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Looking, Ep. 2.07: “Looking for a Plot” is a showcase for Lauren Weedman

At this point, how are Patrick Murray’s friends not completely fed up with him? After he drunkenly insults everyone in his life at his own terrible party, he tags along to Doris’s father’s funeral in Modesto and makes the weekend all about him. He mawkishly sobs at the service, continually tries to one up Doris in the “I had an unhappy childhood” department, and ends up totaling Dom’s car and sending all three of them to the hospital. Doris, bless her heart, is nothing but kind and patient in response to Patrick’s appalling behavior. Dom mostly ignores him, instead focusing his energy on trying be there for Doris while dealing with his ambivalence towards Modesto and his own father. Patrick goes through the motions of being a good friend, listening when appropriate and offering back rubs, but he has neither the emotional maturity nor the capacity for empathy to think about anyone other than himself.

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Looking, Ep. 2.06: “Looking for Gordon Freeman” exposes Patrick’s crazy

In Looking for Gordon Freeman, Agustin continually compares Patrick to Clarissa Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s seminal neurotic hostess. This is not an obscure reference for anyone with a cursory knowledge of American literature. Even if someone’s never read the book, they’ve probably heard the name before and know it has something to do with parties and flowers and tragedy. But, the reference is completely lost on Patrick. For Agustin – and perhaps for the liberal arts educated Looking viewership – this gap in knowledge is a bit surprising, but it says more about Patrick’s interests than his intelligence. So he’s not a reader. He knows a ton about obscure video game characters, and is shocked when no one recognizes his Gordon Freeman Halloween costume. Maybe Gordon Freeman is as basic a reference to programmers as Clarissa Dalloway is to English majors.

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Looking, Ep. 2.05: “Looking for Truth” down a familiar road

Patrick really does seem to have ended it with Kevin. This is the one rational decision he has made since Looking began and could be interpreted as evidence that he has matured, able to see himself in a toxic relationship and get himself out of it. They encounter each other at the office and Patrick holds his ground, rejecting Kevin unequivocally. Kevin still wants to have it both ways, sleeping with Patrick but living with John, ostensibly to not hurt John’s feelings. But watching that scene with John, the first real introduction to a character viewers have heard a lot about and seen in the distance but never spent any time with, makes it clear that Kevin is being cruel to his boyfriend by not ending it. Here he is, visiting Kevin for the first time at his office, and Kevin can barely look at him, let alone convincingly fake affection. John either has to be unobservant bordering on autistic, or in total denial about the barely concealed loathing his boyfriend has for him. If Patrick had been privy to that scene he would have ran away from Kevin even more quickly, making sure he never ends up like John, clinging to a relationship both parties know is dead.

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Looking, Ep. 2.04: “Looking Down the Road” kills its idols

Looking has often loved its secondary characters more than its leads. Patrick, Dom, and Agustin have continually paired off with people, in both romance and friendship, who are smarter, nicer, and more together than they are. Richie, Lynn, Doris, and Kevin have been the voices or reason, of patience, and of exasperation throughout the show’s run. They’ve shared their advice, which has usually fallen on deaf ears, and have tried to form meaningful bonds with the central trio of characters, with varying degrees of success. This intelligence gap, or empathy gap, has been detrimental to the success of the show. Why follow the lives of a group of emotionally stunted, unambitious babies when this rich tapestry of noble humanity is one degree away? Why can’t the show spend more time with Richie in his salon, or Lynn at the flower shop, and follow characters who are worth following? Perhaps just like in real life, the more time one spends with somebody, the more he sees them for who they really are, warts and all. Because if Looking Down the Road teaches its viewers anything, it’s that Richie, Kevin, and Lynn can be just as clueless, stunted, frightened and petty as anyone else on the show.

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‘Game of Thrones: The Lost Lords’ adds some new blood to this tale

New elements come in fast and heavy for the second of six planned parts in Telltale’s Game of Thrones series. First up is the introduction of Asher Forrester. Only vaguely referenced in the first chapter, Asher takes a central role here as the sole Forrester situated in the faraway land of Essos. Much like Daenerys Targaryen, though, his story seems to bear little effect on what is occurring in Westeros (at least for now). Still, it’s an intriguing introduction, and his task to find an army to take back to Westeros will be no easy one.

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Looking, Ep. 2.03: “Looking Top to Bottom” goes full frontal

In Looking’s first season, the show’s creators opted against showing much explicit sex or nudity on screen. While its HBO brethren Girls and Game of Thrones pull no punches in their depiction of naked (mainly female) flesh, Looking mostly opts to cut away from its characters at their most intimate moments. Some have accused the show of soft-balling its gay content in order to make comfortable a large mainstream audience that isn’t tuning in anyway. Looking Top to Bottom changes course and lets it all hang out, showing gay male nudity in both sexual and non-sexual contexts. This neither enhances nor detracts from this particular episode, but it’s a tonal shift worth noting, and adds one more tool (pun intended) to the show’s arsenal.

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Looking, Ep. 2.02: “Looking for Results” gives Patrick a scare

The second season of Looking began last week with a strong episode focused on the friendship between Patrick, Dom, and Augustin. The second episode, “Looking for Results,” switches gears a little bit, concentrating on Patrick’s relationship with Kevin, a worrisome sign for someone who felt Patrick’s romantic entanglements were given too much emphasis in the first season. But Looking is a much more confident show now, able to focus on secondary characters without losing sight of its central trio. The result is a totally entertaining half hour of television and a sign that Looking is beginning to know exactly what kind of show it wants to be.

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HBO year-end video provides a glimpse at Game of Thrones Season 5 and Westworld

The year ins’t yet over but we are already looking ahead to 2015. HBO has put out its yearly New Year video, looking back at their programming, and then giving a brief look at what’s to come the following year. The year-end video provides brief glimpses of Game of Thrones: Season 5 and the new …

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Foo Fighters Sonic Highways Season 1: Dave Grohl builds something from nothing

If Rock and Roll and guitar rock is a dying breed, then the rock-doc is certainly becoming a quaint relic. How many documentaries can you make in which an aging rock star waxes poetic about a type of music from 40 years earlier? How much nostalgia, history and navel gazing can you pack into the genre before even the documentaries move on to being nostalgic about boy bands, Taylor Swift and EDM?

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HBO’s ‘The Leftovers’ to make significant changes for season two

One of the most talked about new drama series of 2014, HBO’s The Leftovers, will be entering its second season to some considerable alterations. Deadline reports that for the shows sophomore year they will be having a change in setting and dwindling down of the cast. In its first season the story centered on the …

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‘Game of Thrones: Iron from Ice’ marks an engaging, if underwhelming, first chapter

Since its introduction in 2011, HBO’s Game of Thrones has soared in popularity, even usurping the might Sopranos as the networks most successful and popular show ever created. Of course, one of the shows best joys has been discussing its various plot twists and shocking revelations with fellow watchers. Now, however, for the first time, players can actually have a direct effect on this world, and instead of examining and criticizing the choices of others, fans will have the chance to make their own.

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Kurt Cobain documentary coming to HBO in 2015

It seems about every six months a new relic from Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s past is dug up, continually adding to the mystique of Generation X’s most iconic and influential figure who went too soon. And while numerous sources have mined his history and documented his troubled final days, HBO has received unprecedented access to …

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Alex Gibney to tackle Scientology in new HBO documentary

Alex Gibney is continuing on his quest to make every denomination mad at him, and after turning his lens on the Catholic church in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, he’s now examining the teachings of yet another religion, Scientology. The Hollywood Reporter reports that his latest project is based on Going …

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Aztec empire drama coming to HBO from Martin Scorsese, Benicio Del Toro

While everyone is busy labeling Marco Polo as Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones, HBO is looking for their own new project big enough and worthy enough of inspiring copycats, and they may have found it with a new series now in development from Executive Producers Martin Scorsese and Benicio Del Toro. Deadline reported Tuesday …

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Telltale’s ‘Game of Thrones’ leaks probable first screenshots

Though the release date and any real plot details still remain shrouded in secrecy, Telltale’s upcoming Game of Thrones series purportedly leaked a few screenshots yesterday. The pictures revealed that the game’s art style will not be following in the comic-inspired aesthetics of it’s forebears (The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us respectively) but will instead impart a more realistic style that will be more appropriate to the show from which it takes its name and setting.

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Jonathan Nolan to develop Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Trilogy for television

A new television series is in development from HBO and Warner Bros. TV that will adapt Isaac Asimov’s science fiction epic “Foundation” Trilogy for television. At the head of the project is Interstellar screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, who will write and produce the series, as reported by TheWrap. It should be noted that Jonathan Nolan has …

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Boardwalk Empire, Ep. 5.07: “Friendless Child” laments its losses and rhymes like poetry

Three seasons ago Enoch “Nucky” Thompson met his former protege, Jimmy Darmody, in a dusty field and told him that he wasn’t seeking redemption. And then he shot him in the head. Twice. Things have changed.

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David Fincher To Direct Entire 1st Season of HBO’s ‘Utopia’

The 2010s have been good for David Fincher. His highly anticipated Gone Girl is coming out on Friday. He has been flirting with, but ultimately not directing, Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the new Star Wars, and Sony’s Steve Jobs biopic. And after directing the first two episodes of Netflix‘s House of Cards and winning an Emmy for it, Fincher …

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Boardwalk Empire, Ep. 5.04: “Cuanto” is Margaret’s finest hour

With “Cuanto” we mark the halfway point of the final season, and its first major death. As fans of Boardwalk will attest, though, the only real surprise was that it took as long as it did. If you were running the numbers in Vegas, or Atlantic City for that matter, the odds would come up quick that there will likely be a lot more to come. If only Arnold Rothstein was still around to roll the dice on that one.

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