It’s no secret that Looking—HBO’s half-hour comedy/drama about a trio of gay male friends in San Francisco—is boring. The show’s been widely identified as such since its 2014 premiere. “In Looking, gay men get to be boring on TV at last,” wrote Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak, giving a grudging nod to the progress that’s allowed gay TV characters out of the colorful-sidekick ghetto. Slate’s J. Bryan Lowder could find no such silver lining: “Looking is so boring, so utterly flat in terms of narrative or characterization, so in need of occasional pauses in which to perform a few jumping jacks to bring one’s heart rate up to resting, that I would opt out entirely if we gay men—or at least gay male culture critics—weren’t contractually obliged to watch”…
