HBO’s Looking gives Modesto a full homecoming episode: a funeral, a swim, a night at the Brave Bull and a few memories that hurt more than expected. The series usually follows a group of gay friends in San Francisco. In “Looking for a Plot,” it follows Dom and Doris back to the city where they grew up—and the production really did come to Modesto.
The episode to queue up
“Looking for a Plot” is Season 2, Episode 7, first shown on March 1, 2015. Doris, played by Lauren Weedman, has lost her father. Dom (Murray Bartlett) and Patrick (Jonathan Groff) accompany her to Modesto for the funeral. HBO’s episode page credits Andrew Haigh as director and Jhoni Marchinko as writer; HBO Canada’s original March schedule places the episode on that date.
A hometown tour with some unfinished business
The friends drive beneath Modesto’s familiar arch, then visit a doughnut shop that, in the story, used to be Dom’s father’s Portuguese diner. It is a small stop with a big sting: Dom wants to open a food business of his own, and his father’s dream has become someone else’s shop. Their next break is at the Clarion pool, followed by drinks and dancing at the Brave Bull to “Walking on Sunshine.” Matt Brennan’s contemporary recap in Slant follows those Modesto scenes.
Watch the HBO featurette for the emotional thread running through that tour. Dom and Doris were together as teenagers, and their friendship has outlasted the romance. Dom’s father died before he could tell him he was gay. A cemetery scene finally gives him the words: “I’m gay, Dad!” Returning home also brings Doris’s difficult family history back into view. The hospital conversation near the end turns their old friendship into an explicit promise of family.
HBO brought the production to Modesto
Jonathan Groff confirmed the location visit in a November 2014 interview with SFist, just as the second season finished filming. He described the production venturing beyond San Francisco, including a shoot in Modesto, to explore the characters’ backgrounds.
Bartlett remembered the trip as a highlight when TheWrap interviewed him in June 2015:
“We stayed in a highway motel and shot scenes in the pool.”
Murray Bartlett, TheWrap
Out’s report from the cast’s Paley Center panel identifies the motel as the Clarion Inn and says scenes were shot there. That poolside pause was part of the location shoot, with the cast staying at the same property.
The funeral material had a different weight. In the 2024 oral history of Looking, published by Them from GQ, Weedman recalled sitting in a real funeral home with Groff and Bartlett before the viewing scene. They talked about their own experiences of loss. Afterward, she and Bartlett cried together in her trailer.
The Brave Bull has its own Modesto history
The bar’s name is another real local connection. The Brave Bull opened on South Ninth Street in 1973 and became a gay bar in 1974, according to Michael Flanagan’s history in the Bay Area Reporter. Its address is 701 South Ninth Street, Modesto. The article traces the Lubbers family’s ownership and the bar’s connections to drag performer Marlena.
For more hometown appearances, return to Turlock and Modesto in Movies and TV.
