Link to the Derek d___
He went on to play paranormal investigator Lucas in Strange Days at Blake Holsey High (2002-2006). Noah Reid, later Patrick's boyfriend/husband on Schitt's Creek, played his best buddy Marshall, and he also had a love/hate relationship with school bully Vaughn (Robert Clark again). They are sucked into a wormhole, turn invisible, repeat the same day over and over. In my favorite episode, a chemistry accident sends Marshall through the periodic table: he becomes hydrogen, oxygen, neon, and so on. Meanwhile, his older brother Grant arrives at the school and turns into sodium. Marshall has changed into chlorine, so they stabilize as salt. Just go with it.
Left: Robert Clark
Next Michael moved into the more traditional teencom Life with Derek (2005-2009): He has a sibling rivalry with his adopted sister Casey (Ashley Leggat) and, in the first season, an intense, passionate, joined-at-the-hip best buddy, Sam (Kit Weyman). Then it's girls, girls, girls every second of every day.
In Regenesis (2006-2007), Michael plays homeless teenager Owen, who moves in with paranormal investigator David (Peter Outerbridge, left), but ends up mentally damaged after an experimental treatment to cure his drug addiction
Michael's adult roles have involved fewer subtexts:
18 to Life (2010-2011): newlywed18-year olds move in with their parents.
The "virgin getting laid" comedy Sin Bin (2012).
In 10 episodes of Bomb Girls, 2013, set during World War II, Michael's bomb engineer Ivan dates closeted lesbian Betty, then Betty's crush Kate, then Nazi spy Helen. Then he dies in a bomb factory explosion. No gay male characters.
In The Wedding Planners, which aired for seven episodes in March-May 2020, Michael and his sisters plan weddings. It doesn't look like any of them featured same-sex couples.
Most recently Michael played a gay-coded villain on The Murdoch Mysteries. In 2009, gay student James Gillies and his boyfriend murder a professor in a reflection of the Leopold and Loeb case. In 2023, he returns to torment Murdoch, kidnap The Girl, and survive various lethal stunts. The show features a gay couple, so it's not just queer villains, but still, one doesn't expect such a blatant stereotype in 2023.
And in Life with Luca, 2023, he returns to Derek as a grown-up. He and Casey each have children who replicate the sibling-rivalry of their youth -- Luca is Casey's son.
More after the break
With so much heternormativity and a bit of homophobia, it seems unlikely that Michael would be gay in real life, yet in an interview he referred to himself as "queer." And his Instagram followers commented:
"I remember when I found out you were gay, I was so happy. You validated my crush."
"Finding out that my childhood idol turned fruity was not on my bingo card, but very pleasantly surprised"
"Just learning he's queer. I missed so much"
Not to mention he posts about lots of vacations with the guys. Here they're in Mykonos, the gay center. (Michael is on the far right, with the bulge).
And pictures with his boyfriend (Michael is on the left, licking the ice cream cone.)
Plus his stuff
Michael claimed to be directing Brokeback Beach Summer, starring gay actor/model Zane Ethan Phillips. No such project exists. I think he was just working with the tools he had available.
Maybe he'll do a project with Noah Reid next.
See also:
Schitt's Creek: Quirky small town in Canada (but don't tell anyone), with a gay couple
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