The inevitable face-the-music moment comes mid-episode: Patrick and Dom are walking through a farmer's market, and suddenly Patrick spots his boss and secret lover Kevin.
Kevin is with his longtime boyfriend Jon. Jon puts his hand on Kevin's back. Kevin smiles. They look every bit the happy couple, enjoying each other's company as they food shop together for their shared home.
Patrick immediately starts freaking out, and Dom naturally steers him in the other direction -- albeit using a slightly odd turn of phrase.
"Let's just back up," Dom says.
Indeed.
In "Looking Down the Road," this season's fourth episode of HBO's "Looking," there's a lot of backing up for Dom and Patrick, and for Agustin, as well, depending on how you look at it.
Luckily for the men, the steps back are all done with an eye toward the future, as the episode title suggests.
The moment at the farmer's market makes Patrick realize that the turmoil in Kevin and Jon's relationship that he has envisioned, and that he has used to make himself feel better about his affair with Kevin, may not be as clear cut in real life.
Maybe Patrick needed to be smacked in the face with that fact, because he's certainly been ignoring other signs.
Finally, he confronts Kevin on his continuing relationship with Jon. Kevin says he'll deal with it and doesn't. The episode closes with a distraught Patrick leaving a night club nearly in tears after Kevin arrives and tries, once again, to silence Patrick's concerns about his relationship with Jon through physical intimacy.
Not this time, it appears. Patrick finally seems willing to take a step back and face the facts, even if Kevin isn't ready to face those same facts and take a step forward.
Then there is Dom, who realizes his relationship with Lynn isn't what he thought, and may not even be heading in that direction.
After the couple spends a night with another "friend," Dom finds himself confused about his status in Lynn's life. In a discussion in Lynn's flower shop, the topic of Lynn's now dead partner of 20 years comes up.
Lynn tells Dom that he'll never be able to give his all to another person. Dom, rightfully, takes this to mean that Lynn will not be able to give him what he is looking for, and the relationship suddenly appears finished.
(Dom turns back to friend and roommate Doris for support, which we can only hope will mean more screentime for Doris in coming episodes.)
In my review of last week's episode, I'd predicted some train wrecks down the line, but I didn't expect them to come so swiftly. That leads me to believe that we haven't seen the end of Patrick's dealings with Kevin. I also doubt Lynn is out of the picture for good, but I can see his role in Dom's life diminishing more readily than I can Kevin's role in Patrick's.
But there is also Richie to consider, who is dating someone new himself but couldn't keep his eyes off Patrick when they were all together in the bar, prior to Kevin's arrival.
As for Agustin, who starts a job at the LGBT youth center where buddy Eddie works, his step back is more so from the ledge he'd been teetering on for the last several episodes.
Let's be clear: Agustin took the job because he needed a job, not because he felt a sudden need to give back and be less selfish. Still, turning in nights at the club on GHB for days in an office filing paperwork could be good for him. It could even force him to drop his myopic worldview and consider others a little more.
It could also further complicate his relationship with Eddie. To date, we have no idea whether Eddie has romantic feelings toward Agustin, but I suspect that's where this is heading. And if Agustin starts showing a sensitive side and embracing the center, which Eddie clearly cares a great deal about, it could make Eddie fall for Agustin even faster.
It might be Eddie who needs to take a step back soon enough.
I've been waiting for these turning points in the relationships between Patrick and Kevin and Dom and Lynn, but you never know what future episodes will hold. Kevin could ditch Jon for good. Lynn could have an "a-ha" moment. This is "Looking," after all, a show that tries to cast relationships in a realistic light and zero in on the nuances of our best and worst natures.
As Jerry once said to Elaine in an episode of "Seinfeld," that other great show about nuance, "Breaking up is like knocking over a Coke machine. You can't do it in one push. You gotta rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over."