"Crew Girl": Private school girl on the rowing team must choose between two boyfriends. With a gay character and crew stuff

 

Crew Girl is the #1 tv show on Netflix.  I'm not really into sports, but maybe it will have some beefcake and other stuff.

Link to the n*de photos.

Scene 1: Teagan Tao introduces her parents, Dad David, who owns boutique hotels, and Mom Ella, who is deeply in love with him.  During her rowing competition, Dad gets a phone call.  "I have to take this." But before he leaves, he and Mom mention how deeply in love they are, and kiss. Do they do this every time they part? "I have to go to the bathroom.  I'm deeply in love with you. Back in a minute."

She wins the competition!  But Dad isn't there.  He texts "I'm sorry." Sorry for missing the competition, or... 

Turns out that Dad defrauded his investors out of millions, and scrammed before he could be grabbed by the FBI.  Teagan and Mom, newly impoverished, have to leave L.A. to move back to her home town in Massachusetts.

Scene 2: Establishing shot of the small town of Eagles Cove, established 1791.   Mom points out the Fudge Store ("nobody actually likes fudge"), the Crab Shack where she got her first job, and finally their new house, which actuallly belonged to Nanny and Grandpa.  Her grandmother was named Nanny?

Fortunately, Dad left an education trust, so Teagan can go to the ritzyEaston Prep.  "But their team isn't even on a Top Ten list. Coaches from Stanford were scouting me.  Who's going to see me out here?"  Everywhere in Massachusetts is less than two hours from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. 

While Mom is unpacking, Teagan grabs a bike and heads into town.  She's so busy gawking at the rubes that she hits a pickup truck and plunges into the bed.  The owner is a cute teen boy, Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark)  I'm guessing that this is a meet-cute with her Love Interest.  After a few minutes of yelling and some Boy-of-My-Dreams gawking, he offers to fix her bike.

Scene 3: Off to school.  It's a  huge Tudor-style castle (actually filmed at Hatley Castle, a 1906 Tudor Revival mansion in Victoria, British Columbia).  "Can a school have a British accent?" Teagan asks.

The student body president and dance committee chair introduce themselves. "I'm glad the school isn't all horse girls," Teagan says.

"Um...I'm captain of the equestrian team. What school doesn't have horses?"

A long haired person wearing a tie and sportscoat draws her aside. "I've never seen anyone unalive their social status so quickly."  I turn the sound on to determine their gender. It's a girl, her "first day buddy."  

Founded in 1798, Easton Prep is the "Harvard of high schools," mostly boarders, but some townies commute by helicopter. "Looks like a Skarsgaard convention," Teagan muses. "Who's the hunk?"

The guy in the blazer is Arrogant Josh (Samuel Braun), sixth generation Easton Prep, Prom King when he was freshman.  His buddy is Ryder, who has made out with half the girls in the school.  Heterosexual identity established immediately.  

"They only started admitting girls two years ago.  Great if you're straight, less cheer if you're queer." Sounds like the androgynous girl has come out to her new friend.

Next we meet the equally arrogant Leon.  "Stay away from him.  He's arrogant!"

"I noticed, sigh." So, will it be Josh, Ryder, Leon, or the guy with the truck?

Scene 4: Mom sees a "help wanted" notice on the door of a store that sells glasses and pillows.  The manager, Heather,  recognizes her from high school, and from "that photo of you lying by the pool" in New York Magazine.  So you thought she was hot?

Now she can't admit that she wants a job, so she pretends that she came in to shop.

Cut to English class, discussion of Byron's "She Walks In Beauty." The blackboard has "rebellious," "charisma," "melancholy," but not that he was bi.   Arrogant Josh comes in late and disrespects the teacher, Mr. Wu (not in the imdb or end of episode cast list).

Mr. Wu makes Josh read it aloud, and Teagan falls in love with him.

"What do you think it means?" Mr. Wu asks.

"It means Byron was trying to smash."

Mr. Wu doesn't like this answer -- "Just because you're the famous star of the rowing team" -- but it's completely accurate. Wait -- rowing team?

More after the break

Travis Turner: Short Guy Brigade, gay subtexts, cutesy cartoons, Christmas romcoms, and hip-hop. With n*de photos and Drake Bell

Link to the n*de dudes

In Final Destination: Blood Legacy (2025), a 1960s Elevator Operator encourages the soon-to-be-skewered couple to squeeze into his already overcrowded elevator, in a scene reminiscent of the "Room for one more, honey" episode of The Twilight Zone.  Then, when things start crashing, he tries to take everyone down the elevator again -- and ends up splattered. 

Look at this guy! He's shorter than Noah Bromley, who plays the evil Penny-Throwing Kid.  Of course I've got to research him.

He's Travis Turner, born in Oliver, British Columbia, in 1987,  raised in nearby Penticton in the Sylix Okangan Nation, although he doesn't mention being First Nation.  Cody Kearsley, Moose in the Riverdale series, is from Oliver also.  Maybe they knew each other.

After high school Travis painted oil rigs and sold vacuum cleaners, then moved to Vancouver to study film at Langara College.  He received his diploma in 2009.  .

He appeared in a lot of shorts in 2009-2010, such as "Henchin'," "Scars," "Snow Tramp," and "Dream a Little Dream," plus the Vancouver-based  Easter Bunny Bloodbath (2010), as one of the victims of a psycho-killer dressed as the Easter Bunny.  Here he appears in an illustration in the novelization.  There was a novelization?

Travis' first high-profile role was in a 2010 episode of Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica spin-off.  He played Ashok, a resident of a virtual world who briefly interacts with Tamara and Heracles ( Richard Harmon).

According to the IMDB, Travis is best known for Final Destination: Blood Lines (2025).

A 2024 episode of Wild Cards, a Canadian police procedural featuring a "will they or won't they" couple, Max (a lady) and Cole (Giacomo Gianniotti).  They investigate a missing butcher in a small town, and find a murderous cult.  Travis plays Daryl, who doesn't appear in the plot synopsis.

A 2023 episode of Upload, where you can be uploaded to a virtual afterlife when you die (if they get to your body right away).  Focus couple Nora and Nathan (Robbie Ammell) have returned to the real world, look for jobs, and discover that Nathan has a duplicate (apparently you can return to the real world multiple times).  Travis plays Tom, who does not appear in the episode synopsis.

The anime Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction (2024): Two high schoolers (a boy and a girl, of course) face an alien invasion.  He voices the English dub of Makato Tainuma, a boy who dresses in girls' clothes.  According to TV Tropes, he denies being gay or trans; he just wants to look cute. 

Some Assembly Required (2014-16), a Nickelodeon teencom starring Kolton Stewart as a teenager who becomes CEO of a toy company, and hires all of his friends. Travis played Aster Vanderburg, the snobbish, snarky, fashion-obsessed head of the Design Department (named after the Gilded Age Mrs. Aster).  He's gay-coded for 45 episodes before queerbaiting viewers with The Girl of His Dreams.

More after the break

"Dark Matter": Family Man physicist is trapped in a parallel world. With Edgerton backside, Styx d*ck, and Cass chest

  

Link to the bottoms and d*cks

After finishing Silo Season 3, we checked the other high-concept programs available on Apple Plus, and decided on Dark Matter: a "family man" changes places with his non-family man counterpart in a parallel world. Season 1 premiered in 2024, and Season 2 in 2026.  Sounds ok.

Episode 1.1: "Are You Satisfied with Your Life?"

Scene 1:  A guy with a flashlight walks through a deserted warehouse space, and approaches a triangular structure which is presented as extremely important.  

Cut to "family man" Jason (Joel Edgerton). He wakes up (shirtless shot), kisses his wife Daniela's shoulder, eats breakfast, criticizes his son Charlie's homework, tells Wife Daniela how much he loves her, and kisses her extremely passionately right in front of his son.  They discuss who will drive Charlie to school; he wants to drive himself, with Family Man Jason monitoring. 

Cut to the drive, with the boy not noticing a stoplight and getting yelled at by the driver almost smashed.  

Left: Charlie is played by Oakes Fegley.  His "girlfriend and pr manager," probably just a fan trying to deceive us, says that he "looks like a homos*xual." Make up your mind, is he into you, or is he a gay slur?

On  the show, Charlie's hetero identity is established immediately.    He's depressed because the Girl of His Dreams is dating another boy.

"Then she has bad taste," Dad assures him.  How do you know that her boyfriend is an obnoxious jock?  Wait -- if this won't be a plot point, why mention it?  You don't need to be that eager to assure fans that Charlie isn't gay. 

Next Family Man Jason gets a text from his friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson, backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), who has just won a major award for proving that consciousness lies in the prefrontal cortex. That's old news.  It comes with a million dollars and lots of grant money.  Family Man Jason is invited to the celebration tonight.

Left: Jimmi Simpson  makes a lot of gay references on his Instagram, but he has a girlfriend.

Scene 2: Family Man Jason teaching his class in bonehead physics at a horrible community college.  He draws a cat in a box to illustrate Schrodinger's paradox to his bored students.

Meanwhile, Wife Daniela is at work at her art gallery.  How gender polarized: men are into science, women into the arts.

Cut to a dude in a storage facility, keeping track of Jason's movements and holding up a vial of a purple liquid.

Scene 3: At home, Family Man Jason tells his wife how much he loves her, kisses her extremely passionately, and prepares to do stuff with her on the sink -- in front of their son.  Charlie protests, but they tell him to look away.  They're interrupted by a text from Ryan: "Where are you?"

"Oh, Ryan invited me to a celebration of his major award in the bar around the corner, but I love you so much that I'm going to skip it and do stuff in front of our son."

"Nope!  He obviously scheduled the celebration in the crappy bar around the corner instead of someplace nice because he is in love with you, and wants to ensure that you show up.  We can do stuff in front of our son later tonight.  Let's just kiss for ten minutes, and then you can go."

Scene 4: At the bar, Ryan introduces Family Man Jason to his Extremely Important Scientist friends, who look down on him for having a horrible job at a community college.  

Left: The cutest of the Extremely Important Scientists is Ivan (Sam Cass, top photo and left).

Later, Ryan takes Family Man Jason off by himself: "I'm starting a  neurotech company with my million dollar prize money, and I want you to come on board. We need a good physicist."  But none were available, so he's asking Jason? 

 It pay more than the crappy community college, but it's in San Francisco. (Oh, no!  Who would want to move to the center of art, music, literature, and gay culture?).

 A woman comes up and asks to do stuff with Ryan. "Sure, but I'm busy right now. I'll do stuff with you in a few minutes."  

Jason doesn't want to leave his life in Chicago, but he promises to talk it over with his wife.  Wait -- the having sex with a random woman isn't a plot point, either?  You guys are really paranoid about viewers thinking that characters are gay.  Sounds like showrunner Blake Crouch is homophobic, which means we won't get any actual gay characters.

Scene 5: As Family Man Jason walks to his car (wait -- I thought the bar was around the corner, walking distance), a man in a white mask grabs him and forces him to drive to a warehouse, take off his clothes, and walk a long way n*de (except for boxer shorts). 

Then he has to put on new clothes (couldn't you have made him put on new clothes before the walk?  Not that I'm complaining).  

He injects Family Man Jason with something to make him fall asleep, and asks questions like "Are you happy with your life?  Do you wish things would be different if you made different choices?" Shouldn't you have asked that before the guy got too groggy to answer?

More after the break

Michael Cade: California Dreams, Charlie Chaplin, Devils, and That Chest. With Aaron Jackson and the Greek God Pan

After Saved by the Bell (1989-1993) demonstrated that Saturday mornings didn't have to be all cartoons, every kid in the country suddenly started eating their Cheerios to impossibly buffed teenagers in impossibly affluent high schools.  California Dreams (1992-1997) may not have been the best of the Saved clones-- I don't know if "best" is operant here -- but it was the most beefcake heavy.  

The premise: two Iowa teens, Matt (Brent Gore) and Jenny, move to California, where they form a band called California Dreams.  Wait -- why are you dreaming about California, when you live there?  

We pause this profile to quote the famous "California Dreamin'", which I heard many times during dark dank winters in the Midwest as I plotted my move to the gay freedom of West Hollywood:

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. 
I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
If I didn't tell her, I could leave today.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day.

Most of the Saved clones had the same basic characters: the schemer, who works every angle yet fails every class, and still gets into Harvard; the surly outsider who resents the schemer getting everything so easily; the goofball who litters his speech with nonsequiters; the popular girl, who ends up with the schemer; and the smart girl, who ends up with the surly outsider.  In California Dreams, Michael Cade, left, is the schemer, band manager Sly Winkle (sly wink, get it?)

William James Jones, left, is surly outsider Tony Wicks, the band's drummer and sometime soloist. 

In Season 2, Aaron Jackson joined the cast as Sly's cousin Mark Winkle, performing the goofball role. 

William and Aaron were cute, but they didn't get a lot of teen idol attention. Michael and That Chest were the definite stars. Shirtless photos littered the teen magazines and the gay celebrity websites.

I didn't watch California Dreams often -- on Saturday mornings, we usually watched Joel and the Bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000, then had lunch, browsed bookstores, bought groceries at the Gay Safeway, and went to the gym.  In the evening, we watched Mama's Family and The Golden Girls, then went cruising at Mugi or the Faultline...uh-oh, I feel "The Way We Were" coming on.

Can it be that it was all so simple then, 
Or has time rewritten every word?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?  Could we?

Sorry, these profiles from pre-2000 shows make me nostalgic.

Michael was born Michael Ocello in Elmwood Park, New Jersey in 1972.  He was interested in acting, but avoided drama club so he wouldn't be bullied -- "when I was in high school, being in the drama club wasn't cool," he notes in a teen magazine interview. Sounds like he was worried that people would think he was gay, which was a major concern in the late 1980s.

But the day he graduated in May 1990, he started taking acting lessons.  After a year, a few commercials, and a lot of bare chests, he moved to California where he could be open about his...um...acting.  It took only a few months for his chest to get a guest shot on Baywatch as Young Bobby, brother of focus character Eddie (Billy Warlock)

Michael also appeared in Chaplin (1992), the biopic of the silent movie star, as his nephew Sydney Chaplin Jr.

More after the break.