A lot of people seem turned off by the purported bitterness of it, as far as I can tell. I wonder if centring the show on middle-aged gay men was shooting Cucumber in the foot; although if Banana is low-rated, then maybe the lack of sexy young things isn't quite so much a problem.

Righto.

It's mostly because it went from having Girls as a lead-in, where it was gaining steam, to being shoved being Togetherness, a show for all the straights to get their relationship drama from leaving Looking to be mostly ignored.

That's fair. I think it does all of those things you describe in a different way to 90% of queer texts these days. But if your focus when you watch something like this is mostly on the narrative you might be disappointed because story is not exactly the chief concern on Looking. As Brandon said in the article, it's…

I think people really seem to get their "movies need more diversity" and "TV needs more diversity" wires crossed. TV is really not the enemy, for the most part. TV is where change is happening!

But Tumblr activists DO NOT APPROVE, so fuck it all, basically.

They have? That's disappointing. I thought critical reception was mostly positive? Or at least things turned around a bit once it reached that fated sixth episode.

How is that an outlandish statement? Compared to a few years ago it's a huge difference.

It's a difficult show to sell without giving away all its secrets, to be honest. It lives in the nuance of its craft and its writing, the deft way the relationships are handled and how it relies on viewer knowledge to delicately construct its characters' worldviews and backgrounds. I'm not sure what would be a…

What you're describing is literally a different show, and you know what? It's also a show that would NEVER get made. That's the sad reality of the industry, and the TV landscape.

Isn't that how headlines are supposed to work?

He is so beautiful it made me angry. And he's actually gay! How dare he.

Send them douches, obviously. (I think Brandon may have suggested that in that episode review.)

There is no single "point" of being a critic. A critic can approach art in any way they choose. You don't have to like that approach, but it's also not the wrong one as a result.

Oh yeah, it's definitely pains of the transition from network to Netflix. Doesn't make the episodes any better in my mind, unfortunately.

Yeah, my problem was more all the trial stuff, and suddenly spending so much time with the Indiana characters who we barely knew just threw the whole show off-kilter.

It comes out at around 5/6pm depending on daylight savings in Australia, so it was pretty easy to do. I'm broke and it was Friday night so it just made sense!

I don't doubt it, I just think that's only funny to a point and this went way overboard making that same point too often.

Yeah I dunno, just none of it really worked for me. All the [redacted major guest star] stuff fell pretty flat for me; it just became frustrating to see, after all this, Kinmy have to battle for legitimacy, in a way. As I said though, I'm wondering if maybe I just need some time and to return to them to like them…

Man, this was gonna be an A- season until it reached those last few episodes, but 9 onwards to the finale are really a slide in quality. Maybe it's just a result of powering through all the episodes so fast, so this is definitely just an off-the-cuff reaction, but the return to Indiana really buggers the show's…