A few people have told me I’ve been hard on Looking this season. Last week a friend, jokingly and without a grasp on how few people read these silly things, said he would hold me personally responsible if the show was not renewed for a third season. And I’ll be the first to admit that the show’s gargantuan absurdities are fun to quip on every week, that Patrick’s characterization at nearly every step of the way rings utterly false, and, while I don’t wish death on him, I do wish he would simply cease to exist. But I can also give credit where credit is due. And tonight, credit was due.

The episode opens on Kevin and Patrick apartment hunting. The apartment has floor to ceiling windows. “I am going to really enjoy fucking you against the glass,” Patrick, newly minted top that he is, purrs to Kevin. “And those windows can take it,” squawks an off-screen realtor. I immediately start a campaign to get Christine Estabrook cast as a real estate agent in every television show and feature film made from this moment on. She tries to lure them in with the information that lots of gay couples have been moving in. But not this one! This apartment, we learn, is just for Kevin. He loves it, and he’s going to take it.

Off to meet up with Patrick’s mom for dinner! Patrick’s sister, Megan, is apparently sour about Kevin leaving Jon for Patrick. We’re reminded that Jon is Megan’s husband’s best friend and that Megan has defriended Kevin on Facebook, the ultimate white-girl burn. Patrick chalks that up to her being “super judgy and a drama queen, “ two characteristics Patrick apparently has a knack for identifying in other people — but that he himself most certainly does not possess.

Doris seeks out Dom at the chicken window-in-progress, seeming tense. A bouncy pop tune is playing in the background, so you know shit is about to get real. It turns out that her uncle is contesting her father’s will, holding up the funds she had promised to Dom for “a while, three to four months.” Dom starts to spiral, to list off all the things he has purchased that now he has no money for, rages at Doris that he has zero cushion, and asks her why she would offer him money that wasn’t hers to offer.

This scene was difficult to watch, the way that good drama can be. You want to shake both of them, to grant them immediate perspective, to hold their tongues. But there will be none of that here. Doris leaves with a “fuck you. I hope all your dreams come true.” I take back what I said earlier, that is the ultimate white-girl burn.

Patrick’s mom, Dana (like banana, like “don’t you dare fucking call me Day-na.”) welcomes Kevin with open arms. She asks Patrick what he did at school today, and he proudly pulls out the “One Up Him” app. “So that’s a leather daddy,” muses Dana — who, let’s be honest, looks and sounds like a low-grade drag queen dressed up as Lily Rabe, performing in the world’s saddest drag show — and lauds them for following their dream of developing the most unnecessary, vile iPhone app in the history of iPhone apps. As long as it will make them money.

Dana asks Patrick to join her and Megan tomorrow at, for some unexplained reason, the zoo. Patrick, terrified of zoos and bed bugs and acting like an adult and his own shadow, tries to get out of it, claiming he told Kevin he’d go mattress shopping with him. Mom tells him to shop early.

The Sleep Number Bed, Official Mattress Sponsor of Looking — joining the Clarion Inn as the Official Hotel Sponsor and double entendres as the Official Rhetorical Device — lures in Patrick and Kevin. “This one likes it hard,” Kevin tells the unimpressed salesman. He sure is jovial now that his affair is out in the open. Horizontal, Patrick asks Kevin why he didn’t ask him to move in with him. Kevin says all the right things, that he was concerned about being perceived as crazy, as moving too fast, as making the same mistake he made with Jon, but that he bought the apartment with them in mind. He wants Patrick to move in. “It’s a big step,” Patrick says. “Ready when you are,” that cheeky Brit responds.

At the homeless shelter, Eddie is freaking out because his mural painter just quit, refusing to work on a piece of art with the theme of “tolerance.” Agustín chooses this moment to ask Eddie if he had any crazy side effects when starting Truvada, because Agustín is considering starting PReP. God, he’s trying. If you had asked me if I could ever imagine having feelings for this character that couldn’t be characterized as murderous, I would have laughed you off the planet. But here we are.

Eddie brusquely answers his questions, and gets back to the issue at hand: they need someone to paint the mural and he wants Agustín to come out of retirement for one last ride. It is clear in his asking this that Eddie has never seen a piece of Agustín’s art. I ache to see a unicorn made out of dicks painted two stories tall, but Agustín declines. Eddie tells him he’ll be the biggest douchebag asshole if he says no to them when they’re in a bind. Agustín’s entire progress of this season has been related to him moving out of the Land of the Douchebag Assholes, and he sighs an assent. Giant dick unicorn is back on, folks!

They go to a coffee shop to talk strategy and instead run into Frank, Agustín’s ex, who is still alive, but is now someone who wears overalls. “What are you doing here?” he asks Agustín, “Scouting for rent boys?” I imagine Frank in a poorly lit basement, sitting at a desk, crumpling up papers on which he has written ideas of sick burns to use on Agustín when they run into each other, and he picked a good one. Agustín introduces Eddie as his friend, and Eddie responds perfectly. He’s upset, but he’s just going to sit at this table sharpening his claws until he gets Agustín alone. Agustín tells Frank about his new job, about how far he’s come since they last saw each other. “Who are you and what have you done with Agustín?” asks Frank, a question I would like answered as well.

Speaking of claws: at the zoo, Megan’s are out. When Megan goes off to get hot chocolate without asking Patrick if he wants any, he calls her out. “Aren’t you guys always watching your weight, with the juice cleanses and the CrossFit?” She’s asking Patrick? The guy we saw scarfing pancakes in last week’s episode and who counts listening to Dom talk about his stupid Zumba class as a workout? Bitch, pick a better target.

Patrick asks Megan if they can talk about the proverbial elephant — oh my god, is that why they want to the zoo? Just to give him that awful line? — in the room. Megan digs into him, telling him that he could have said no to Kevin, that she has to come home every night to her husband tending to poor Jon, that she thinks Patrick’s moral compass is severely dysfunctional. When she asks Patrick if he thinks that he and Kevin will last, he tells her that Kevin asked him to move in with him. Patrick loves dropping revelations in the middle of conversations he no longer wants to be in.

Megan, who clearly has some issues to work out in regards to the way she feels about the gays, rails into Patrick, telling him that he gets a free pass for being gay: a pass from having to give their parents grandkids; to get to live with his friends in San Francisco, pursuing the career of his choice; to “break up a fucking relationship because you’re gay.” This clearly misdirected rage springs Patrick into action, finally forcing him to put to use that backbone we’ve yet to see. He tells her she has no right to judge him or his choices based on the way she and Gus live. And he’s right. It’s nice to see Patrick forsake doormat status, act like a grown-up, and speak up for what he believes in.

Dom comes home with fro-yo to make amends with Doris. While one gets the impression that this has worked 1,000 times before, it’s not going to go so well this time. Doris is locked in her room listening to angry chick music and is vindicated in her anger. She’s the only one who has ever really supported Dom and the first time she’s not able to do that, he blames her for all of his shortcomings. “I’ve been your person for the last twenty fucking years,” she tells him, “It’s too much. It’s not good.”

“We’re both damaged,” she tells Dom. “We don’t know how to be adults. I prioritize you over Malik, and when I don’t do that, I feel guilty about it. If this keeps going on like this, we’re going to be 70 years old, stuck in this apartment, still talking about fucking fro-yo.” This is a future that sounds pretty ideal to Dom. Doris leaves to go go stay at Malik’s, and she’s going to pick up her motherfucking Emmy on the way.

Turns out Patrick’s not the only member of his family who loves revealing secrets at inopportune moments: Dana’s fallen in love with someone else, and she’s thinking of leaving their father. She has to honor her truth, which Patrick scoffs at even though he has most certainly said that more than once during his affair rationalizations. And now he effectively finds himself faced with an example of an affair he’s not involved in, literally close to home.

He worries about his dad, effectively the Jon in this situation. But he also, by default, has to take his mother’s side because that’s what he did in committing to Kevin, aligned himself with the person leaving, the person — puke — honoring his truth. “I support you, mom,” he says grudgingly.

Back at the shelter, Eddie confronts Agustín about being introduced to Frank as his “friend.” Agustín tells Eddie he doesn’t get to have it both ways, doesn’t get to say that he just wants to keep it casual and then get upset when Agustín doesn’t introduce him as his boyfriend. “I’m getting really tired of persuading you that I’m into you,” Agustín tells him. “I want to be your boyfriend. What do I have to do? You want me to go to the top of Twin Peaks and yell it out? I’ll do it.” Eddie admits, after weeks of fighting against it, that he wants to be with Agustín. “Will you please be my boyfriend?” he asks. And Agustín finally gets what he’s been working toward all this season. Who knows what next week will bring, but sometimes it is so rewarding to see someone on television get exactly what they want and, in this case, exactly what they deserve.

Getting ready to leave the city, Dana encourages Patrick to give Megan time in regards to him and Kevin. Patrick asks mom if she ever loved her husband, if it was all bullshit. It wasn’t all bullshit, she tells him, because they were her choices. “What are you going to do?” he asks. She responds, “I have no fucking idea.”

But Patrick knows what he’s going to do. He goes to Kevin’s apartment. He’s going to move in.

The penultimate episode is as good a time as any to discuss the future — or lack thereof — of this show. The numbers have been down, other shows have been renewed, but Looking continues to live in HBO Limbo. For most of the season I’ve been pretty ambivalent about this fact, with the awfulness that is Patrick overshadowing all of the really interesting and affecting aspects of the show. But tonight I found myself, for the first time, really hoping for a third season. The places they are taking these characters — Agustín’s road to redemption and his relationship with Eddie, Patrick and Kevin moving in together, Dom and Doris falling apart — is ripe with dramatic potential and provides some really interesting possibilities for how this show could continue to grow. As the weeks pass, it looks less and less likely we’ll get a season, but this week, Looking proved that it deserves one.

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

Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!

Photos: HBO