The Top Beefcake Stars of the Disney Channel, 2019

Disney Channel sitcoms used to be almost entirely about teenager girls who want to become singers, or who already are singers. Remember Austin & Ally, Sonny with a Chance, Jesse, Hannah Montana?  It wasn't all bad, since the teenager girls had teenage boys hanging around, with the potential for gay subtexts.

Besides, many -- most -- of the teenage boys were "dreamy" or muscular or both. Remember the Austin half of Austin & Ally?

Now Disney seems to be mixing things up with high-concept, fourth-wall-breaking, bizarre-premise shows.  Plus the cast has gotten exponentially younger, and the beefcake exponentially scarcer.

Sydney to the Max.  Does anyone use the phrase "to the max" anymore?

 12 year old Sydney lives with her father, Max.  Her adventures are paralleled by flashbacks to Max as a 12-year old having similar adventures.

12-year old Max has a best friend, Leo, but they both get crushes on girls.  And Sydney gets crushes on boys.

The adult Max is played by Ian Reed Kesler, who looks rather buffed, and has played gay characters.

Fast Layne.  Don't you hate series with titles that are awful puns?

12-year old Sophie stumbles upon a talking car named VIN.    "I've got a secret" antics ensure.  Brandon Rossel stars as her crush.

Just Roll with It: 12 year old Owen Blatt and his family have sitcom adventures, but several times per episode, they stop the action to ask the studio audience what should happen next (you get three choices).   Then they continue based on the selection.   I'm not sure if they actually filmed multiple segments, or if they are memorizing huge scripts.

Oliver's dad is played by Tobie Windham, seen here in a stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (he's the one with the bulge).

Coop and Cami Ask the World: 12-year old twins Coop and Cami Wrather have an online show called What Would You Wrather? Don't you hate shows with titles that are awful puns?  In the show, viewers get to vote on their decisions.  For instance, when Coop's crush cancels on him, should he accept his mother's offer to be his "date" to the dance?

What?  No, that's tots creepy.

The cast seems to consist almost entirely of 12-year olds, but I did find Kevin Daniels as the school principal.

Raven's Home:  Remember That's So Raven (2003-2007), about a girl with psychic powers?  Well, Raven is home, a single mother living with her "best friend" and their kids in Chicago.

Closeted lesbian couple? The two ladies don't even have any hetero-romantic plotlines, although their preteen kids do.  This is a program I can get into, even though it's beefcake-deficient.

Jonathan McDaniel has a recurring role as Raven's ex-husband.  Believe me, you do not want to see what's going on under that shirt.

Bunk'd:  Remember the kids from Jesse?  They are inmates at an endless summer camp.

The good news is, they're well into their teen-idol years: Karan Brar is 20.

The bad news: Cameron Boyce appeared only as a guest star.

More bad news: Heterosexual hijinks abound.

Pup Academy:  Sentient dogs from a parallel world have to go to a special school to learn how to pass as pets.  Huh?

And there's a prophecy about a "Chosen One."

The human characters include the founder of the academy, his crush, his grandson, and his grandson's crush.  The dogs are voiced by girls.  I got nothing.





Gabby Duran and the Unsittables: Gabby becomes the babysitter to a gaggle of alien toddlers, and must keep their secret while dealing with their weird powers.

For once, the star is a teenage girl, not a 12-year old, so she has a teenage boy accomplice played by Maxwell Acee Donovan.

He may not be a Tiger Beat Fave Rave, but I'll take what I can get.

Now could somebody point this boy in the direction of a gym?

"Welcome to Wanderland": Beyond Gay-Inclusive

Welcome to Wanderland, a 4-issue limited series by Jackie Ball and Maddie Gonzalez, is set in a Disney-style theme park that has fallen on hard times.  Middle schooler Bel has practically grown up there, and her older brother/guardian Mike works there as a costumed character, the Princess Lark.

Mike is gay; although his romantic interests are referenced only once, he says things like "I swear to Gaga" and spends most of his scenes in drag.

Thanks to a magic door, Bel finds herself in the real Wanderland, a magical sword-and-sorcery world ruled by the tyrannical Sylvia.  The real Princess Lark, who prefers the kick-ass name Riot, is in exile.

Riot and Bel become buds, and use the magic door to travel between their worlds whenever they want. Mike assumes that they are a couple, but Bel explains that she is not interested in anyone in that way.  Presumably asexual.













But Riot is gay.  She has a crush on a female pirate captain, who shows up to help them in the final battle (to restore the rightful king to the throne), and then becomes Riot's girlfriend, kiss and all.

Heterosexual romance is only referenced once in the entire series, when the minor character Keith mentions his "girlfriend."

This is a world I can get behind.

I only have a few quibbles:

1. Apparently Bel has the ability to make magical changes to the theme park. But that plotline is underdeveloped; the few changes she makes are uninteresting.

2. There are several loose ends left hanging.

3. Mike doesn't get a boyfriend.  Granted, he only appears in a few scenes to "big brother" Bel, and then to participate in the climactic final battle.  But an occasional flirtation with a hunk would be nice.

10 Beefcake Boys of "Riot Girls"

The premise of Riot Girls (2019): most of the population of Potter's Bluff has been killed by a mysterious plague, leaving only teenagers and a scattering of 10-year olds.

So many questions:  How long has it been?  Why are teenagers immune?  Do they succumb when they reach a certain age?  Are there other communities, or are they all alone?  Are they surviving on canned goods, or have they developed agriculture? Why is the electricity still on?

Not to worry, it's not important; the goal is to get the teens alone.  They have divided into two societies, as over-the-top good and evil as Boulder and Las Vegas in The Stand.

 The East Side  is a laid-back hippie commune, run by the saintly, "we're all in this together" Jack (Alexandre Bourgeois). He keeps admitting refugees, such as Sony (Ajay Friese, left), but for some unexplained reason, he doesn't like dogs.

The West Side is a heavily stratified, heavily militarized totalitarian dictatorship, where they kill refugees.  It is ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West.. um, I mean Jeremy  (Munro Chambers), who also kills his own people for such offenses as failing to meet work quotas.

The plot: Jack is captured by Westsiders, who intend to execute him.  His sister Nat (Madison Iseman), the butch Mohawk-haired Scratch (Paloma Kwiatkowski), and Sony rush to the rescue.

It's a surprisingly long way to the West Side; it takes them two days to get there, even with a car.

There's some blood, a lot of rock music, and some heart-to-hearts.  Dr. Evil is killed, and his successor promises "Things are going to be different around here."  The four friends head for home.  The end.

Hetero-horniness:  None.  No one seems particularly interested in sex except for a border guard who tries to rape Nat.  Sony tries to kiss her, but is quickly rebuffed with "I'm not..."

Gay characters:  You're not what, Nat?  The two girls are certainly gay coded, but at one point Nat clarifies: "You're not my boyfriend!", thus establishing her as both heterosexual and unaware that gay people exist.

Bondage: No one has ever heard of rope.  All captives, including Jack, just stand there.

Beefcake: None.  No shirts come off.  There are quite a few cute actors, so I'll try to find shirtless pics from othe productions.  Unfortunately, other than 1. Jeremy, 2. Jack,  and 3. Sony, I have no idea who is who.

4. Darren Eisnor as Todd, one of the Titans (the sports team that now serves as Jeremy's thugs)

5. Atticus Mitchel as Cracker.  Atticus Mitchel is 26.  What's the age range of this Apocalyptic plague?

6.  Darnell Bartholomew as a Westside Guard
















7. Jake Sim (not Sims) as Flick, who I think is second in command.

8. Chris Mark as Sean.  He couldn't have been shot in the locker room?

9.Carson MacCormac (left) as Spit.  Come on, one "frolicking in the river" shot for the gay male viewers?















10. Keanu Lee Nunes as a miscellaneous Titan.

I give up.

I'll give the movie a B-.  Points for its raucous energy and lack of hetero-horniness.  Demerits for the ludicrous villain and closeting the lesbian couple.

And closeting the physiques.

Twelve Forever: The First Gay Protagonist of Any American Children's Program

In Twelve Forever, a 12-year old girl named Reggie is terrified by the prospect of growing up, so she creates a fantasy world called Endless Island, and populates it with interesting characters like Flower Woman (with flowers for eyes), Brown Roger (a small, hairy thing), and Guy Pleasant (half rock star, half dog).


For antagonists, she conjures up the Butt Witch and her henchman Big Deal, who try to force her to grow up.  She convinces two of her real-life friends, Todd and Esther, to come along.









Sounds like H.R. Pufnstuf meets Peter Pan, except those islands were real.   I'm not so sure about Endless Island. It sounds very much like a psychotic delusion.

I became interested due to an episode in which the Butt Witch tries to break up the romance between two burly wrestlers, Mack and Beefhouse.  Two burly male wrestlers!

The other characters are completely nonchalant about their gender, saying things like "I can't wait to find my soulmate," and so on.

This is definitely a gay -positive show.  Reggie herself gets a crush on a girl named Connelly.

Unfortunately, Reggie is such a self-centered jerk that she's impossible to watch.  When Connelly displays interest, she makes an excuse and runs away.  Repeatedly.

Imagine: you're 12 years old, you find a girl you like, and she makes it very clear that she wants nothing to do with you.   How's that for a crushing childhood trauma?

Later, at the school dance (4 male-female couples and Reggie), Connelly shows up, and a flustered Reggie forces her friends to leave, even though they are having fun.

Isn't it always the way: you find a gay-positive character, and they're unpleasant and possiblypsychotic?

Oh,well, who am I to nit-pick?  This is the first gay protagonist of any American children's tv program, cause for celebration.

"Vida": Queer Characters, Female Empowerment. What's Not to Like?

In Vida (2019-), two estranged Mexican-American sisters, party girl Lynn and responsible Emma, reunite at their estranged mother's funeral in Boyle Heights (a Hispanic neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles).

 They discover that Mom has willed them each a third of her financially unsuccessful bar and apartment building, so they have no choice but to drop whatever they were doing and move to Boyle Heights to become bartenders and apartment managers.  They rename the bar Vida, after Mom (and, of course, it's also Spanish for "this is life, the one you get, so go and have a ball").

The other third of the bar and apartment building goes to Mom's extremely butch roommate, who has the extremely butch name Eddy.  Are we surprised to discover that Mom was a lesbian, and Eddy her wife?  The girls are.

Are we surprised to discover that Emma was estranged from her Mom because she is bisexual?  Turns out that Vida was gay and homophobic at the same time.  It happens.

After the initial sexual identities are established, Eddy, Lynn, and Emma, along with their friend Mari, settle down to their various crises: keeping the bar afloat, cleansing the apartment building of evil spirits, suffering from homophobic and anti-Hispanic discrimination, and especially fighting gentrification: they want to keep Boyle Heights the way they remember from their childhoods.

Meanwhile, they start telenovela-style romances, with lots of sex, lies, and videotape.

1. Mari has a troubled on-off romance with  Tlaloc (Ramses Jiminez).

2, Lynn has a troubled on-off romance with Johnny, Mari's brother (Carlos Miranda; this might not be the right one, but who cares?).

3. Later she moves on to city councilman Rudy (Adrian Gonzalez).

4. Emma has a troubled on-off romance with Cruz, a woke lesbian bartender, but she also hooks up with Baco (Raul Castillo) the building's handyman.

5. Eddy hooks up with Nico (a woman, of course).  Do all Hispanic lesbians have masculine names?

Two of the four central characters are queer, which is groundbreaking, and the Hispanic culture is pleasant (they even speak Spanglish, switching back and forth between English and Spanish as the mood strikes).

But this is definitely a woman-oriented, women-centric series, with men definitely in the background.  Not that there's anything wrong with that -- Goddess knows there are plenty of series with women in background roles.  But it makes the beefcake options sorely limited.  And would it kill them to have a few gay men wandering around?

Should I Skip or Stream "Wynonna Earp"?

Wynonna Earp has been showing up on my Netflix feed with an 86% match.  Should I stream it or skip it?

Con: My first instinct: run far, far away.  I hate Westerns, and I certainly don't want to watch a female version of Wyatt Earp gun-slinging down some fake dusty Wild West backlot.

Pro:  Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) is a modern-day paranormal investigator, no connection to the Wild West (except she's Wyatt Earp's great-great-granddaughter)

Wow.  The title and central characters are so completely misleading that they must have been created on purpose, to draw in Western fans.  But doesn't it scare away all of the fans of paranormal investigation?

Con: Oh, this is still a Western.  Wynonna lives in the modern-Wild West town of Purgatory, where the bars have antler-heads and people still wear cowboy hats.  And she has a six-shooter, a special legacy from her ancestor that allows her to hunt down Revenants, escapees from Hell, and send them back where they came from.

Fortunately, the Revenants can't go farther than the area around Purgatory, called the Ghost River Triangle.

Unfortunately, they are adept at masquerading as humans, and highly organized, with a leader unfortunately named Bobo (Michael Eklund).  You can tell he's evil because of his unfortunate beard and androgynous mannerisms.  Yet another trans villain?

Con: The writers seem to be getting their character names from old John Wayne movies: Shorty, Carl, Red, Hetty, Tug, Skip, Drek

I also find Eve, Abel, and Jesus, but maybe they aren't the Biblical characters.

Speaking of names, what's with the extra "n" on Wynonna? I have to check the spelling every time.  It just doesn't look right.

Pro:  According to the plot summary on Wikipedia, the  mythology gets curioser and curioser.  Everybody has a tragic backstory, and no one is who they seem.

I like complex mythologies, as long as they don't get too ridiculous, like on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where each season had a much-worse-than-before, Apocalyptic Big Bad.

Wynonna joins a top-secret paranormal-hunting government agency, and gathers up a group of scoobies:

1. Doc Holiday (Tim Rozon), the partner of her great-great-great grandfather, who didn't die of tuberculosis in 1887; he's still alive and kicking and looks about 30.

2. Waverly, Wynonna's sister (name too long to copy).  Well, actually half-sister.  They share a mother, but Waverly's father was an angel named Julian (yes, angels can reproduce).

3. Xavier Dolls (Shamier Anderson), the head of her unit.

4. Purgatory Sheriff Nicole (Katherine Barrell), who starts dating Waverly.

Pro: Ok, a lesbian relationship among the major characters, and they don't even wait until season 8.  That's a plus for inclusivity, but I wish there were some gay guys, too.

Pro: Score!  Jeremy Chetri (Varun Saranga), the Black Badge Unit's Lab Technician, is gay (and dating Agent Dolls?).  He's introduced in the second season.  In Season 3 he gets a boyfriend, Robin Jett (Justin Kelly, below).

Con: The show seems a bit beefcake-deprived.  Of the first 10 actors listed on imdb, 4 are women, 2 have weird beards, and 1 is grizzled.  That leaves Agent Dolls, Jeremy Chetri, and Daniel Onerheim as Paramedic (can't find a photo).

Farther down the list, we find Justin Kelly (6 episodes) and Dylan Koroll (top photo) as Hardy Champ, the boyfriend of Wynonna's sister Waverly before she starts dating Nicole.

So we have 4 Pro, 4 Con.  I need a deal-maker or deal-breaker.

I fast-forwarded through Episode 6: "Agent Dolls' secret comes out when he joins forces with Wynonna to find the Blacksmith, and encounters a family with a voracious appetite."

The Canadian Rockies in winter.  Cowboy hats, fringed leather jackets.  This is a Western.  Doc Holiday has apparently not changed with the times, ma'ama.  Wynonna wishes she could be a girl, buy lip gloss and wear flirty skirts.  Apparently she hasn't changed with the times, either.

Con.  Skip it.

Imposters: Gay Subtexts in a Long Con

The first episode of Imposters is nightmarishly heterosexist, but hang in there -- it gets better.

The awkward, shy, but somehow extremely wealthy Ezra (Rob Heaps) works for his father's shoe company, where water-cooler banter involves mostly boobs and how much you are getting. 

Somehow Ezra grew up less sexist, and married the "the woman of his dreams," the French-accented Ava (Inbar Lavi),  even though he has to negotiate his Neanderthal brother (Adam Korson) and boorish father (Mark Harelik), with their "does she like it when you have sex with her?" leering.

It's no wonder that she vanishes a month after the wedding, draining his bank account and leaving a very nice "it's not you, it's me" video.

Then Ezra meets dumb but formerly extremely wealthy jock Richard
(Parker Young, top photo), who married the same woman, only she called herself "Alice."  One month, bank account drained, vanished.

 And lesbian artist Jules (Marianne Rendon), who married Cece.  One month, bank account drained, vanished.

The trio vow to track down the elusive scammer, to get their money back, or at least say "how could you treat me like that?  I thought our love was real." (Their only cue is a story about her pet dog, which she told to each of them).  They are brok, so they indulge in some cons and identity-theft tricks to raise money, and become quite proficient at it.

Eventually they track down the scammer -- real name Maddie -- in Seattle, where she is working on her new mark, a disagreeable, violent-tempered banker (Aaron Douglas).

She has two older associates with the ridiculously 1940s names Max and Sal (Brian Benben, Katherine LaNasa), and a big boss, the ridiculously malevolent Doctor.  If ever she tries to get out of the game or shirk her duties by getting a boyfriend on the side, the Doctor will send in his cool-as-ice fixer (Uma Thurman).

 Things get complicated when Maddie falls in love for real with the extremely wealthy Patrick (Stephen Bishop).

And even more complicated when her banker mark ends up murdered.


And even more complicated when Patrick turns out to have a game-changing secret of his own.

And even more well, you get the idea... when the Bumblers (Ezra, Richard, and Jules) show up in Seattle, and agree to work with Maddie and her associates to bring the Doctor down.

Gay characters:  Jules, who starts dating Patrick's "sister" Gina, even though they're both working on cons against the other.

Maddie is bisexual, I suppose, but it's never referred to.

Gay subtext:  Richard strikes me as gay but not out (Jules even refers to this or that hot guy as his new "boyfriend" or "man-crush").  He has a gay-subtext bromance with Ezra, and then switches to Maddie's associate Max.  Side note: Silver Daddy Brian Benben was last seen as a bare-butt Dad on Dream On?

Beefcake: Occasional shirts off. The cast is surprisingly top-heavy with hot guys.  For example, Samuel Patrick Chu plays a nebbish working at the bank, not part of any scams, with only a few lines.  And here's his physique.

I've only seen one season of The Imposters.  My grade: B

There are nude photos of Mark Harelik on Tales of West Hollywood.

See also: Chris Demetral

Tuca & Bertie: Female Empowerment among Birds

Reading the press -- "Creator Lisa Hanawalt is fighting back against the repressive boys' club of adult animation"; "She expects men to hate-watch her show" -- I expected the new animated series Tuca and Bertie to involve heavy-handed message stories, endless fights against sexual harassment, glass ceilings, income disparities, and women's freedoms of various sorts, "Me Too" writ large.

 But there is nothing in this show that even the most un-woke, objectifying, toxic masculinity-breathing alpha male would find discomforting. Indeed, only three episodes even deal with sexist objectification:
Bertie's boss at the bakery inappropriately touches her.
She recalls a childhood sexual assault
She tries to deal with the catcalls that women get all the time.

Another evokes the glass ceiling: Bertie's ideas at her other job are not taken seriously.  But it turns out that she's just not assertive enough.  When she speaks up, the boss is happy to offer her a promotion.

Maybe they think alpha males will object to the discussions of boobs and other lady parts.  But I thought they enjoyed that sort of thing?

Tuca and Bertie are a pair of active-passive bffs, a female buddy tradition dating back to Thelma and Louise and Laverne and Shirley, or farther,  to the ingenue-sassy sidekick of the 1930s screwball comedies.

Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) is an uninhibited, irresponsible free spirit toucan who bounces through life.  She has to learn to be more responsible.

Bertie (Ali Wong) is a needy, insecure, micromanaging, perfectionist song bird, saying things like "I really should be working on that big presentation."  She has to deal with her crushing anxieties.

The third major character is Bertie's live-in boyfriend, Speckle (Steven Yeun, top photo), who doesn't really have a lot to do except ask "Then what happened?" 

You may have noticed that they are all birds.  This world differs from Bojack Horseman's world, where animals are a distinct minority.  Here it's mostly anthropomorphic birds, with a few other animals and sentient plants thrown in.  Humans are so rare that when they appear, they seem like an oversight; some animator forgot.

I especially like the sentient plants, which are, as far as I know, unique in the world of animation. 

Sometimes inanimate objects are alive and sentient, too.  Bertie's boob plays hookey and comes back drunk.  The subways are giant worms.  A yeast infection is comprised of sentient insects. 

The surreal landscape is more interesting than plots, which we've seen a thousand times before:

Tuca goes on a date, but is so nervous that she ruins it.
She is injured but afraid to go to the doctor.
Bertie and Speckle decide to buy a house.


Beefcake:  None. These are birds.

Gay characters: The upstairs neighbor, the theatrical Dapper Dog, may be gay. 

There are lots of lesbian couples in the background.  Two become pivotal in an episode: Bertie's old swimming coach and her wife.

See also: Bojack Horseman

The Men of "Bomb Girls"

This is Billy MacLellan from The Silence (2019), a shot obviously not taken from the movie.  He's standing in a lake, pretending to be naked, biceps, chest, and abs on display, holding up a sign with a Canadian maple leaf and the logo: "Keep calm and save bomb girls."

I have no idea what that means,but if it will give me more glimpses of Billy's pecs and abs, I'm all for finding out.

It's a Canadian tv series (2012-2014) about four women working in a bomb factory during World War II.

Sounds dreary, but...

Are there any men?

It looks like each woman gets some: boyfriends, husbands, sons, fiancees who die in the war, or male allies.









Lorna (Meg Tilly), the middle-aged floor manager.  Think Paula on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

1. Marco (Antonio Cupo, left), who is ostracized by the other factory workers due to being Italian (Canada is at war with Italy).  He begins dating Lorna, which results in a pregnancy and miscarriage.  Later he dates Vera (below), and then he dies.

2. Bob (Peter Outerbridge), Lorna's husband, a disabled World War I Vet.

3. Ned (Gabe Gray), a doctor who starts dating Lorna and Bob's daughter Sheila.

Gladys (Jodi Balfour), the heiress, who can't decide on a beau. Definitely Rebecca on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

1. Gene (Brett Dier, left), Lorna and Bob's son, who suffers from PTSD due to his war experiences.  Gladys gets engaged to him after one date, even though she's engaged to someone else.

2.James (Sebastian Piggott), Glady's first fiancee, who has an affair with Hazel, gets an STD, and is killed in the war.

3. Clifford Parry (Tamoh Penikett, left), an intelligence officer who dates Gladys after the James-Gene story arc ends.

4.Rollie (James McGowan), Gladys' distant father.

Betty (Ali Liebert) the closeted lesbian.  Maybe Valencia on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (pansexual, but not closeted).

1. Ivan (Michael Seater, left), who dates Betty before she falls for Kate (below).  Afterwards Ivan dates Helen, a Nazi spy (the boy likes women with secrets!).  Then he dates Kate, and finally he is killed in a factory explosion 

2. Karl (Kjartan Hewitt), an escaped German POW who disses Betty for being in the closet.  Well, can you blame her?  This is 1941, after all.  She could lose her job, be institutionalized as a psychopath, and go to prison.

Kate (Charlotte Hegete), the naive, sheltered ingenue (Heather?)

1. Leon (Jim Codrington, left), an African-Canadian worker, who befriends Kate and gives her advice on starting a musical career.

2. Vernon (John Ralston), Kate's dad, an abusive street preacher.  Kate accidentally kills him, but Betty (above) takes the fall. 











Wait -- where does Billy McLellan fit into all of this?  Turns out that there is a fifth Bomb Girl:

Vera (Anastasia Philips), disfigured in an accident and now sleeping around.

1. Harold (Richard Fitzpatrick), the plant supervisor.  Vera sleeps with him to get a job, and gets pregnant.

2. Archie (Billy McLellan), an injured vet who she meets in the hospital.  After two episodes, he commits suicide.

What?  Billy appears in only a few episodes?  He's not even connected to one of the Fab Four?

And the show has no gay men?  A lot of lesbians, apparently, but no gay men?

Next!