TV REVIEW: LOOKING [HBO]

IN TWEET: THE NEW HBO SERIES “LOOKING” IS A SNOOZY STROLL WITH THREE GAY GUYS LOOKING FOR LOVE IN SAN FRANCISCO. YAWN.

While some have called the new HBO series LOOKING a gay version of GIRLS, it’s actually a trite comparison that doesn’t hold water. To its credit, LOOKING isn’t nearly as whiny, self-impressed or insufferable as the wildly overrated GIRLS. Unfortunately, it is a show that lacks any real spark, charm or reason for existing (other than giving HBO a gay-friendly bauble to use in their next subscription campaign).

Set in present-day San Francisco, the main focus is a trio of gay friends who are muddling through life and love. Patrick (Jonathan Groff), a video game designer on the cusp of 30, is dealing with the impending nuptials of a recent ex. Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) is an aspiring artist who may or may not be ready to move in with his boyfriend. The geezer of the group is 39-year-old career waiter Dom (Murray Bartlett) whom the official series site describes as “middle-aged.” I kid you not.

While there’s nothing wrong with the leads, per se, the characters they play are dull and unremarkable. Not only did I not buy their mutual friendship for even a moment, they’re the type of guys very few of us would want to be friends with. Truth be told, in almost every scene, each of them ends up being the least interesting person in the room. That doesn’t bode well for audience retention.

Groff, who has done excellent work on stage (including a Tony-nominated role in SPRING AWAKENING), here is reduced to grinning a lot and acting like a doofus. We first meet his Patrick during a botched attempt at cruising (because, you know, every gay guy heads to the woods for a hand job) and later accompany him on a terrible date. Sure, the guy he meets is a tool but, to be fair, Patrick is no prize himself. He’s an empty vessel and gives us (and potential boyfriends) very little of substance to latch onto. No wonder his ex gave him the heave ho.

Alvarez and Bartlett fare a little better but, each is saddled with the kind of stock gay character you find in those crappy direct to video films lurking in the “gay/lesbian” section of Netflix. Agustin is being pushed into a live-in situation by his boyfriend until a three way shakes things up (and I use the term “shakes” very loosely). Dom is coping with the most horrific of gay demons…turning 40 (cue scary music). The fact that he looks (inexplicably) like a holdover from 1970’s gay porn doesn’t really help his cause.

Among supporting players, Lauren Weedman is a stand-out as Doris, Dom’s roomie. Her brief scene with him is easily the best moment in the pilot. It’s funny and feels genuine. Andrew Law also makes a nice impression as Patrick’s co-worker Owen. Unfortunately, like all promising second stringers here, each of them is underused.

Almost everything else about LOOKING seems designed to suck the dramatic and sexual tension out of every scene. The opening cruising vignette quickly becomes a silly throwaway. When Patrick does run into his ex, their bathroom conversation is dull as dishwater and goes nowhere. Why subject us to it? Even the threesome is botched. The set-up is sexy and generates some genuine heat but the payoff is inexplicably flaccid; as if the series creators lost their nerve and decided to pull out prematurely (double entendres fully intended).

In fact, a general lack of courage and conviction hangs over the first episode like a cold summer fog. It’s full of false starts, ideas that go nowhere and a lot of lazy writing. The show runs 30 minutes but it seems much longer and I’ve never seen San Francisco depicted as such a colorless and soulless place. I lived in SF for a number of years in the late 90’s. It seems odd to set and shoot a series there and then do so little of consequence with such a compelling backdrop. See the PBS production of TALES OF THE CITY for one example of how to do it right.

There will also be the inevitable comparisons to QUEER AS FOLK, Showtime’s glossy, groundbreaking revamp of the UK original. Though wildly uneven, when QAF was firing on all cylinders, it offered viewers a thrilling experience like nothing else on TV. The series managed to juggle graphic sex, soapy storylines and rich, compelling characters with a great deal of skill. It was a water cooler hit.

Flash forward almost a decade to LOOKING and it actually feels like a huge step backward. The show plays it way too safe and forces us to spend time with people we’d otherwise pass by without so much as a glance. It’s almost as if the cameras were set up in a vibrant club full of fascinating denizens but instead of featuring any of them, the producers chose to zoom in and lock focus on three dull wallflowers biding time in the back of the room.

“LOOKING” AIRS SUNDAYS AT 10:30PM E/P ON HBO.

RONTHINK GRADE: C-

RE-VERSE: GAME OF THRONES

IN TWEET: A RE-VERSE IS A REVIEW WRITTEN IN VERSE. FOR THE FIRST OUTING OF THIS NEW RONTHINK FEATURE, WE CHOSE “GAME OF THRONES” FROM HBO.

Sometimes when you want to write a negative review, turning it into a poem can make the bitter pill go down a little easier. I know many of my fellow geeks love the HBO series GAME OF THRONES. Alas, I’m not one of them.

GAME OF THRONES has everything I dislike in one hugely overblown snoozer of a package: dragons, dirty looking characters wearing pelts, storylines that are deliberately confusing for no valid reason, a deep well of smug self-importance, ugly people having kinky sex, fantasy novel roots, excessive violence and Peter Dinklage.

So, without further pontification, here is the inaugural RONTHINK RE-VERSE!

GAME OF THRONES

A DARK SONNET OF RHYMING COUPLETS

Tonight White Walkers march once more.

Hark! Here comes that crashing bore!

As GIRLS lays waste to comedy

This is death by fantasy.

The cast be large, the critics mused.

Whilst I sat there dazed and confused.

Geekdom is moist with so much love

But I suggest death from above.

For on this turgid GAME OF THRONES

I would launch Obama’s drones.

Season 3 of GAME OF THRONES debuts tonight (Sunday, March 31) on HBO at 9pm E/P.

OPINION: MUNN SCORES! MORGAN BORES!

IN TWEET: OLIVIA MUNN PUTS CNN BOOB PIERS MORGAN IN HIS PLACE. THAT VIDEO PLUS MUSINGS ON MUNN, MEDIA AND LOS ANGELES.

Los Angeles is probably the most unfairly maligned city in the United States. Yes, everything you’ve heard about it is probably true. At the same time, most of the negative stuff isn't nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. More often than not, the loudest haters tend to be those who have never spent more than a week there and/or New Yorkers, a plucky people with a remarkable ability to convince themselves that the raft of  problems in their city are just further proof of its status as center of the known universe. Big Gulp, anyone?

I lived in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2011. Sure, it has problems but it’s also a vibrant city rich with simple pleasures, amazing cultural diversity and an endless treasure trove of hidden gems. Unfortunately, Los Angeles is located in California, a state so screwed up that I finally said “enough is enough” and fled for greener (and colder) pastures. I say all of this as a roundabout introduction to this post. Plus, since RONTHINK launched, this is the first chance I’ve had to get in a few fun jabs at California and NYC.

One of the things I do genuinely miss about Los Angeles is attending the annual PALEYFEST. Run by the Paley Center for Media (formerly known as the Museum of Television and Radio), it’s a series of panel discussions featuring the casts, writers, creators and producers of current (and sometimes classic) TV series. I am planning a full post about the 2013 PALEYFEST this week but, after screening THE NEWSROOM panel, I couldn’t wait to highlight this piece of amazing video.

THE NEWSROOM is an original series on HBO. It’s written by Aaron Sorkin and stars, among others, Jeff Daniels, Dev Patel, Sam Waterston and Olivia Munn. Sorkin, a brilliant writer, is responsible for some of my all-time favorite TV series (SPORTS NIGHT, THE WEST WING) and THE SOCIAL NETWORK, easily one of the best movies of the past decade. That’s why I thought the THE NEWSROOM was such a disappointment. It had everything Sorkin fans love but was bogged down by an excesses of the stuff his detractors always whine about. I had written off the show…until now.

Though the entire panel chat is worth watching (see the full video at the end of this post), the must-see clip is an uncomfortable exchange between CNN talking head Piers Morgan and Olivia Munn. In one of those “be careful what you ask for” moments, Morgan, the panel moderator, asks Munn to give her definition of journalism. She does and, if you’re a self-impressed jackass like Piers Morgan, it isn’t pretty. Given Morgan’s own problems with everything from his journalistic ethics to woeful ratings, his mere presence as moderator of this panel was already questionable. When Morgan makes the mistake of chiding Munn, cue the fireworks.

MUNN: “I prefer to see Piers Morgan and Dianne Sawyer…just on the news and not on the red carpet. That’s just me, personally…”

MORGAN: “Well, I had to do it. I’m moderating.”

MUNN: “No, I know…”

MORGAN: “…unpaid, Sunday night, don’t be so bloody churlish.”

MUNN: “…Do you want the truth or do you just, you know, want me to say something.?”

Ouch! The answer, of course, is the latter. Munn gave an honest response and Morgan got his panties in a twist. He also turned a discussion about a show he isn’t on, held in front of an audience who didn’t pay to see him, into one of the same “all about me” moments that Munn goes on to carpet bomb. Here's the full clip:

To her credit, Munn remained poised throughout and gave Morgan infinitely more respect than he deserved. More importantly, she was spot on. Media buzz aside, this exchange now becomes another fascinating piece of the puzzle that is Olivia Munn. In less than five minutes she manages the almost impossible task of defining and defending the nobility of real journalism, adding cred to her own increasingly impressive resume, refusing to be turned into a joke because she answered a question honestly and giving Piers Morgan a long overdue verbal bitch slap. Score!

During my decade plus in Los Angles, one of the positions I held was Director of Marketing at G4. It was a network with a tiny audience of the most mind-bogglingly wonderful fans I’ve ever worked with. In fact, they were the reason most of us were there. G4 is owned by Comcast, the cable conglomerate everyone hates (unless, of course, you believe the “future of awesome” really does emanate from Philly). Of all the networks owned by the company, G4 was the one that got the fewest resources and the least respect. I say “was” because G4 is held in such low esteem by Comcast that it will soon be turned into something called The Esquire Network. Good luck with that, Kabletown.

My tenure happened to fall during the heyday of Olivia Munn, when AOTS! was still on the air and held cult status as the best live show almost no one was watching. I’m not gonna say Munn was an angel 24/7, but working at G4 did have a way of making even the best people a little brittle (present company included). We all worked for relative peanuts. Some of us also worked for outright buffoons while others toiled away creating small television miracles, like X-PLAY and the aforementioned AOTS!, on a shoestring.

Munn and AOTS! co-host Kevin Pereira had that rare on camera “thing” that sparkled. I never had any doubts about Pereira. He’s a nice guy with a passion for everything geek and an ability to make you care. Munn was the question mark. I never fell into the trap of selling her short or assuming she was just a hot chick looking to be a star. She was too self-deprecating and willing to “go there” for that. In fact, with the exception of Munn and Carrie Keagan on BIG MORNING BUZZ LIVE WITH CARRIE KEAGAN, it’s hard to find female hosts who can manage the delicate balancing act of brains, body and bawdy. Both do it exceptionally well.

Munn has moved on from her TV hosting days and small cameo roles in feature films. She starred in the NBC sit-com bomb PERFECT COUPLES, a show so badly written no-one in the cast should be blamed for the epic fail. Rather than trying to make any more hay in the Comcast family (NBC is also owned by the company), Munn moved out and on to a major supporting role in MAGIC MIKE. To the dismay of her detractors, she was quite good. Those who continued to sell her short got their comeuppance when Aaron Sorkin cast her in THE NEWSROOM. While critical reaction to the show was split almost evenly between fawning and eviscerating, Munn received near universal praise for her performance.

Unlike some, I much prefer to see public figures grow, evolve, mature and blossom. I don’t subscribe to a media mindset fixated on building people up only to tear them down. Yes, some actors and politicians are their own worst enemies but, they are also often as much a player in their rapid rise as they are a victim in their spectacular falls. Munn started her career on the geek fringe, a place where you can spread your wings and make mistakes in front of a fan base honest enough to call you out, smart enough to give advice you probably should follow and forgiving enough to let you fly again. 

Based on where Olivia Munn is today, those who thought she was a flash in the pan should probably eat some crow. If the Olivia Munn we now see in movies, TV series and at this particular PALEYFEST panel is the real deal (and I think she is), second chances are indeed a very good thing.

Here is the full video of the NEWSROOM panel from the 30th annual PALEYFEST. Enjoy!