"Tell Me a Story," and Be Sure to Include Biceps and Bulges

Tell Me a Story (2018-), on CBS and Vudu. "A re-imagining of classic fairy tales."

Well, I've already seen Once Upon a Time, but ok, I'll give it a shot.

First scene:  close-up of a bare chest tattooed with the words "Fuck You."   The uber-muscular Eddie (Paul Wesley) is asleep in his underwear in his trailer, when his friend Mitch (Michael Raymond Jones) drops in.

Nice.

Next scene: Jordan (James Wolk) strips down to take a shower. 

Bare chest and butt, and I think a bit of his penis. Wow!

Third scene: Gabe (Davi Santos) and his roommate Billy (Luke Guldan, left) are talking.  In their underwear.

Muscular physiques, underwear bulges!  Four in a row!  

I've never seen a tv show display so much male skin and so little female.  Just the way I like it.

Next scene:  High schooler Kayla was a screw up out on the West Coast (she smoked marijuana!), so she and her dad have moved to small-town Manhattan to make a fresh start.

Dad doesn't have his shirt off.  Maybe later.

I keep watching.

Unfortunately, they all turn out to be despicable people.

Gabe and Billy, who both have drug problems, work as go-go dancers and hustlers at a mixed gay-straight club.  Right, all gay people are drug-addled partyboys.

Billy talks Gabe into having a three-way with the ultra-rich, cocaine-addled Dan (Paul Rolfes).  While Gabe is...um...busy, Billy goes into the bedroom and steals from the guy's wallet.   Dan catches on, gets violent, and ends up dead.  Billy runs away, leaving his "friend" Gabe alone an apartment with the corpse of a man he didn't even know.

Meanwhile, at the same club, Kayla graduates to Ecstasy, washed down with vodka, and picks up Nick (Billy Sullivan).  After a lot of sex (showing us Nick's bare chest and butt, of course), she discovers that he is her new teacher. 

Well, I guess they couldn't help that, except  they continue the relationship.  Teacher-underage student.  Nice. 

Eddie (of the "fuck you" chest), Mitch, and a third buddy are saddled with debts and drug  something or other, so they are planning to rob a jewelry store wearing pig masks. 

Jordan (of the nude shower) is pressuring his girlfriend to get married and have a baby.  But she doesn't think that Trump's America is a fit place for a child, with all the neo-Nazis and guns and mass murderers.  Why bring a baby into the world, when it will be killed at age seven by a school shooter?   But Jordan finally talks her into it, so they go ring shopping at the..um...jewelry store where

Well, you know what happens next.  

I think I need a shower and about six hours of old Golden Girls episodes.

And I don't see the connection to fairy tales.  The pig masks?

Instead of more plot summary, wouldn't you rather see the chest of Dan Amboyer, who plays one of Gabe and Billy's go-go-boy coworkers?

Or the bulge of Rarmian Newton, who plays one of Kayla's classmates who gets a crush on her, finds out about her relationship with her teacher, and goes ballistic?

7 Hunks from "Once Upon a Time," Season 7

Once Upon a Time, Season 7 is a blatant, unnecessary reboot.

Season 1:  Fairytale characters are living in our world, in the town of Storybrooke, with wiped memories and new identities.

Season 7: Fairytale characters are living in our world, in the town of Hyperion Heights, with wiped memories and new identities.

Season 1: The Evil Queen Regina has orchestrated the whole thing in order to get revenge on her stepdaughter, Snow White.

Season 7: The Evil Lady Tremaine has orchestrated the whole thing in order to get revenge on her stepdaughter, Cinderella.

 Season 1: 10-year old Henry Mills tracks down his birth mother, who happens to be Snow White's daughter, the only one who can break the curse.

Season 7: 10-year old Lucy tracks down her birth father, Henry Mills, who happens to be Cinderella's long-lost husband, the only one who can break the curse.

Yawn.  And they're fresh out of fairytale characters.  The only new ones who show up are Mother Nature and Baron Samedi, Hansel and Gretel, and Captain Ahab.  I don't remember Mother Nature actually being a character in any story, and Baron Samedi is a Haitian voodoo god.

Season 7:  Fairytale characters are living in our world, in the town of Hyperion Heights, with wiped memories and new identities.

It's also a beefcake-limited season. The main characters are Cinderella, Lady Tremaine, the wicked stepsisters, Lucy, Regina...men mostly relegated to recurring and guest roles.  I could only find 7 respectable hunks.

1. Andrew J. West (top photo) as the adult Henry Mills, who has forgotten that fairytale worlds exist.  He published a bestselling novel about them, but insists that it is pure fiction.  Oh, and he's Cinderella's husband and Lucy's father.

2. Jeff Pierre (second photo) as Prince Naveen from "The Frog Prince," who is cursed by Baron Samedi but doesn't really turn into a frog.

3. Nathan Parsons as Hansel, who, after the candy house thing, ends up in Oz, and then in Hyperion Heights, where he becomes a serial killer.

4. Liam Hall as the Prince, who dates Cinderella before she marries Henry.  He doesn't have a first name because in the fairytale he's called Prince Charming, but that name is taken.

5. Kevin Ryan as Robert, who is working for Baron Samedi because his lover has been turned into a frog.

6. Dan Payne as Ivo, Hansel and Gretel's father.

7. Chad Rook as Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick, who owns a magic fish hook that Captain Hook needs to....well, who knows?

Once Upon a Time: Finding or Losing True Love

In the idyllic New England town of Storybrooke, a young boy named Henry (Jared S. Gilmore), adopted son of Mayor Regina (Lana Parilla), suddenly realizes that everyone around him is a story book character, mostly from Disney adaptions of fairy tales.

His teacher is actually Snow White (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937)
Regina is actually the Evil Queen who gave Snow White the poisoned apple.

The seven dwarfs are wandering around doing various civilian jobs, as are the Magic Mirror, the Huntsman, Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), and characters from other Disney movies and fairy tales: Jiminy Cricket (from Pinocchio), Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel.

Henry has told only a few people of these amazing revelations, and they all think he's crazy.  They have no memories of their other lives, or really any memories of the past at all.  Oddly, no one questions this collective amnesia.

Or the fact that time is standing still: for the last thirty years, no one in Storybrooke has aged.  No one is born (Henry was born outside), no one dies.  No one moves to town (except Henry), no one leaves.

Then Henry's birth mother, Emma, arrives, and time starts again.

Another startling revelation: Emma is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming (real name David).  So Henry's  teacher is his grandmother.

We gradually discover what happened:  Regina is angry with Snow for destroying "her  happiness": apparently she told the evil Queen Cora that her daughter was dating a stable boy named Daniel (Noah Bean), and the queen had him killed. 

So Regina arranged for a "Dark Curse" to bring everyone to a world without magic and zap their memories.  She will then be able to keep Snow from being happy (that is, from dating Prince Charming).

This is the premise of Once Upon a Time (2011-), currently streaming on Netflix. I've only seen the first season, but I understand that it gets very, very complicated.  Regina has a long, harsh back story and eventually is redeemed and becomes The Good Queen, while Snow can be petty, vain, and...well, malicious.  The back stories of many other characters are revealed (evil people are invariably evil because their "true love" was killed).  And the palette expands from Storybrooke to Neverland, the Looking-Glass World,  and who knows where else?

Robin Hood (Tom Ellis) and Captain Hook {Colin O'Donoghue) fight Hades (Greg Germann) from Greek mythology, who is in love with the Wicked Witch of the West (from The Wizard of Oz)

Cruella Deville (from 1001 Dalmatians), Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty). and Ursula (from The Little Mermaid).kidnap Belle (from Beauty and the Beast)  in order to force her boyfriend Rupelstiltskin (who happens to be the son of Peter Pan) to give her the magic Gauntlet of Camelot, which he got from Victor Frankenstein.

Hokey smokes!

The mishmash of fairy tales, legends, mythology, popular novels, and Disney movies sounds very annoying.

Even in the first season, I am annoyed by the trope of "finding happiness" which is always equated with finding or reuniting with your "true love," the person you are destined to spend your life with.  When you have found your true love, you are by definition happy.  When you have not, you are by definition unhappy.

You can always tell when you find your true love: you stop whatever you're doing -- fighting goblins, running for your life, hugging your girlfriend -- and stare at them with a dumb expression.

There are only three motives for every act:
1. To find/win your true love/happiness
2. To fight those who are trying to destroy your true love/happiness.
3. To get revenge on those who have successfully destroyed your true love/happiness.

The concept of "true love" was invented during the 17th century to promote companionate marriages over the arranged marriages of the past.  It is amazingly simplistic and patently untrue: our emotional bonds with friends and lovers come in an infinite variety, and none were predestined at the beginning of time.  It's daytime soap opera nonsense.

Once doesn't offer much beefcake.  This is a show about the power struggles of princesses and queens, with men as mostly interchangeable "true loves," all around 30 years old (regardless of their true age), tall, fair-skinned, and dark-haired. Their only distinguishing characteristics appear to be hair length and degree of androgyny.   Although I have over 50 years of experience in evaluating masculine beauty, I have a hard time telling them apart.

I don't even know who this one plays.  Like, Emma's grandson, or Rupelstiltskin's grandfather, or both?

No identified gay characters in the first season -- I understand that there are some lesbian "true loves" around Season 6.

But I do find something gender-transgressive about Henry's obsession with the adults being adequately paired off: "You have to be together!  It's true love!"  It doesn't sound like the sort of thing a straight 10-year old would be harping about.

Disenchanted: A Gay-Free Heroic Fantasy Spoof

I'm not very happy with Matt Groening's (or his writers') inclusion of gay characters.

 The Simpsons has a very occasional homophobic stereotype prancing about, plus Smithers (who finally came out after 17 years) and Patty (28 years). Neither have the slightest inkling of gay history and culture.

They don't even get the offensive gestures right.  Remember when BOTH Patty and Smithers flashed limp wrists to demonstrate they are gay?  Patty?  Really....

On Futurama, Groening's science fiction spoof, gay people were mentioned exactly twice, both times disparagingly, and same-sex desire was dismissed as ridiculous once.

So I didn't have high hopes for Disenchanted (2018), Groening's parody of the fairy tale genre.

In the faux Medieval kingdom of Dreamland, teenage Princess Bean (Abbi Jacobson) is a drunken wastrel who rebels against the constrained princess life imagined by her father, King Zog (John DiMaggio).  Her partners in crime are:

1. The demon Lucie (Eric Andre, left).

2.  The naive, goodnatured elf Elfo (Nat Faxon, top photo and left).  I'm not sure, but think this is a photo of Faxon's character having sex with a guy (notice the bald spot on top).

Nice triceps, Nat.

Together Bean, Lucie, and Elfo have a sort of Leela-Fry-Bender dynamic.  Elfo even has a partially requited crush on Bean.

Other characters include:
1. King Zog, a brash, easily perturbed Archie Bunker type.
2. His second wife, Queen Oona, a snakelike creature who speaks with an Eastern European accent.
3. His sorcerer, Sorcerio (Billy West), who believes that elf blood holds the secret to immortality.

Various courtesans, advisors, and knights that it's hard to keep track of.

The society is sort of fun, a juxtaposition of magical-realm and the horrors of real Medieval life.

I like the fact that their religion isn't Christianity.  They worship the "one god who is the brother to the other one god," and there's a female high priestess.

The plotlines are rather predictable:  Bean rebels against an arranged marriage; Bean tries out a number of new jobs, including executioner; Lucie is captured by an exorcist; Elfo makes up a girlfriend to avoid admitting that he likes Bean.

I liked the episode where the witch from "Hansel and Gretel" turns out to be innocent, the victim of the murderous children.

But there are overarching plots inside of plots.  Elfo is not what he seems.  Bean's mother, who was turned to stone 15 years ago, is not what she seems, either.  Nor is Bean.  And some dark wizards are watching the activity in a magic flame and commenting on how well their plan is progressing.  It becomes quite complex, not to mention surprisingly dark, and ends on several cliffhangers.

The artwork is competent, the visual tropes pleasantly familiar from 30 years of Springfield, and there is a quite a lot of beefcake.  Even the portly King Zog was a muscular warrior, as shown in a flashback to his youth.

Gay references:  Not many.  When Bean decides to cozy up to invading Vikings, she says "I'm changing teams," and Lucie yells "Called it!"  He thinks that "changing teams" means turning lesbian.

You'd think a demon would know that you can't turn lesbian.

Generally in fantasy stories, when you encounter sirens, female creatures whose beautiful songs lure you to your death, only the men have to stop up their ears.  Women are immune.  But when Bean and the gang encounter them, Bean has to stop up her ears, too.  Nice for the myth to be somewhat less heterosexist.

And that's it.

Gay characters: Sorcerio refers to another guy as his ex-lover.  So he's gay.  I suppose.  But when they encounter a hippogriff, a horse-eagle-human hybrid that claims to be female but asserts that "gender is fluid," Sorcerio offers to have sex with it.

And that's it.

Uncle Tom Award #8: Chris Colfer's Land of Stories

You probably remember Chris Colfer as Kurt Hummel, the gay kid on Glee.  He is still acting (in 2015 he played the young Noel Coward), and producing, but arguably his main claim to fame today is the juvenile fantasy series Land of Stories.  The first, Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell, appeared in 2012, and shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, probably because of the name recognition.

Other books in the series, Land of Stories: The Enchantress Returns (2013), Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning (2014), and Land of Stories: Beyond the Kingdoms (2015), have also done well.

A gay author who played a gay person on tv and supports innumerable gay charities, from It Gets Better to the Trevor Project to Uprising of Love (for LGBT Russians)?  Obviously he would make gay people an unremarkable part of his fictional world.

Obviously.

Right?

Um...

The premise is well known from such properties as The 10th Kingdom and Once Upon a Time: fairy tales are real, historically accurate depictions of events that occurred in a parallel reality.  Teenage twins Alex and Connor (a boy and a girl) find themselves in Fairy World, and change the course of both fairy and human history.   Let's go through a run-down of the major characters;

Alex dates a boy named Rook, and Connor dates a girl named Bree.  Next!


Their mother, Charlotte, gets a new boyfriend.  Next!

Jack, the grown-up Beanstalk Climber, marries Goldilocks of Three Bears fame.

The Evil Queen of Sleeping Beauty fame had a boyfriend.  Sleeping Beauty herself is married to Prince Charming.

Froggy, aka Charlie Charming, aka the Frog Prince, is dating the grown-up Red Riding Hood.

That leaves a couple of very minor characters who don't mention any specifically heterosexual interests.

There isn't even any room for a Dumbledore to be gay and closeted and come out after the fact.

There aren't even any potential gay subtexts, as every major relationship is carefully organized into a boy-girl pattern.

Let's review:

A gay author who played a gay person on tv and supports innumerable gay charities has written a series of juvenile fantasy novels in which every single character of consequence is firmly and undeniably identified as heterosexual.

Hey, Uncle Tom...um, I mean Chris, I thought you supported gay kids' right to exist?