode:

Paddy admits that he and Dom did hook up! But he also jokes that he’s too old for Dom now. I hope they go into more detail about this, because Paddy and Dom have a nice friendship.

Richie speaking to Agustin in Spanish was, I think, done in an attempt to find some common ground, and it was quite tactful really, but it ended up riling Agustin more, because as he’s demonstrated, he’s very much out of touch with his heritage and Richie’s Spanish probably exasperated that more.

I can’t remember who it was, but whoever gave Agustin the nickname ‘Aggy’ needs to be given an ASBO. Aggy!?

“Did he impregnate you? You’re glowing like a pregnant women” – Doris has the best lines.

Kevin’s boyfriend got the job in San Francisco, so he’s living here full time now. Wonder why Kevin didn’t mention it earlier…

And, in exciting news, Looking has been renewed for a second season! Furthermore, Doris, Richie and Kevin have been promoted to series regulars, which can only be a good thing.

Next Week:

Paddy takes Richie to his sister’s wedding, but he’s surprised to find someone else (hint: big eared, British) there as well. Dom starts preparing for his pop-up, and Agustin and Frank argue quite a lot. Awesome. See you next week!

> ‘Looking’: Episode 5 in-depth recap
> ‘Looking’: Episode 4 in-depth recap
> ‘Looking’: Episode 3 in-depth recap
> ‘Looking’: Episode 2 in-depth recap
> ‘Looking’: Episode 1 in-depth recap