"Daybreak": Saving the Non-Gender Specific Person in Distress

I was definitely planning to skip the new Netflix drama Daybreak, about teenagers surviving the apocalypse while the adults are all zapped. Riot Girls, The Last Kids on Earth, Nowhere Boys....I've seen it all before.

More importantly, the promo is all about Josh (Colin Ford) trying to reconnect with the Girl of His Dreams. What does that even mean? It's heterosexist brainwashing.  How about a new mantra: so many girls, so little time, how can I choose?

Plus Colin Ford has nice abs, but attended a evangelical Christian school, has starred in heartwarming productions, and "has never been accused as a gay."

So I was noping my way out of there when I read that his sidekick in the show is gay.

It wouldn't hurt to take a look.

Episode #1:  A narrating Josh, aka Ferris Bueller, thinks that the post-apocalypse is awesome.  Sure, everyone over 18 (and, one assumes, under 10) melted into goo  or turned into trudging "ghoulies," roving gangs are kidnapping kids to "turn into hummus," and Sam, the Girl of His Dreams, has vanished, but you can get all the fast cars and glitzy gear you want.  It evens out.

Josh hears a girl screaming as Golf-Team cannibals prepare to eat her, and rushes to the rescue.  "Let the girl go," he says, "and I'll leave you to whatever circle jerk you have planned for tonight."

"That's tomorrow night," the gang leader, Terry (Chester Rushing, left), tells him, pointing out that gender norms don't exist anymore, so gay sex is no longer shameful.

Not to worry,they still throw around homophobic slurs.  Gay sex is still shameful.

So Josh rescues the foul-mouthed 10-year old Angelica. Then they encounter Wesley (Austin Crute), a gay black bully (I've never seen those three words together before) turned Asian-wisdom spouting street samurai. 

After battling the Mad Max-style Turbo Jock, the trio heads to the  mall, where reputedly Sam is being held captive by the evil Baron Triumph.  No Sam, and the evil baron turns out to be Eli (Gregory Kashyan), a former poor kid now holed up in the mall.  The only other resident is The Witch,  aka Mrs. Crumble, a deranged, semi-zombified former biology teacher.

Kind of derivative, with boring flashbacks, and why did Josh rush to rescue a girl, when a moment before he just watched while a boy was dragged to his death.

Right -- the Girl.

I'll just sample some other episodes.

They turn the mall into a free zone, for kids who didn't belong to a clique before the apocalypse, and try to live as normally as possible.  They even hold a "welcome to being alive" prom, with a gender-neutral ruler instead of a king and queen.

Although ostensibly the "good guy" leader whom everyone loves, Josh is rather jerk-like.  When a new Asian refugee is admitted to the sanctuary, he tells her that he's the new ICE, and she has to vote for him in the upcoming election or he'll have her deported.

Not approp, dude.


There's a lot about power struggles in the Turbo Jock tribe.

Wesley turns out to be dating one of the jocks, Turbo Bro Jock (Cody Kearsley, Moose on Riverdale), who is partially melted and cannot speak.

Principal Burris (Matthew Broderick), who somehow survived being melted, wants to finish "cleansing" the world by setting off a bomb.

Fade out kiss?  Well, Wesley and Turbo Jock Bro get one, but not Sam and Josh.  She rejects him in the end.  Turns out that she never needed rescuing, and she never wanted to be his girlfriend; all of this  dreamy romance-stuff was in his head.

Who'd have thought, Josh as unreliable narrator?  How postmodern!  I might have to go back and watch this after all.

The Last Straight Kids on Earth

42 days after a zombie  AND giant monster apocalypse destroys his town and probably the world, teenage video-game addict Jack (Nick Wolfhard, left) seems to be coping well.

The monsters and zombies can be easily outrun, there is plenty of food and other supplies to scavenge, and he has his technogeek bud Quint (Garland Whit) for company.  There's only one thing missing:

The Girl.

That's right, only 1 1/2 minutes into The Last Kids on Earth (2019), and Jack is summoning The Girl as the meaning of life, the key to his dreaming, the only thing missing in the apocalypse.

Sigh.  Why is it always the Eternal Feminine?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but after watching Twelve Forever and reading Welcome to Wanderland, a series dedicated to finding The Girl seems old fashioned and even offensive. 

The tv series is based on a series of children's books by Max Brallier, who although cute, doesn't appear to have any sexual or gender diversity in his works.

He does admit that "there are gay kids out there" in response to a homophobic comment on his twitter page.  Just none among The Last Kids on Earth.

To be fair, only Jack expresses heterosexual interest.  The other characters could be gay, just closeted.

The Girl is June (Montse Hernandez), all-around athlete, top student, editor of the school newspaper, practically perfect in every way, whom Joe was crushing on before the world ended.  In the first episode, Joe and Quint discover that she has survived the apocalypse by hiding in the school.

What a coincidence?

They also hook up with the school bully Dirk (Charles Demers).  The four "last kids on Earth" (and a friendly cat-monster named Rover) move into a decked-out treehouse with a zombie-proof moat and get down to the business of survival.

According to Netflix, this is a tv series, but there is only one "episode," 67 minutes long, online.  IMDB lists six episodes, perhaps covering the five books in the series, where the kids learn more about their situation, and eventually have to fight to save the world.  There is some stunt casting, including Bruce Campbell from The Evil Dead series and Mark Hamill.

And maybe they'll find someone gay along the way.

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.

"Us": A Horror Movie That's Not Really About Us

In 1986, the preteen Addy gets lost on the boardwalk at Santa Cruz.  She's only gone for 15 minutes, but when she returns, she is so traumatized that she cannot speak.  Even after recovering, she never tells anyone what happened to her.

She never returns to Santa Cruz, for obvious reasons, until 2018, when her boorish, clueless husband Gabe (Winston Duke, left) insists:  he needs to kiss up to his wealthy coworker Josh (Tim Heidecker, below).

"See, Honey, something terrible happened to me on the beach at Santa Cruz.  That's why I spent all those years in therapy, and still wake up screaming.  So I'd rather not go."

"We're going."

"Ok, but I absolutely won't go to the beach where the terrible thing happened."

"We're going to the beach."

Jerk.

So they grab their teenage daughter and preteen son (Zora and Jason) and head out to the same summer house that her parents took her to 30 years ago.

That night there's a home invasion.  The intruders look exactly like Addy, Gabe, Zora, and Jason, except their movements are jerky and uncoordinated, they don't seem to be intelligent or even sentient, and they scream a lot.  Only the Addy-double can speak, in a pained, wheezing voice, as if she's suffocating.

This is obviously not an ordinary home invasion, but the clueless Gabe keeps saying "Do you want money?  You can have my car."

Addy-double explains that in 1986, Addy stumbled upon an old government laboratory, and somehow Addy-double was created.  She grew up in the lab, tethered to Addy, forced to imitate her actions, but with rocks instead of toys, and nothing to eat but raw, bloody rabbits.  When Addy married, Gabe-double appeared, but he was a grinning idiot (real-world Gabe the idiot squared).  When Addy gave birth, so did Addy-double, but her children were non-sentient monsters.  Finally they have broken free, and come for revenge.

What a coincidence that she breaks free the moment Addy returns to Santa Cruz.

Fighting, running, schepping on boats, killing, schlepping on boats again, and finally the family ends up at Jason's house.  But he and his family have just been killed by doubles of their own.

More fighting and killing, and then some time to watch tv: apparently doubles have been popping up all over the country.

Post-apocalyptic fighting and killing. Fade out to millions of doubles forming a hands across America chain.

Wait -- how could millions of doubles fit into that single underground lab?  They are physical beings, not spirits, so how did they eat?  How were they created in the first place?  Did you have to be near Santa Cruz?

 Back to micro-level sociological analysis: all of the doubles of Addy's family are killed.  Success.  But, as they drive away, Addy reveals that she is the actual double.  That's why she couldn't speak when she first appeared -- she had to learn how.

So the doubles aren't non-sentient, they're just deprived. They would be like us, if given the opportunity.

I get it; it's a parable on capitalism.  Every privilege you enjoy comes with the price of someone else's misery.  That tomato you bought at the grocery store was farmed by a migrant doing back-breaking work for starvation wages, and it's being sold by a cashier who works 12 hour shifts for minimum wage, with no health benefits.  

Pro: It's nice to see a black family in a horror movie, even though this is a post-racial society where racism does not exist.  The sole inequality is economic.

Pro: I like how the doubles are just exaggerated versions of the real people. 

Con:  There are so many plot holes, it strains suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.  If the doubles were spirits, maybe I could buy it.   Not millions of escapees from a lab in Santa Cruz.

Gay characters: This is a very claustrophobic movie,with Addy's family and Josh's family, and almost no one else.  Assuming that those people are all meant to be heterosexual, that leaves no gay people.  Us is not really about us.

Beefcake:  No.  This is rather a woman-oriented movie. Five female characters, three male, all jerks and losers:

1.  Gabe (Winston Duke) is buffed, but he's wearing a fat suit.

2.  Josh (Tim Heidecker) really is on the chunky side. 

3. Jason (Evan Alex) is only about 10 (whose bright idea was it to give two main characters similar names?  Did Friends have Joey, Jimmy, Jason, and Chandler?)

"Into the Badlands": Beefcake without Bonding in Post-Apocalyptic Oklahoma

A post-Apocalyptic tv series without zombies?  How retro!

Into the Badlands (2015-2019) is set 500 years after our civilization ended.  The Badlands (aka Oklahoma) has developed a society nearly identical to the Warring States period of medieval China, with feudal barons (mostly elegantly-dressed ladies) struggling for power with their armies of clippers (Ninja warriors who fight in slow motion).  There are cars and electricity, but for some reason no guns.

The religion seems to be a Buddhist-Taoist mix, but the architecture, interior design, costumes, and even the cars are strictly 1930s America.

Why, after 500 years, do they mimic the 1930s?  It's a ludicrous cultural development.

The Badlands are misnamed.  Sure, most of the men are cogs (slaves), and most of the women are dolls (sex slaves), but anyone who can fight or have expert sex can rise through the ranks to become a baron.  Besides, there is sunshine, and people bathe. Outside it's a Road Warrior world with gray skies and dirt, where ragtag bands squat in the rusty relics of the old civilization.

Why has no one built anything new?  500 years ago, Magellan was just starting his round-the-world voyage, and Martin Luther had barely started the Reformation.  We've built a lot of new things since.

There are two focus characters.  Sunny (Daniel Wu, top photo) starts out as head enforcer to the evil, unpredictable Baron Quinn (Marton Csokas, left), who has a Southern accent for some reason, and a ridiculous beard.

Quinn has an ex wife and a new concubine, who also happens to be the lover of his son Ryder (Oliver Stark, below).

Sunny is morose and angst-ridden, particularly when he is assigned the task of killing the only doctor in the Badlands, who also happens to be the father of his girlfriend Veil.  Who is pregnant.

And Quinn wants her.

So Sunny tries to arrange passage out of the Badlands, but he just ends up a slave in some sort of horrible Road Warrior mine.

He spends the rest of the series trying to get back into the Badlands to retrieve the Woman He Loves.

The other focus character is the teenager M.K. (short for Monkey King in the Chinese tale Journey to the West), a teenager (Aramis Knight) with an untapped pool of Dark Energy that pops out when he's angry.  So everyone wants to apprentice him, capture him, or seduce him.

At first he's an apprentice clipper (called a colt), and then he joins a weird Buddhist fighting-ninja monastery.

Sunny and M.K. are together for the first few episodes, so I thought that they were going to develop into a gay-subtext couple.  No such luck; they never really seem to like each other, and soon they separate.

Sunny gets a comic-relief sidekick, the rotund British-accented Bajie (Nick Frost).  So how did he get all the way from London to Oklahoma?

M.K. doesn't pair up with anyone in particular, although he does kiss some girls, and he has an occasional male buddy.

Otherwise the show is rather intensely heterosexist.  A man for every woman, a woman for every man, and so on.  Chippers in training are told that they will get power "and women."








Gay references: The Woman Sunny Loves escapes from her jail cell, and later claims that she seduced her jailer, Edgar (Ladi Ereruwa).  But she is apprised that he only likes men.

There appears to be a Sapphic pair later on, in episodes I haven't seen yet.

Beefcake:  A lot.  Sunny is shirtless every five minutes, and.  M.K. and his fellow apprentices do not seem to own shirts.

My grade: D for the ludicrousness of the future society, A for some striking visuals, D for the gay characters, A for the beefcake.  Average: B.

I can take it or leave it.  Or fast-forward to the good parts.