The British are coming (in a gay way)

YOU GUYS. The producers of Looking have been hearing our cries! Episode 3 kicks off with a seaman pun that would hold its own in Sex and the City world (where was that show set again?). If my only requirement as a serious television critic is to get a Samantha Jones-inspired pun once in a while, we’re off to a good start.

Here’s why the seaman: the episode begins with Patrick and coworker Owen boarding a docked ship in Alameda to celebrate the launch of a new video game called Naval Destroyer. Patrick meets large-eared Brit Kevin who he hits on unsuccessfully while playing video games, straddling a torpedo. We later discover Kevin could potentially be his new boss. (Note: Does Kevin have kind of a Ricky Gervais-but-hot vibe or am I just racist?)

SAMANTHA: The British are coming, the British are coming! (She’s having sex with a British guy in this one)

Patrick spends the rest of the episode trying to save face and figure out how to get on Kevin’s team while Kevin effs with him a bit (British people are awful!), including telling Patrick he’d been going through his internet history and he should lay off the OK Cupid and Manhunt. Of course, in the end, Patrick decides to take matters into his own hands, designs some bonus shit to show Kevin, only to find out he was going to be picked for the team anyway. Kevin is, nonetheless impressed: “Commitment looks good on you.”

Our other boys? Well, Agustin is fired from his job working for another artist for hating her shitty art. He drowns his sorrows in a piece of cake (READERS: Where?) and meets a cocky, Thor-like sex worker who tells him he’s like sooooo good at sex and makes like sooooo much money. Intrigued, Agustin considers this career path himself.

Meanwhile, our friend Dom with the Tom Selleck mustache decides (in a Bollywood dance class!) that it’s finally time to open his own restaurant, something about Portuguese chicken (fuck your Anglo chicken, Zuni!). We later see him cruising a sauna (SEXY PEOPLE: can you cruise a sauna?), where he befriends Lynn, owner of a floral shop on Castro, an “institution”, and mothereffing Scott Bakula looking not a day over 47 (Note: He’s 59 so way to go, Bak!).

SAMANTHA: I’d like to leap his quantum!
SAMANTHA: I’d like to get behind his candelabra! (She’s having sex with Scott Bakula in both of these)

I liked this episode, you guys. I think the show is starting to get its footing here, and it’s addressing some very San Francisco issues that haven’t much been addressed on TV. Being in your 20s or 30s and ponying up and deciding to do a thing in a city of Peter Pans is something that struck me; it’s difficult to do here vs. in NY or LA, where everyone’s basically just a dick about careers and/or stations in life all the time. “I don’t think either of us are very good at being who we think we are, maybe we should try a little harder,” Patrick says to Agustin. I felt it, dudes.

I am also very interested in the introduction of Lynn, the institution. The relationship between gays over 40ish and younger gays is not something I consider much as a boring straight girl, but I am intrigued: the political vs. liberated, there is a mutual respect but both have gone through different shit and have some unique shit to get over.

And finally, Looking is kind to San Francisco. I can’t tell you how underwhelmed I was by Woody Allen’s San Francisco in Blue Jasmine (BREAKING: Woody Allen hates gay people). Looking features our bars, restaurants, streets, even our public transportation prominently, we are all up in San Francisco and its beautiful views and I dig it.

SAMANTHA: If that’s what they call the San Francisco treat, I’ll take two, honey! (She’s having sex with a San Franciscan in this one)

Spotted in this episode: the Transamerica pyramid, the J-Church, a burrito, Valencia between 16th and 17th, a nonexistent Esta Noche Facebook page, BART, Nellie Street.

Mission Mission