Link to the d*cks
Boy #1: 17-year old Charlie (Joseph Zada) is outed after his hookup with a married man (didn't the multicolored hair and makeup give people a clue?). He is instantly rejected by everybody at his high school, because of course gay people are always outcasts, hated and shunned by the straights.
Boy #2: 19-year old Matt (Joe Klocek, top left) starts dating Charlie, but their relationship is stymied due to the need to pretend they are straight buddies.
Boy #3: Zeke (Aydan Califiore) is dealing with the toxic masculinity of his macho Italian-Australian family, where the worst thing you can be is a poof. He suffers from depression and body dismorphism, and contemplates self-harm.
When Ian (Isaac Davies, left) shows him a gay video and starts getting grabby, he angrily says "What are you doing?" and sends him away.
Left: Australian actor and singer Aydan Calafiore has over 700 photos on the teen idol site. Here he's trying to strangle his boyfriend. But he looks nothing like the Aydan Califiore gettng cruised in the above photo. They must be different people.
Boy #4: Alpha male Hammer (Zach Blamfied, left, at Melbourne Fashion Week) has always been a "man's man," into sports, beer, and hanging with his buds, and hating poofs. But then his girlfriend decides that she's ready to go to the next level, and he's not up to the task. Could he be gay?
But he wants to become a pro soccer player, and of course that would be impossible for a gay man.
Zeke (Boy #3) and Hammer are attracted to each other, but their romance is stymied by having to hide from their homophobic families, friends, and teammates, and the fact that they hate themselves for being gay. "Evenything I can't have in this world is due to liking men" (Pose).
More after the break. Caution: it gets more depressing, but there are cute guys.
Zeke's family finds out and disowns him, and Hammer is going insane.
Luke Jai, left, plays one of their homophobic friends. On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, I substitute a photo of Luke being a bottom.
At the big night where the girls are presented to Geraldton society (didn't that practice fade out during the 19th century?), "an indiscretion" threatens to out the boys and destroy their lives forever.
In the last episode, the same-sex marriage referendum passes, so Boy #5 Lorenzo (Jamie Ward) and Boy #6, Nat (Joanna Tu), get married.
Wait -- Nat is a girl. Why did they have to wait? Maybe she's trans, so classified as male by the Australian government? But actress is cisgender female.
According to Reddit, the problem is, she's Asian, and his family disapproves of mixed-race marriages. But that doesn't explain why their wedding occurs in a "same-sex marriage is legal!" episode. Maybe it's a homophobic jibe.
There's also a femme aboriginal guy played by Yannick Benoit, and a Redditer complains about the inclusion of a trans man. I haven't discovered who that is.
Other terrible things happen to the boys: one of them dies of self-harm, and another is a victim of a homophobic hate crime. Oh, and there's religious homophobia and a dad with dementia, just to make things more grim.
A reviewer calls the show "torture p*rn," and another says that it works overtime to put in every gay agony trope they can think of, painting gay life as endless sadness and pain. Not a moment of joy, or even of contentment. Agony all the way down.
"If only we didn't hate ourselves quite so much": The Boys in the Band.
"Never being happy isn't the same thing as being sad": Fame.
I won't be watching. F*k the Sadness. Gay life is great. You meet people from all over the world. You explore lost and hidden history, find queer subtexts in movies and tv shows. And you get to do bedroom stuff with guys.
No one can be depressed while looking at a hot guy, in real life or in a photo.
Who are the frontrunners here? The series is based on a young adult novel by Holden Sheppard, based on his own experiences as a gay teen in Geraldton. The director, Nicholas Verso, also directed Boys in the Trees and Crazy Fun Park, coincidentally also featuring dead gay boys.
See also: "Crazy Fun Park": Dead gay teens come to life in an abandoned amusement park in Australia
"Boys in the Trees": My Favorite Movie of the Year
Howard Cruse: Gay comics at their most depressing.
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