‘Looking’ Recap, Season Two Episode Three: “Looking Top to Bottom”

Truth tellers: you may not want them at your brunch table, but boy are they fun to watch on TV. This week’s truth tellers come in two forms. The first is “MDG Employee” (played by Cooper Foster, who you may recognize as “Infected Woman” from I Am Legend), who tells Patrick, gloating that he’s purchasing an enema even though he’s “not getting a colonoscopy tomorrow,” that he lives in San Francisco and that he should really try growing up. Then ther’s  Malik, Doris’ new love interest who points out how odd it is the two “grown ass 40-year-olds” (Doris and Dom) are still doing the roommate thing. Agustín, who fancies himself a truth teller, but is in fact just a chronic asshole, continues being terrible. And if we all perish at the hand of this impending blizzard, at least we got to experience an entire scene of cable television featuring Jonathan Groff, cheek to the rug, administering an enema to himself.

Following Kevin’s blue ribbon talent show performance that ended last week’s episode, this week’s opens on him performing once again: singing “Happy Birthday” with Patrick (and all of the people who directly report to him that he’s not sleeping with) to a woman in their office who is totally not a lesbian. He and Patrick slip away to the roof (is this the most poorly executed workplace affair in the history of television?), and we learn that they are “back on for this weekend.” Kevin’s boyfriend will be out of town and he and Patrick will get a solid 28 hours alone, as opposed to the 40+ hours they already spend each week doing dance routines in Kevin’s office. There’s one small catch: it’s Dom’s first gay rugby game and Patrick has promised he’d go. Kevin, in a complete 180 from last week, begs Patrick to let him come along.

Meanwhile, in a Hooverville down under a bridge somewhere, Agustín accosts Richie at his place of work. “I come in peace,” he says timidly, and Raúl Castillo breaks scene entirely to express his incredulity that the Looking writers didn’t milk every last drop of double meaning out of that line. See, Agustín is being very sincere because he came to apologize for last week’s blackout and for how terrible he was to Richie when he and Patrick were dating. Richie wonders if Agustín was being such an asshole because he’s in love with Patrick (he isn’t), which means he was just being “an asshole for no reason.” (Richie, join the ranks with your fellow Truth Tellers!) Richie seems reluctant to accept the apology, but he tells Agustín to take a seat, forcing a shave on him. Agustín, who doesn’t pay for rent, GHB, or an Uber to get himself home after he passes out next a pupusa cart, is more than happy to accept.

Back at home, Patrick, who once saw an episode of MTV’s Room Raiders and was severely scarred by learning just how vividly cum stains show up on sheets, is stripping his bed in preparation of Kevin’s overnight visit. Because he is not clairvoyant, Patrick has no idea what they’re going to do. Fuck? Cuddle? Watch TV? Order in? Agustín, who we later learn is actually a robot designed for the singular purpose of dispensing awful advice, tells him to think of this as a “test drive” for what a relationship with Kevin might be like. Patrick, giddy at the mention of the word relationship, spins around in circles until he makes himself so dizzy that he collapses, giggling, to the floor.

In an ongoing effort to clean up before Kevin’s arrival, Patrick goes shopping for an enema. He’s never needed one before (he has “more of a self-cleaning oven” – I’m sorry, I had to endure it, so you do, too); it’s never been so pre-meditated. When Agustín encourages him to stop approaching butt sex like murder, Patrick replies, “I don’t need one of your sex-positive talks right now” before slipping into his preeny voice to read the back of the enema box, which promises to leave its users “fresh as a mountain stream after a rain.” Agustín, enraged that someone somehow got paid to write that copy but that no one will buy his dick-unicorn collage, proceeds to ransack the entire store and burn it to the ground. But not before Patrick denies having bottom shame, declaring he is “totally, officially versatile and loving it,” something that is patently untrue. Agustín, angling his freshly shorn beard to the fluorescent lights, prompts Patrick to comment on it, so he can tell him that he saw Richie, proving that underneath that wounded, apologetic exterior is still the terrible person we have come to know and loathe.

The next morning, across the quad, Dom and Doris both had boys spend the night! Lynn bemoans the fact that his place is nicer, while Malik tries to convince Doris to try the “Saturday Morning Special.” Doris, declining, instead crawls into bed with Dom and Lynn, screaming “slumber party!” and begging to play Seven Minutes in Heaven. Doris confesses that she l-o-v-e-s Malik and, as anyone who watches television already knows, declares that butt play is in! Somewhere in HBO headquarters, a roomful of producers gets a crazy idea for True Detective Season Two.

At breakfast, we learn that Dom had a meeting the day before with Lynn’s friend Jack, someone he was hoping might be a potential investor in his chicken window but who really just wanted to ask him to be the manager at his new restaurant. Lynn doesn’t understand why Dom isn’t interested, harkening back to the Season One scene in which Patrick couldn’t believe Richie didn’t want to own his own barbershop one day, and reminds him that that “manager” is a good solid step or two up from “busboy-fucking lunch shift waiter.” Doris and Dom look at Lynn like he’s speaking Esperanto and the scene ends.

The next scene is eleven seconds long and consists entirely of Patrick giving himself an enema on his bathroom floor.

Kevin shows up with an overnight bag, then he and Patrick go to a bar and continue getting to know each other better while working up the liquid courage to be seen together in the light of day. We learn that Kevin only has two years left on his visa before he needs to get married or get sent back to England. Patrick starts jumping up and down on his stool and begins to spin it around until it has created a whirlwind, out of which he emerges wearing Cinderella’s wedding gown.

They join the others (Doris, Agustín, and Damien from Mean Girls — AKA “Eddie”) at the rugby match. Kevin, dutifully playing the role of the resident Brit, explains the rugby expression “ball’s out” to the boys (here is where I would insert a “deflate-gate” joke, if I had any idea of or ounce of interest in what “deflate-gate” is). (“Deflate-gate” and its associated “deflated balls” are a few other terms one can imagine the Looking writers’ room having a field day with.) When Damien, sucking seductively on a juice box, asks Kevin if he has a boyfriend, Agustín tries to deflect the question. He wants to be the one to tell Damien about Patrick and Kevin’s affair, which he does in the next scene.

In the bathroom at the rugby match, Agustín asks Damien if he can stay the night, due to Patrick’s impending “fuckfest” with his boss. “Honey, I work at a shelter, I don’t run one,” replies Damien, but he acquiesces when Agustín suggests they “torrent Romy and Michele” (add “iTunes movie rental” to the list of things Agustín can’t/refuses to pay for) and get some mochi ice cream, presumably by holding up a bodega.

Patrick drags Kevin to the back of the bleachers to enact a high school fantasy of his. While they go at it, the crowd cheers and everything is very, very subtle.

In the shower, post-rugby match, Lynn’s friend Matthew tells Dom that he loved his pop-up (wait for it…) restaurant. He’s been to “four or five” since then (I have never been to a single pop-up restaurant in my entire life. Am I doing adulthood wrong?), and they’ve all paled in comparison, which you kind of have to say to someone when you’re standing naked next to them. He also shares that he heard that Lynn recommended him to Jack for the manager job he scoffed at.

“I think I get it now: gay rugby’s all about the showers afterwards, right?” Doris squawks at some random guys leaving the locker room, practicing for her Last Comic Standing audition tape. Lynn arrives late, having missed Dom’s victory because he owns a flower empire that keeps him incredibly busy. Dom, exiting the locker room, makes a beeline for Lynn, and confronts Lynn about giving him a glowing job recommendation. Dom’s commitment to his peri peri window, and his refusal to settle for anything less, would be cute if it was coming from your 17 year-old cousin who was going against her parents’ law school dreams and enrolling in Juilliard, but from Dom it shows a total lack of understanding about what “working your way to the top” (tee hee) means.

Back at Patrick’s apartment, Kevin finds a self-help book called Finding the Boyfriend Within on Patrick’s bookshelf. “What? How did that get there?!” Patrick exclaims, as he sets fire to his copies of The Rules, He’s Just Not That Into You, and, oddly, What to Expect When You’re Expecting in his kitchen sink. Kevin’s ready to get a jumpstart on the aforementioned “fuckfest,” but Patrick, forgetting that his “fresh as a mountain stream after a rain” butthole will turn back into a pumpkin at midnight, suggests they take their time. They watch cartoons.

Later, in bed, Kevin tells Patrick that it’s his turn to top. Patrick, doing his best Deana Carter impression, sings “Did I Douche My Ass For This?” at the top of his lungs into an invisible microphone before taking the condom from Kevin and giving us one of the hottest TV sex scenes in recent memory. This is the physical manifestation of the power dynamic we began to see emerging last week, the pendulum swinging from Kevin to Patrick, at least in Patrick’s mind. See, for Patrick, being a top or being a bottom means being in control or, conversely, being submissive. The fact that he has so much less to lose from this affair has given him some emotional power over Kevin, and now, at least in his eyes, he is gaining some physical power over him, too. The episode closes on a very different Patrick than the one we have known up until this point, a Patrick that can hear Kevin on the phone with his boyfriend, register what he’s hearing, and go back to sleeping soundly. Someday, and someday soon, we expect someone will approach Patrick and force him to see just how unhealthy this whole Kevin thing is. But, at least so far, that particular truth teller has yet to show up.

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

 

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Photos: HBO