This week, on a Very Special Halloween Episode of Looking, Agustín seduces Bilbo Baggins while dressed as a Lisa Frank treasure troll doll from hell on acid, Patrick attempts to be a “Fun Gay” the only way he knows how (hint: he does it by being a really not-fun gay), and Dom and Doris have been cryogenically defrosted, coming back from the dead to dress up as pop cultural icons of the ’70s and ’80s and struggle to learn the difference between Tumblr and Twitter.

In the interest of being a “Fun Gay,” Patrick decides to host a Halloween party. The Fun Gays, incidentally, is the name of a forthcoming new show premiering later this year in the HBO Sunday night 10 PM slot starring none of these characters. Agustín wants them to go as the Golden Ghouls again (insert Thank You For Being a Fiend joke here). Patrick — who is a total Rose — shoots him down and decides to go as Gordon Freeman, who is apparently some character who popularized the “first-person shooter” video game format, which sounds like a masturbation joke. Dom tells them the Halloween store they’re in used to be a Blockbuster; Agustín and Patrick are like, “ LOL what’s Blockbuster?”

Patrick goes to work to steal napkins, Pop Chips, and Cadbury crème eggs, because once you’ve had butt sex on the DL with your boss in your office, you must feel like you’re pretty much above the law. Kevin is there, sitting in his glass box of misery, wistfully writing code for the gay Top Trumps app he and Patrick joked about developing four episodes ago. Patrick, again in the interest of being the “Fun Gay,” invites his boss/former lover and his current long-term boyfriend to his Halloween party. Kevin tells him it’s not likely they’ll attend. They’ve been discussing moving back to Seattle and want to experience their one and only Halloween out in San Francisco.

Dom (@chickendom40) has registered for Twitter to help his Kickstarter. He has been trying to Snapchat a Picstitch for the past hour, but his Pinterest push notifications keep getting in the way. Doris, she tells us, just learned last week that her phone has a calendar on it, which explains where she was last episode. She also tells Dom that she won’t be able to do a couple’s costume with him this year because she already committed to one with Malik, who apparently still exists.

Back at Chez Patrick, he’s drawn on stubble and needs some help getting into his Gordon Freeman costume (or “that gay Walter White Tron thing,” as Doris aptly refers to it later). This is when we learn about who the fuck Gordon Freeman is. Agustín sums it up, noting that by dressing up as this notorious first-person shooter, Patrick is effectively “a character with so little personality he’s basically nothing.” I couldn’t agree more.

Dom shows up dressed as He-Man, but really as Bondage Sia, and Patrick throws the first of 17,492 fits over the fact that no one knows who he’s dressed as. This rage would be warranted if he was dressed as, well, anyone who anyone has ever heard of. He reminds us that he’s a “Fun Gay,” proven by the fact that he rented a karaoke machine and that there is a sign-up sheet for it.

Malik and Doris, in the best visual of an episode full of visuals, show up dressed as Sonny and Cher, who Patrick has never heard of. Eddie, dressed as what appears to be Gay James Madison, but turns out to be Bilbo Baggins, brings a Gay Asian Legolas to the party to flirt with the newly single Patrick. He quickly dodges Legolas and approaches Richie and Brady, dressed (sort of) like Max and a Wild Thing from Where the Wild Things Are. Holy shit! This Brady kid is a ginger and he is named Brady. Is he Brady Hobbes? Miranda’s son from Sex and the City? Does the HBO universe exist in a self-contained realm outside our own, and are Rust Cohle and Olive Kitteridge going to show up on the Thanksgiving episode of Girls? Brady, of course, is the only person at the party who knows who the hell Gordon Freeman is, which just makes Patrick drink more.

Patrick, still drinking, finds Gay Legolas. Gay Legolas explains something about his job, saying “it’s not very fun, but pays pretty well.” Patrick hears “not very fun” and basically pushes this kid over the railing, telling him that he needs to go check on the chips. He runs down into the backyard, where Brady is holding court, discussing PrEP — also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis — a pill that can be taken to prevent to transmission of HIV. Patrick makes an ass of himself. He drinks more.

Malik tells Dom that he has fallen pretty hard for Doris. Dom tells Malik he thinks that Doris feels the same way, but that she’s scared because she literally has not interacted with a straight male since the Clinton administration. Eddie decides to bail on his other plans to stay at the party and dance with Agustín, who is still wearing whatever he’s wearing. Richie and Brady decide to stick around, too, and make out in front of Patrick every chance they get.

All this smooching has put Patrick in the mood, so he grabs Gay Legolas and kisses him hard. Gay Legolas pushes him away, talking smack about Patrick’s party playlist as he breezes past Kevin and Jon, who have showed up and who are both almost as drunk as Patrick. Jon is wearing a literal jester’s cap to the party he is attending with his boyfriend at the home of the man who cuckolded him. Kevin is wearing … no costume? Or perhaps he is some other video game character no one has ever heard of and he and Patrick are destined to live forever together on an island where none of us have to deal with them.

Patrick drinks more. Have you seen 2008’s indie-gem, Rachel Getting Married? Do you remember Anne Hathaway’s rehearsal dinner speech? Then you have basically seen this next disastrous, perfectly executed scene. Although, Hathaway’s Kym had the good sense to begin her speech, “I am Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening.”

Patrick just launches right in, stands on a chair, grabs the karaoke mic, and does the following: declares that he only hosted this party because he wants to be a Fun Gay; patronizes Dom, makes light of his chicken window dreams, and passes around a baseball cap like some sort of proto-Kickstarter to raise funds for his peri peri place; lauds the new “thoughtful and helpful” Agustín, who is still wearing that costume that gets you high just by looking at it and who is still not paying rent to live in Patrick’s apartment; singles out Richie — “such a good person. Let’s raise a glass to Richie!” — and makes big, cartoonish doe eyes at him while Richie is standing next to his boyfriend who still may or may not be Miranda Hobbes’ son; and then singles out Brady himself, “Richie’s soul mate, and the gay Dr. Ruth” (Patrick has no idea who Sonny and Cher are, but is able to make an off-the-cuff Dr. Ruth reference. Sure.). At this point, people are basically scaling the walls trying to get out of this room. But this trainwreck keeps plowing full speed ahead, right into Kevin. Agustín and Dom, totally inconspicuously, rip the microphone away from Patrick before he can broadcast his affair with Kevin to the entire party. “I am Gordon Freeman, OK?!” he screams as they carry him out of the room, “the most important character of all time.”

This cringe-inducing downward spiral is some of the best acting we’ve seen from Jonathan Groff all season. As an audience member, you reach the point where you physically need to burst through the scene and stop him from saying anything further, and then the scene continues for 90 more seconds. Actually, come to think of it, I think Patrick and Anne Hathaway’s character from Rachel Getting Married would get along famously.

We later find The Most Important Character of All Time sitting on the front steps of his apartment, moping. Kevin approaches and apologizes for bringing Jon to Patrick’s party. Patrick confesses that he doesn’t want Kevin to move back to Seattle. Just as they are about to have a moment, Jon stumbles out of the house, looking for the karaoke sign up sheet. Hilariously, the only two people in this episode who either want to do karaoke or know who Gordon Freeman is are Jon and Brady. Jon allegedly “slays Celine Dion,” which, well, I’ll believe that when I hear it. Which won’t be tonight, as Kevin tells Jon they’re leaving.

“I hope everything works out the way you want,” Patrick tells them as they walk off. “What does that mean?” Jon asks Kevin as they disappear into the night, passing a gay angel drinking a cocktail on the sidewalk, one of the show’s most on-the-nose visual metaphors yet.

Patrick goes back inside to find Agustín dancing with Eddie, Richie dancing with Brady, and Dom dancing with Maddie Ziegler in nude bodysuits in an abandoned apartment. Just kidding. Dom’s old, so he’s sitting on the couch. Patrick cuddles up next to him, gazes longingly at Richie, who smiles at him flirtatiously before re-joining Brady on the dance floor.

This episode was a really well done pressure cooker episode, throwing every character together into a confined space and watching them go. It’s not over for Patrick and Richie, and probably not for Patrick and Kevin, and apparently not for Patrick and Kevin and this gay app they are developing, and certainly not for scenes of Patrick being that chronically Not-Fun Gay, no matter how hard he tries to be anything else.

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

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Photos: HBO