Ladies and gentlemen, we have made it to the end of Looking Season Two. We’ve been through bed bug scares and PrEP education, Kevin’s “Take That!” dance in his glass box of emotion and that gay prom, Gordon Freeman and Hot Matthew From Rugby, the transformation of Agustín and the emancipation of Patrick, come in the eye and stabs in the back. It’s been a bumpy, uneven ride — one that, unfortunately, did not toss Patrick off the turnip truck — but, oh, what a ride it has been.

The finale opens with Patrick carrying a box up to his new, glimmering high-rise. He handles it about as adeptly as he handled that breakfast in bed, and stumbles like an idiot in front of his new, very cool gay neighbors. See, this is a fob building (“It’s fob-ulous,” the Looking writers force one of the very cool gays to say, because they hate me and want me to suffer), and Patrick doesn’t have a fob. He’s locked out. He can’t get in. She can reach me, but I can’t ever get her. See, the building is a metaphor for his relationship with Kevin. Because everything is a metaphor for his relationship with Kevin.

Patrick approaches the apartment with a look of abject terror on his face, like he knows the murderer is waiting right behind the door. (Oh please, oh please, oh please.) But no murderer here! Just Kevin, who asks him to take his shoes off because they are a no footwear family (as opposed to Kelly Ripa’s clan, who we learned from a recent, perfect episode of Broad City is a “Shape-Ups family.).

Patrick notices a gigantic Field of Dreams poster on the wall, because Kevin has undergone a radical change and turned into my father. (We once took a family vacation to Dyersville, Iowa, to see the field where the movie was filmed and I kind of loved it?) Patrick muses that he doesn’t know Kevin’s stuff, that there are still things they’re learning about each other. Field of Dreams poster as a metaphor for his relationship with Kevin.

“To moving in and moving on,” they toast, foreshadowing just how smoothly this whole moving in together thing is going to go.

Kevin leads Patrick to the bedroom, which reminds Patrick of how badly he wanted to fuck Kevin up against the floor to ceiling windows for the world to see. But Patrick demurs. “That was before they were our neighbors.” So, the bed it is. The Sleep Number Bed (Official Mattress Sponsor of Looking), which Kevin has already pre-programmed to Patrick’s 75 and his 96. Which are not the same number. Because they need different things. Sleep Number Mattress as metaphor for his relationship with Kevin.

The doorbell rings. It’s Jake and Milo, the very cool gays from downstairs Patrick met in the elevator, who are inviting them over for Christmas drinks that evening. It’s Agustín’s mural thing and Patrick promised he’d go. But he also read in Finding the Boyfriend Within that compromise is important in a relationship, so he tells Kevin they should do both.

Down at City Hall, Dom is waiting on the steps for Malik, who works in city government. We learn in this scene that: Dom misses Doris, Doris misses Dom, and Malik loves Doris big time. Malik convinces Dom to come over and go on a walk with Doris. Looks like we won’t be getting another big Zumba scene this season.

Meanwhile, Patrick and Kevin stop in at Jake and Milo’s Christmas party. The hosts let it slip that they only invited them for “access to that rooftop garden of yours.” “Why?” Kevin asks coyly, “so you can plant some seeds up there?” If this show took place in real life San Francisco, yes, it would be because they wanted to plant some seeds up there because Jake and Milo are both very opposed to the agro-industrial complex and only eat vegetables that have been grown under 24-hour supervision by either one or both of them. Instead, this passes for flirting.

“Hey! Cute accent!” says a hottie as he passes by Kevin, a line he has probably used more than once and more successfully than the best pick-up line any of us mere mortals have ever attempted.

“It’s very white,” says Patrick, helping himself to some bourbon punch. “The apartment?” asks Kevin. “The crowd,” he replies, subliminally lusting for uncut Latin cock. They are immediately approached by another gay couple from the building and are immediately labeled as “fresh meat,” like this is a Real World/Road Rules Challenge or something. One of the guys tells them to stick around: “As the night goes on, we get a little bit wild,” said no one who has ever gotten a little bit wild.

Patrick and Kevin escape to another room to discuss whether or not this party might be an orgy. Kevin remarks how everyone is so fucking flirty. “Yeah, with you,” Patrick fires back, the smoke that will continue to pour out of his ears for the rest of the episode beginning to show. Sensing Patrick’s impending lack-of-attention-inspired meltdown, Kevin suggests they go to Agustín’s. But Patrick wants to stay and watch, get “a little looky-loo at that nookie new.” “All right, Patrick, easy on the puns,” says Kevin in response to something that was not a pun.

Back at the maybe-orgy, a group of gays is huddled around a phone, checking out the Grindr profiles of everyone at the party. A new one’s showing up! No picture, no description, but a headline: Romford. Patrick’s smoking ears start to whistle like little pissed off teakettles: Romford is Kevin’s hometown. He grabs Kevin to go.

“I need a fucking fob,” he tells Kevin in the elevator, exhibiting that backbone he’s been growing in the shadows all season. “Are you Romford?” he asks Kevin, kicking off a conversation about monogamy and core values that might have been better to have before finding yourself surrounded by boxes labeled “Fragile.”

Kevin admits it’s him, that he just wanted to see who else is in the building. “Just tell me I didn’t move in with a sex addict,” a line that is immediately added to the Patrick Murray Sex-Positive Hall of Fame. Agustín calls, wondering where Patrick and Kevin are. Patrick explains the situation and asks Agustín (Agustín!) for advice. Shockingly, Agustín functions as the voice of reason in this scene — his only one in this entire episode — and tells Patrick to calm down.

Kevin, for some reason, asks Patrick if he wants a PB&J sandwich before they go to Agustín’s mural thing. Patrick can’t believe Kevin has never heard his rant about nut butter, because he generally leads with that on first dates. Basically, his rant is that he believes nut and butter should be separate. Still in disbelief that Kevin doesn’t know about something so integral to his life, Patrick asks him about how much Jon didn’t know. Did Kevin fuck around with other guys when he was with Jon? Did he tell Jon about it?

Patrick pushes on, telling Kevin he wants to talk about these things like adults, those things that die at the beginning of all the Disney movies he watches.

Kevin tells him that, yes, he fucked around on Jon, and no, he didn’t tell Jon about it. “If I hadn’t cheated on Jon, we wouldn’t be together.” One gets the impression that Patrick hasn’t ever considered this obvious fact, so wrapped up was he in his whirlwind workplace fuckfest.

Patrick storms off to the bathroom, where he places his toothbrush next to Kevin’s (and next to the tube of Crest 3D Whitening, Official Toothpaste Sponsor of Looking). He lives here, too, dammit.

When Patrick emerges, Kevin tells him that he wants to do it differently this time, that he doesn’t want any secrets between them. He wants to be completely honest. The scene then cuts away and jumps to Patrick’s reaction. Basically, Kevin wants Patrick to agree that if anything should happen with the two of them, vis-à-vis cheating, that it would warrant a conversation and not mean the immediate end of their relationship. (Authorial Note: this is a completely reasonable, level-headed, and mature thing to request.)

Patrick, honoring his oath to talk about these things like adults, suggests that Kevin return to the “KKK butt orgy” downstairs. Kevin questions why monogamy is so important to Patrick, brings up Patrick’s mothers lack of belief in monogamy, and Patrick storms out, searching for a literal and metaphorical exit.

Kevin starts to play dirty: wasn’t Patrick the one who called him when he was in bed with his boyfriend in the middle of the night and begged him to come up to Russian River and fuck him against that 1,000-year-old tree? (“I was single!” retorts Patrick.) Kevin digs in deeper: “Wasn’t it you who let me fuck you whilst you were still with Richie without a condom?” Reader, it was.

They fight some more, using all the ammunition they’ve stored up all season: Patrick calls Kevin out as an excellent liar. (“I’ve seen you do it!”) Patrick tells Kevin that now the cat is out of the bag, that every time Kevin goes to the gym, or gets a massage, or runs out for a bagel, he’s going to wonder what he’s doing. Kevin tells Patrick that he upturned his life for him. He wants them to be together, if it’s possible, until they’re two old miserable cunts – as opposed to the young, miserable cunts they are now – sitting on a porch, but if Patrick doesn’t want that, then he should just go. This fight was long and exhausting (and not over yet!), but these things can be long and exhausting in real life. The writing, when not deigning to easy metaphor, felt surprisingly real during this entire 37-hour-long scene.

Dom picks up Doris and Malik’s house and they go for their nighttime walk, settling in on a literal precipice to have a Very Important Conversation.

I’m not sure what I can say about this scene except: watch it. Watch it with your nearest and dearest hag and get ready for some real talk. Dom and Doris both apologize, both admit that they fucked up; both admit that this feels like going through the worst break-up ever. “But we do kind of need to break up,” says Dom. “I need to try this on my own.” It begins to rain; he walks the streets of Paris in a newsboy cap, singing Eponine’s eleven-o’clock number from Les Miz.

Dom tells Doris it’s okay for her to put Malik first. She should, in fact. The scene ends with him putting his arm around her. Their relationship has changed, for sure, but there’s still a strong foundation there. A true tragedy of this show not getting a third season would be missing out on the opportunity to see Dom and Doris figuring out what their new relationship looks like.

Back in the rooftop garden, Patrick can’t stop thinking about the bed downstairs, that Sleep Number bed with “two very different sides with two very different sleep numbers.” Constantly surrounded by blatant metaphors has driven Patrick to begin referring to them outright. He and Kevin both agree that comparing their relationship to a Sleep Number mattress is totally ridiculous, but neither stops. And it’s not just been tonight, says Patrick; it’s been the whole time they’ve been together. Deep down he knew they operated differently, that they wanted different things, but he ignored it.

“I wanted to be in love, to be in a relationship,” says Patrick. “I wanted to prove to the world I was capable of being in one,” says Patrick Murray, Center of the Universe. The world is not watching, my dear. (Insert low-ratings joke here.)

Patrick slips into a monologue that makes everything Meredith Grey ever said sound like Shakespeare. (I stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy after Meredith went to purgatory following that ferry accident and saw her dead mother and turned back around. A friend let me know that I’ve since missed a few shootings, a plane crash, and a lion that escaped from the zoo.) Kevin tells Patrick that their relationship can’t end tonight, that now that he knows how Patrick feels, he can make the choice to change. Patrick just needs to trust him.

Meanwhile, back at the chicken window (I’m getting a little weepy at the thought of typing that for what is possibly the final time), Dom wears a mustache, drinks a brewski, and stares out into the night. I wait for the True Detective final monologue about light vs. dark to start playing in the background. Dom is truly, for the first time, on his own.

Across town, Patrick moves through the apartment, opens a box labeled “Valuables” (Box Labeled Valuables as metaphor for… well, you get it), and what should he find but the scapular Richie gave him in Season One.

The next day, Patrick approaches Richie’s shop. He called ahead. He doesn’t want to talk about anything; he just wants to stop looking like a middle-aged lesbian. “Will you cut my hair?” Patrick asks Richie. He wants Richie to buzz it all off, putting his breakup haircut cart before the proverbial breakup haircut horse. The theme song from The Help starts to play in the background. (Did The Help have a theme song?). At the end of the first season, Richie asked Patrick if he was ready: ready to stop caring what his family thought about him dating a Mexican barber, ready to make a commitment to him. Patrick wasn’t ready then. Perhaps now, after a single fight with his boyfriend, he is.

Richie begins to cut his hair, the camera pulls back and the screen cuts to black right before Richie slits Patrick’s throat with a rusty razor, putting an end to our long national nightmare, right? Right?

Stray Observations:

– With Looking’s fate still hanging in the balance, series creator Michael Lannan is “cautiously optimistic” that the show will be brought back for a third season. Not that you asked, but I really hope this is the case. For all its shortcomings, this was a really strong season and it left the characters in really interesting positions. If Season Two is all we get, I’m just always going to assume Patrick gets whacked after the screen cuts to black.

– I’ve never experienced whatever the opposite of FOMO is as much as I did when I saw Milo and Jake’s party.

– I just realized I never adequately addressed the fact that we saw Eddie’s humongous dick two episodes ago: we saw Eddie’s humongous dick two episodes ago.

– What do you think the mural looks like?

– Which Looking character deserves a Better Call Saul-style spin-off? My vote is for that radical queer faerie from the season premiere

– Thanks for watching along with me this season. Never forget: even if this is the end for Looking, we’ll always have that footage of Jonathan Groff administering an enema to himself on his bathroom rug. Do with that what you will.

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

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Photos: HBO