Weather Channeling and Looking

I find it funny that Direct TV has dropped the Weather Channel (WC) from its lineup and the WC folks are going crazy. Let's be honest. The Weather Channel is a joke and has been for some time now. I remember the good old days when the WC reported on the actual weather. Now it's a side show filled with infotainment and named winter storms. (Janus anyone??) Give it up, folks! If my cable provider decided to drop them tomorrow, I would shed no tears over the loss. I can't believe Sam Champion jumped from Good Morning America to board that sinking ship.

In other non-weather-related news, I was able to see the first episode of HBO's new show "Looking" and, sadly, I was underwhelmed. I don't have HBO (because I pay enough for cable already), but the first episode of Looking was available for free on line so I watched it. I was really glad to see Murray Bartlett starring as the older man Dom on the show. He's very good in a movie called August that I saw recently. However, I wasn't thrilled with the porn-stash they gave him on HBO. What's up with that? A perfectly handsome man was transformed into a Tom Selleck reject. Still, I enjoyed watching him as an older gay man dealing with the reality that he's not as hot as he used to be and the relationship he had with his female roommate (ex-girlfriend?) seemed interesting. The other two main characters were dry. The blond guy, who's supposed to be the cute one, did nothing for me. Watching him try and hook up (and then whine about his love life or lack thereof) was like watching paint dry. And the bearded guy only got brownie points for having a good looking minority boyfriend (who I realized was black far later than I, as a person of color, should have). My suggestion would be to drop the two younger guys, have Dom hook up with the good looking black guy and focus on their interracial/May-December relationship, and keep the story line dealing with him and his female roommate (but not in a Will & Grace kind of way). Now that's a show I would watch. But blond whiners and hipster threesomes? I'll pass.

I've read a lot of reviews of Looking lately and most of them were not encouraging. It's a shame because I want this show to find an audience and succeed. I watched Queer as Folk (QAF) for many seasons until it went off the rails and enjoyed a lot of the episodes mainly because of the relationship between Brian (Gale Harold) and Justin (Randy Harrison). What made QAF work was that a lot of women watched it. As one reviewer I read recently said about Looking, it can't survive with only a gay audience and, sadly, I believe that.