Ride or Die: Assassin and MP's wife are buddies, with some hunks, some queerbaiting, and a bonus profile of the cute Czech-Indian bartender.

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Ride or Die on Amazon Prime, is about a woman (a MP's wife) who discovers that her "ride or die" (close friend) is a spy.  There's bound to be a gay-subtext romance between them, and probably a gay friend in there somewhere.  Or at least some beefcake.  

Scene 1: Austria.  A group of people dancing and hetero-flirting outside in the snow. A sniper zooms on on Oleg (Pavel Konstantyn, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Her handler tells her to take the shot, but she refuses.  Instead, she skiis down and stabs him, then skiis away with Russians in hot pursuit. She crashes or eludes them, and takes off her mask: It's Judith (Hannah Waddingham)!  

Scene 2: At the chalet that night.  People dancing, drinking, and hetero-flirting. Judith wins the hammering-a-nail-while-drunk contest, then asks Hans the Bartender (Taylor Napier) for another drink "or nine."   

When he gets off work, they bounce and crash into her hotel room to smoochify.  Darn, I thought she was a lesbian.  Nice chest shot of the Bartender as Judith is slowly getting ready.

She gets up in the early morning hours.   "So, can I call you?"

"Scoff, scoff.  Absolutely not!"  So he's not an ongoing character, just there to identify Judith as not gay?.

"Who the f*ck are you?" He asks as she walks away.

Good question, she ponders.  Her passport says that she's a forensic accountant, but that's just a boring cover to avoid follow-up questions.   She's actually an assassin.

Scene 3: London.  A closeup of a woman's wedding ring (hetero identity established immediately) as she drives, listening to a true crime podcast. She inches her way into a parking space, but now she's blocked in,so she has to climb out through the window.  It's Debbie (Octavia Spencer)!  

Assassin Judith calls, pretending that she was at an accounting conference, but she'll be back in time for Book Club, and pick her up an apothecary cabinet at the Antique Warehouse.

It's like Black Friday in the U.S., crowds jostling and running over each other to get in.  Real-life celebrity antique dealer Drew Pritchard and his boyfriend rush toward the apothecary cabinet, but Debbie beat them to it!  They fume with jealousy.  Wait -- the real-life guy is straight.  They just gave him a boyfriend on the show to queerbait.

"Who the heck is that?"  The Boyfriend asks.  I agree.  What does this scene have to do with anything?

Debbie ponders it. I made law review at Yale, fell in love, moved to England.  I have two grown children.  My husband is David Claybourne, Member of Parliament, who will be the next Prime Minister.  But I have a secret -- one that would tear my life apart.  Are you and Judith secretly girlfriends?  No, it's Book Club tomorrow,a nd she hasn't read the book, har har.

Scene 4: London.  Assassin Judith arrives at a fancy restaurant for lunch with Sam (Calam Lynch), her Handler, who demands to know why she stabbed the last mark instead of shooting him, resulting in 100 witnesses. 

"You used to follow the rules, but now every case turns into chaos. You're acting out, getting sloppy, and putting us all in danger."  He gives her another assignment, but "no mistakes, or you're gone."   

The Mark is the hunky Billy Donovan (Ed Skrein), a crime boss.  It's to be done at the Water Relief Gala, the charity that Billy launders his money through.

"And poison him.  No high tech gadgets."

Scene 5: At home, the MP (Jamie Parker) is upset because the Book Club is all ladies, giggling and carrying on in a gender-stereotyped fashion, and because Debbie bought too much junk at the Antiques Fair.   But she assuages him by cooking him dinner and offering to go over his speech.

Tomorrow he's meeting a client at a charity event. Uh-oh.  Debbie insists on going with him. "But it's business, not political."  "I don't care, I'm going."  He snorts "Fine!" and stomps out.  Why don't you want her there?  Is something sinister going on?  Isn't that the same meeting where Judith's hit is?

Judith enters with wine.  They discuss the book, ladies with weird hair, Debbie living in her husband's shadow, and makeup, while a mysterious figure watches from outside the window.   

Scene 6: In the morning, Debbie heads to Parliament to give the Railroad Chairman (Ben Bradshaw) a Zambian terracotta pig that she bought at the antique place yesterday.  "And by the way, could you sign the Transport Bill?"  Bribing the old guy, har har.

Meanwhile, Assassin Judith heads to a shop called Williams and Daughter, where she gets her fake ids, guns, knives, crossbows, and high-tech gadgets.  But today she just needs some poison, two vials to hide in her shoe.

After Judith leaves, Daughter calls Handler Sam, flirts with him, and reports that she bought 220 miligrams of aconite. (wolfsbane). Dang, I was hoping that he would be gay.

More after the break

Unprisoned, Season 2: Will Finn finally come out, or stay gay-vague forever? Plus a lot of search engine misdirections

 

Unprisoned, on Hulu, features an elderly man named Edwin, who spends 17 years in prison for cocaine dealing, is released, and has to reconnect with his estranged daughter and 16 year old grandson.  He spends the first season trying to avoid violating the terms of his parole and finding a girlfriend, while the estranged daughter does TED talks about relationships and has relationship problems with her boyfriend. It's heterosexist all the way down, except for the son, Finn, played by Faly Rakotohavana.

Through Season 1, he never expresses any interest in girls, nor do his mom and grandpa ever try to push him into meeting or dating girls.  The lack of expressed heterosexual interest codes him as gay, but it's a very fragile code: showrunners often go through an entire season, or more, with a character that all viewers think is gay, only to give him a girlfriend at the last moment and yell "Fooled you!  Gay people don't exist!" It already happened on Doogie Kamehameha, M.D..  

It could not be more obvious that actor Faly Rakotohavana is gay in real life, but I googled him and "gay" anyway, and got this result:

So the murderous doll has a talk show now? His interviewees are Zackary Arthur and Teo...., not Faly Rakotahavana.

By the way, it looks like he's interview his costars in the Chucky tv series, Zackary Arthur and Teo Briones. 

None of these people is Faly Rakotahavana, either.  The one on the left is Will Smith, and the one on the right, "Uis hth",  would go gay for him. What does that even mean?  Uis is only attracted to women now, but if ___ agrees to date him, he'll change to gay, and only be attracted to men for the rest of his life?

Found him: Louis Smith.  There aren't any shirtless photos of him, except behind paywalls.

Back to Finn: I was fearful of watching Season 2, due to the possibility that they would clobber us with a "Fooled you!" girlfriend.  Especially Episode 2, where "Finn tries to make a friend." 

I clench my teeth and brave through it after the break

OMG, some jaw-dropping queer codes on "Chad Powers." Russ and Danny are in love! With Zahn backside, Clayne d*ck, and some random Tennessee dudes

  

Link to the n*de dudes

This is huge.  This is Glenn and Zy holding hands on Solar Opposites,  Finn on a date with a boy in Unprisoned, Scotty telling Gideon "You knock me out" on The Righteous Gemstones. 

This is Kurt Russell smiling at Patrick Dawson on a dreary November night many years ago, the smile that gave me the first clue that two boys can fall in love. 

 A few weeks ago, I reviewed Episode 1.2 of the Hulu sports series Chad Powers: several years after he was cancelled for being an a-hole, footballer Russ (Glen Powell) tries to get into the game by pretending to be high school superstar Chad Powers and playing for  he South Georgia State College Catfish.  

He is assisted by Danny (Frankie Rodriguez), the team mascot, who gives him a place to stay, provides his prosthetic cheeks, and makes sure that the back story details he ad-libs are consistent.

They aren't at all consistent,  but Coach Hudson (Steve Zahn) is desperate for a winning season, so he doesn't dig too deeply.

Danny displays a few queer codes, but doesn't express any same-sex interest.  Frankie Rodriguez stated in an interview that it's nice to play a gay character where being gay is not the main thing about him, but I wasn't happy.  Most viewers won't notice, or will dismiss the queer codes with "Straight guys do that.  It doesn't make him gay."

Then came Episode 1.4.  I'll do a brief synopsis to get to the jaw-dropping part.

Scene 1: On the bus en route to an away game in Knoxville, the Coach presumes that Chad/Russ and Danny are boyfriends, even though they aren't sitting together.  He personally doesn't care, but they will in Tennessee, so keep it closeted.  

Chad/Russ claims that they're not boyfriends, they're brothers: Danny's family fostered him for a few years, and then Chad/Russ's family fostered Danny.  This makes no sense, and doesn't fit the established back story at all, but the Coach just shrugs.  Whatever, he's a good player.

Scene 2: At the hotel, Assistant Coach Dobbs (Clayne Crawford, right) cautions the players to not "spread any cheeks" tonight, so they'll be rested for the big game (while looking directly at Chad/Russ, also assuming that he and Danny are boyfriends). 

Bedtime is 11:00 pm.  If you're not in your room by bed check, you don't play tomorrow. 

Scene 3: Problem: someone left the cap off the glue, so there's no way to affix Russ's prosthetic cheeks.  The ones he is wearing will fall apart by morning.  What to do?

"There must be prosthetic glue somewhere in Knoxville," Russ suggests. 

The other players have invited some fans, including Mean Girl Sasha, to a pre-bedtime party in their room. Russ and Danny steal her car keys so they can drive to a Halloween store.

Noticing the messiness of Mean Girl Sasha's car, Russ exclaims "Girls are gross!" 

"But not Assistant Coach Ricky?  Don't you have a crush on her?"

"Heck, no.  She's just nice, that's all."  So you don't like girls, Russ?  I did notice that you brought a dude to the club in Episode 1.   "And she's being nice to Chad, not Russ."

"Yeah, she'd hate Russ.  She's not into f*kboys." A f*kboy is someone who treats his partners like objects.  So Danny doesn't think of Russ as a potential partner because he wants something more meaningful?

Scene 3: At the Halloween store, Russ notices his face on a Halloween costume: "A-Hole Quarterback."  He's depressed, but Danny tries to console him by suggesting that the model was another a-hole "with frosted tips and a cubic zirconia ear stud."  

A big guy bought the last bottle of glue, and is using it to apply a mask.  Russ wants Danny to ask him for the glue, but he refuses: "Bears are not my type."  What about A-hole quarterbacks?

So Russ approaches and starts a conversation.  It's a mask of the rival team; he's planning to wear it to the game tomorrow in honor of his dad.  

While they are talking, Danny steals the glue.  That's a lot of theft, buddy. Aren't you supposed to be encouraging Russ to become a better person?  

Scene 4: The Bear notices and chases them out of the store. 

Another problem: Someone broke into the car and stole their stuff, including Danny's $180 airpods and the prosthetic cheeks! 

They track down the guy,  but he starts shooting, so they run away.  And Russ cut his hand on the broken glass in the car! 

Scene 5: The wait at the ER is too long --bed check is in an hour -- so Russ orders Danny to find some bandages.  He'll take care of his injury himself.

Danny: "You can't order me around. Am I your employee?"

Russ: "I don't wanna litigate the nature of our...whatever this is...right now."  It's a friendship.  Why is it so hard to define?  Unless....

 Danny is incensed over his refusal to name their relationship "Our whatever? I save your *ss again and again and again..."

Russ:  "You're just hanging out with me because of Chad.  Chad makes you relevant." 

More arguing.  Each accuses the other of using him, not really loving...I mean caring about him, and finally Russ orders Danny to leave.  

"Ok, if you don't need anyone, get your own goddam glue."  He dumps the glue out onto the floor and storms out.

Russ sits there for awhile, upset over the breakup.  Back to his problem: they use medical adhesive in hospitals.  He steals some, bandages his hurt hand, and rushes back to the hotel.  

The jaw-dropping scene after the break.  

"Tracker," Episode 3.1: Tracker tracks a probably gay teenager. With Pride flags, Greek tavernas, a Canadian wrestler, and Bryant c*ck

 

 Link to the n*de photos

 Tracker (2023-) not to be confused with Duster (2025-6) and Reacher (2022-5), is about a guy who "tracks" missing people, usually in the square red states.  I went through the first season in search of gay characters awhile back, and didn't find much (Tracker's assistants are a lesbian couple, but the missing people seem to be all hetero).  

Tonight I have nothing to do while waiting for  my partner to get back from the gym (and bring food), so I'm going through Season 3.  Episodes about "Randy's close friend vanishes" and "a hidden relationship in a lawless desert town" have been disappointing, but Episode 3.11, "an 18 year old with a secret life" looks promising.   It stars Ben Krieger, a Broadway star who is obviously gay: he goes to Pride events, performed magic in a gay bar, and spent his 21st birthday with a male companion.

Scene 1:  Queens, New York. Stepho's Greek Taverna. Ben is cleaning up his parents' restaurant after closing.  A girl invites him to a party, but he refuses.  Your first sentence is rejecting a girl?  A nice queer code. 

He locks the back door, sets his bag of food aside, and walks over to the dumpster to throw out the trash.  Suddenly a car zooms up with its headlights glaring.

Scene 2:  The parents call for Tracker (Justin Hartley): Ben didn't come home last night, and because he's 18, the police won't do anything.  He also failed to deposit the day's receipts, several thousand dollars. In cash?  Doesn't everyone pay by card nowadays?

Tracker suggests that maybe he took the money and vanished, but the parents dismiss that idea.  He would never just leave.  But he didn't want to work in the restaurant forever.  He was interested in social justice issues.  Like LGBTQ rights, for instance?

 They open his locker, and find a taser cartridge.  Dude needed to protect himself for some reason.

Scene 3:  Next they check the back.  Notice the Pride Flag on the building next door.  It is visible in several scenes, certainly a deliberate background choice to hint that Ben is gay.

A homeless lady is eating the food that Ben dropped off.  She saw him arguing with a guy, and then being loaded into the car.

Next they find Ben's cell phone: he must have dropped it during the scuffle.  Tracker gets his associate, the Hacker, to hack into it.

Left: Google says that the Hacker is played by Eric Graise, a gay actor best known for the new Queer as Folk.  He may be disabled: some sources say that he's a bilateral amputee, and others, that it's his character.

The IMDB says that Eric left at the end of Season 2, replaced by "Cousin Randy" (Chris Lee), who is straight in real life.  

The new, straight Hacker tells Tracker that yesterday Ben called Ellis Brawner (Alex Barima from Daniel Spellbound, straight in real life) a dozen times.

The parents know him: he used to work at the restaurant, but was fired for stealing.  Could he have gotten revenge by kidnapping Ben?

Scene 4: The B-Plot, back at headquarters. A lady is buttering up another lady, who praises her work on previous cases.

Alex Barima (right), seen here in a non-romantic scene in The Exorcist, has no n*de or beefcake photos online.

The Hacker looks up Brawner's address, and Tracker breaks in.  A lot of fake passports and drivers' licenses.  No posters of bikini babes?  A good sign. When Brawner arrives and sees Tracker, he runs, but Tracker chases him down. 

He explains that he and Ben-Ben are partners in the fake id business. Ben-Ben?  Sounds like they're boyfriends.  

Last night Ben called and told him to get to the restaurant fast.  They were yelling because Brawner was angry over being awakened in the middle of the night.  It was just after a restaurant closed, and one of the staff was heading to a party.  Do you go to bed at 7:00 pm?

He needed some ids and a car right away, and paid for it with the money he took from the restaurant.

"Was it about the fake id business?"

"No, I think it was about a girl.  I heard him talking."  Ulp, heterosexual identity established at Minute 15.  

Ben left his laptop at Brower's place.  Tracker confiscates it.

More after the break.

Daniel DiMaggio: The queerbaiting son on "American Houswife" grows up to play Count Chocula and post selfies

 

Link to the NSFW version

You may be familiar with Daniel DiMaggio, no relation to Joe DiMaggio, as Oliver Otto on American Housewife (2016-21).  I never heard of it, but I wouldn't have watched anyway.  Who wants to watch a sicom about June Cleaver or Donna Reed?  

It starred Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a housewife who, although not pretentious herself, is immersed in the ultra-pretentious world of ladies who lunch in Westport, Connecticut, along with her husband (Diedrich Bader), two daughters, and son Oliver (Daniel). 

She has a lesbian best friend, and there's a gay character (Jake Choi) in Season 5, so there's a bit of representation.  The main problem fans had was queerbaiting Oliver.  

He is presented as gay, with everything from pictures of muscular men on his bedroom wall to an interest in ballet to a boyfriend, the wealthy, femme Cooper (Logan Bell).  Everyone thinks they are boyfriends, including Cooper, who is upset every time Oliver claims that they are not dating.  But then he backs off and gets a girlfriend.  

Logan Bell (the femme one) is gay in real life, and states that he played Cooper as gay.  So why five seasons of "crumbs" that led nowhere?  Fans were irate when the showrunners were too cowardly to let Oliver come out.

Daniel already has two strikes against him (baseball metaphor, har har) for five years of queerbaiting.  Let's check on his other projects.

He was born in 2003 in Los Angeles, and began acting at age nine in the short Geisho (2010): a man (Horatio Sanz) wants to become the world's first male geisha.  Kind of gender-fluid.

Next, a 2013 episode of Burn Notice, which, I discovered today, is not about a hospital burn unit, in spite of the misleading title.  It's about a spy who was "burned" (fired). How the heck are potential viewers supposed to know that?   Daniel plays the young version of focus character Michael (Jeffrey Donovan). 

More after the break

The Top 14 Hunks of "The Bride," including Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, a gay guy, and a lot of queerbaiting

 

Link to the n*de dudes

This weekend we saw The Bride! (2026).  I assumed that it would be a sequel to Frankenstein (2025), but it is not.  The frenetic, lunatic ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, channeling Bellatrix LeStrange from Harry Potter, complains that she died before she had a chance to write anything meaningful (lady, you died at age 53, having published dozens of novels, short stories, essays, travel journals...)  So she possesses a 1930s floozy named Ida, who starts a lengthy diatribe and falls down a flight of stairs.  Frank the Monster (Christian Bale, left) convinces a mad scientist to revive her, and they go on a rampage, channeling the Joker and Harley Quinn, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Me, Too Movement.   

There are a few nods to 1930s gay culture: Ida kisses a lady in the first scene, and takes Frank to a nightclub frequented by a few LGBTQ couples.  But it is ruined by a monumental queerbaiting.  

Detective Jake Willis (Peter Saarsgaard) and his partner Myrna, who has to pretend to be his secretary because female detectives aren't allowed, investigate the murder of a railroad cop in rural Indiana.  After Jake gets intel from the small-town sheriff, Partner Myrna points out that she does all the detective work; all he has to do is seduce small town sheriffs to get intel.  

In the 1930s, all sheriffs were male.  She very clearly and unambiguously states that he has sex with men. 

But at the end of the movie, he admits that he keeps letting Ida get away because he is in love with her; they used to be romantic partners, before her accident.

WTF?  A real life person could be bisexual, of course, but in movies, a hetero-romance obliterates gay references.    Myrna's statement was an outright lie, a nasty joke played on the audience. 

This is not a review of the g*ddam monstrosity (it would get an F----).  I was so angry that I looked through the entire cast list, hoping to find a gay person to profile.  I finally found one, after researching a gaggle of straight hunks:

1. Christian Bale as Frank the Monster

2. Peter Sarsgaard as the queerbaiting Detective.

3. Jake Gyllenhaal as Ronnie Reed, a Fred Astaire-like dancer.  Frank idolizes him, so they travel to all of the sites where his movies were filmed.

4. Zlatko Buric, left, as mob boss Lupino.  The Mafia is involved, too.

5. Will Dagger, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, as a guy at a movie theater who is trying to get with his girlfriend in spite of her protests.  Frank and Ida intervene.

6. Louis Cancelmi,  on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, as Officer Goodman, one of the cops that the couple kills.

7. Neil Vincent Smith as a patron in a restaurant that the two disrupt.  Sorry, I couldn't find a photo where he isn't hugging a lady.

8. Antony Abbato, left, as another restaurant patron.

The gay guy after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.7: The handsome man, misdirection, queerbaiting, tied-up guys, and me yelling at the screen a lot

 

Link to the n*de photos

In Episode 3.6, we saw the aftermath of the Judy/BJ and Kelvin/Keefe breakups, with failed reconciliation attempts, a fist fight, and both Kelvin and Judy quitting their jobs at the church.  In this episode, things get even worse.

Title: "Burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."  Exodus 21:25. Fans argued like mad about trying to connect the burn/wound/stripe to the personalities or kidnapping strategies of the Gemstone siblings, but it's a misdirection. The previous verse has the more familiar "eye for eye, tooth for tooth." It just means that the punishment should fit the crime.

Burn for burn and all that:  During the evening of the day of the Aimee-Leigh Hologram debacle, the BJ-Stephen penis fight, and probably the Kelvin-Keefe rocking chair fight, Judy goes to a drug store to buy pain medication for BJ.  On her way home, goons from Peter's militia crunch her car with the Redeemer and grab her. 

Misdirection alert: the trailer makes it look like she is the one crunching. 

Chuck Montgomery tries to trick Jesse, and when that doesn't work, the goons shoot him with a tranquilizer dart.  

Kelvin bangs on the door at Woodpecker's Carpentry, yelling: "Are there any woodworkers in there? I'm looking for Keefe Chambers!"  Now that he's no longer worried about his job at the church, he's free to reconcile with Keefe.    But it's long after hours; the building is dark and deserted. Why would anyone be inside?  Besides, Keefe told Kelvin where he was working; wouldn't he give him his new address and phone number, too?

Imagine if someone were inside: "See, my ex-boyfriend and I had this big fight, and he doesn't want me to have his new number, and I don't know where he's staying...I need to see him...no, I am not a stalker!"

Six militia men wearing scary masks surround Kelvin.  The trailer makes him look paralyzed with fear, but actually he is quite brave, trying to intimidate them and then defend himself.  They punch and hit him, and squirt a toxic liquid into his eyes -- which stings but has no long term effects.  Why does Kelvin need six guys to take him down?  Why does he get a more brutal kidnapping?  I don't know.

Screaming like a woman:  The three siblings are put in what everyone calls a chicken silo, although chickens are housed in coops.  They are tied to chairs, with pillowcases over their heads.  What for?  You don't need to be imprisoned and tied up both.

Fans uncomfortable with the idea of gay relationships noticed that Kelvin's pillowcase resembles the trans pride flag, thereby signaling that he is actually a transgender woman.  Doubtful: Jesse's depicts the cartoon character Maisie Mouse. 

Kelvin yells for help. Uncle Peter enters and asks if he is "screaming like a woman," maybe a dig at his gayness, but more likely because he considers any emotion "like a woman."   He explains that the militia is holding them for ransom.

The handsome man: When Keefe arrives for work the next morning, he sees Kelvin's car with the doors still open, checks the ground for signs of a struggle, and asks his coworkers, "Have you seen The Handsome Man?"  This makes no sense, as Kelvin only visited once, for a few minutes, and most of the carpenters weren't paying attention.

Cut to Amber and BJ noticing that their partners didn't come home last night. Next, Eli, at the office even though he's retired and should be fishing, receives a scary video of Kelvin crying and Judy and Jesse screaming in rage.  The gay one has a "sensitive" reaction. Peter gives the ransom demand.  

Eli goes home and confronts May-May: "Your sons have fucked me over."  She denies that she has anything to do with the kidnapping.

Back at the chicken silo, the siblings complain about the heat and the food, and bicker.  Shouldn't they be praying?  They're religious, right?

Cut to BJ, Amber, Gideon, and Eli discussing the kidnapping with Sheriff Brenda. They were kidnapped in town, so it should be the Rogers Police. 

Notice that Keefe is not there.  Why didn't Eli call him?  Because his number has changed, because they have broken up, or because he is just a friend, not a partner?

The Freemans arrive.  Tiffany has made dolls of the siblings --very quickly -- "for you to hug and kiss until they come home safe."  She gives the Kelvin doll to Eli.  Same question: Why doesn't she save it for Keefe? Because they have broken up, or because they were never partners to begin with? 

Geography problem: How did they get to Eli's house so fast?  Don't they live in Florida?  

The trailer made it seem like the militia sent the dolls, adding a hint of the paranormal that turned out to be a misdirection.  Still, they look like Gullah Island voodoo dolls: "You can hug and kiss them until your loved ones come home safe.  And if they ever stray, you can make their privates fall off." 

More queerbaiting after the break

Dylan Everett: The depressed Degrassi teen buddy-bonds with three gay guys, wears tight jeans, joins the army. With a lot of backsides and a Dylan d*ck

 

Link to the n*de Dylan

I'm not usually into backsides -- I prefer the side that with the chest, abs, and beneath the belt stuff  -- but the backside on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends is a thing of beauty.  It belongs  Dylan Everett, then 26, who you probably know as Campbell Saunders on the Canadian teen soap Degrassi: The Next Generation. 

 Cam appears in Season 12 (2012-13) as a "good-hearted, gentle, nice, shy, cool, and sweet" hockey player who rejects an offer of friendship from the gay kid Tristan, for fear of being assumed gay himself, but then apologizes.  They hang out, and he begins dating Tristan's friend Maya.  But anxiety and depression take their toll, and his plot arc ends with suicide.

Born in Toronto in 1995, Dylan began acting in commercials at age ten, and moved into television with The Doodlebops, "the ultimate rock n roll band for kids."   He first played the friend of a gay kid in Breakfast with Scott (2007): a "straight-acting" gay couple (Tom Cavanaugh, Ben Shenkman) become the guardians of a flamboyantly femme boy (Noah Benett).

A lot of teencoms and tv movies followed, notably How to Be Indie (2009-2011): the Indian-Canadian girl has two friends, a teencom standard: Abbie (a girl) and Marlon (Dylan), who according to the fan wiki is "always full of bright ideas," but sometimes annoying.  He wears pants that are so tight, he can't sit down, has a gay-subtext boyfriend, John Lu (Jason Jia), and displays no interest in girls -- obviously gay.  At least until the showrunners decided to queerbait by giving him a girlfriend in Episode 49.

Next the busy teenager simultaneously appeared on
Degrassi and starred in the teencom Wingin' It (2010-13): To earn his wings,  apprentice angel Porter (Demetrius Joyette) must help outcast high schooler Carl (Dylan) become popular.  I'm not sure how much of an outcast Carl is, since he has the standard teencom two friends, Jane and Alex (Brian Alexander White), but most episodes involve crushing on girls, competing with Porter for girls, asking girls out, and so on.  Apparently popularity means having a girlfriend.

Dylan played Mark-Paul Gosselaer in The Unauthorized "Saved by the Bell" Story (2014), himself in Dylan (2015), the young Dean Winchester in three episodes of Supernatural (2013-15), and a heterosexual teenager in Undercover Grandpa (2017).  

He has a n*de scene in All About Who You Know (2019): an aspiring screenwriter tries to meet his idol by arranging a romcom-style romance with the guy's daughter. Or you could just call him.

AusCaps has a scene where his friend Austin (Stephen Joffe) wakes up in bed with a guy, and looks surprised but does not recoil in homophobic horror, so maybe he has a gay plotline.

More after the break.  

"Superman" (2025): You'll believe a man can queerbait

 

Link to the n*de dudes

I don't usually review movies that are playing in theaters, but we just saw Superman (2025).  I went in with an internet full of complaints about "wokeness," so I expected a lot of LGBTQ representation.  Here's what I got:

The Wokeness: There are some nonwhite people around.  Big deal.

The Plot: The tyrannical leader of Boravia (mostly Russia, a little Israel) wants to invade neighboring Jarhanpur (mostly Palestine, a little Ukraine), and promises to make Lex Luthor  (Nicholas Hoult) king of half the country if he helps.  So he sells them $80 billion in arms for cheap. 

But Lex's main goal is to discredit and hopefully kill Superman (David Corenswet), because he doesn't like aliens, because he's envious of Supe's popularity, because...well, even he isn't sure. He's a movie villain, it's his job.  

Lex has a vast number of high-tech resources to help with the discrediting/murder:

1. The Engineer, who can fill your lungs with nanobots so you suffocate.

2. A prison in an unstable pocket universe, where he keeps political prisoners and people who criticized him on social media.

3. An interdimensional rift that can take down whole cities.

4. A lot of Superman clones.

5. Super-genius employees played by Terence Rosemore and Stephen Blackehart (left)

6. A monstrous kanju that grows to Godzilla-size and breathes fire.

7. The message that Jor-El and Lara sent along from Krypton. Supe always thought that they asked him to help the people of Earth, but they actually told him to rule Earth, and massacre anyone who resisted.  This is real, not fake, and when it gets into the media, people reject poor Supe.  Why do they care about the career his parents planned for him?  My parents wanted me to work in the factory.  

Supe has a number of allies this time around:

1. Food cart guy Malik Ali (Dinesh Thyagarajan), who jumps into a crater to help the injured superhero. Lex kidnaps him.

2. Krypto the Superdog.  Lex kidnaps him, too.  Spoiler alert: The dog doesn't die.

3.-5.  The bickering Justice Gang: Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi, left), Hawk Girl, and The Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion). In some of the comics and the tv series, Green Lantern is gay, but there's no indication here.

6. The superhero Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), who can transmute into any element.  Lex imprisons him to turn into kryptonite and torture Supe.

More after the break

"Siblings," Episode 1.1 or 1.3: Dan tries too hard to win a guy who uses a wheelchair. With gay wheelchair guy bonus

Link to the n*de dudes

Siblings is a Britcom (2014-16) now streaming on Amazon Prime, featuring lazy, amoral siblings Hannah and Dan (Charlotte Richie, the sort-of-cute Tom Stourton).  Reminds me of The Other Two, so let's take a look at "Wheelchair Conference," which the IMDB calls Episode 1.1, but Amazon Episode 3.3

Scene 1: At breakfast, Dan is describing a bank robbery that "really happened," but it turns out to be a movie.  Hannah has to rush to work (at 10:30), because she has a new boss who might expect her to show up. The old one was always drunk, and didn't notice whether she was there or not.

But what is Dan supposed to do while she is away?  "Go out and make a friend."

Scene 2:  Hannah rushes into the office just as Drunk Boss is leaving.  He's been sacked for good for silly things like "gross incompetence."  Now she has to find a way to kiss up to the new boss

Cut to the coffee shop, where Dan approaches a Writer (Rob Carter, who is heterosexual) busily working on his novel (just work at home0.  He asks inane questions, and "jokes" that he's going to pour coffee on the guy's laptop.  But he slips, and actually does! (just work at home).  Friendship attempt thwarted, he leaves.

Scene 3: After a long day of trying unsuccessfully to make friends, Dan comes home to Hannah conducting extensive research on the new boss, looking for an angle.  The problem is, there are a lot of Annette Walkers online, so she has to learn about everything from Costa Rica to the University of Hull.

Ulp, there's a homeless guy named Biscuit in the house.  Time for a lot of jokes about how homeless people are disgusting, har har, and Dan is an idiot for inviting one home, har har.   About 40% of homeless youth are LGBT, kicked out by homophobic parents. A sizeable percentage are victims of physical and sexual abuse.

Scene 4: At the office, Hannah tries to kiss up to the new boss by demonstrating her knowledge of Costa Rica and the University of Hull, but this is a different Annette Walker.  She's been going through the reports, and discovers that Kevin's  job encompasses Hannah's job, so one of them is redundant.  Hannah lies that "Kevin is homophobic."  Interesting -- 20 years ago you would be fired for being gay, and now you're fired for being homophobic.

Kevin is played by Matthew Steer.  No intel on whether he's gay.

Uh-oh, Kevin is talking to the new boss about his report analyzing five years of appraisal statistics.  Hannah heads him off with "Weren't you saying last week that gay people shouldn't be allowed to live by the seaside?"  "Um...no."

Boss Annette can't work late tonight, because she's meeting her son for dinner, and she has to get the company car refitted for his wheelchair.  What a coincidence -- Kevin  had to get his car refitted for his mother-in-law's wheelchair!  Uh-oh, Hannah is out.

Or maybe not: "My brother Dan uses a wheelchair, too.  He's 23."

"My son is 23, too!  Why don't the two of you come to dinner with us tonight!" Setting them up on a date?

It takes a while to become accustomed to using a wheelchair, so Dan will doubtless be awkward and give himself away.

Scene 5: Dan falls head-over-heels in love with the son, Charlie, who is a video game developer -- his dream job! And Charlie is impressed by the jokes that everyone else hates.  Dan asks him out on a date:

"Sorry, I have a basketball game tomorrow night, but you can come and watch.  We're playing in the semis."

"I've got a semi right now!" Thanks for sharing, buddy.

Charlie is played by David Proud, who uses a wheelchair in real life.  He is famous for his role as Adam Best, a snobbish Oxford student, on EastEnders, and is heterosexual in real life.

Back at dinner, Dan explains how he had the "accident" that led to his needing a wheelchair: he was jet-skiing in Puerto Rico with this smokin' hot supermodel, and they were making out, and...dude, I don't care if your bi, but you won't attract gay men by talking about ladies with incredible bodies.

Scene 6: Boss Annette invites Heather to a business weekend, where they will be staying "in a hotel" (tell me more, tell me more)

Cut to Dan and the wheelchair basketball team in a bar after the game (hey, no fair -- I wanted to see some of the game).  He asks Charlie to stay with him "for the rest of my life."  Too soon, dude!

Random n*de guy who uses a wheelchair on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Then Dan  invites Charlie for a sleepover: "Of course, we won't be doing much sleeping!"  Charlie balks, a straight dude not realizing that Dan has been hitting on him, so he backtracks "Because we'll be watching films and stuff, not s*x."

More after the break

"No Good Deed": Four lesbians, a gay realtor, a gay son, Oedipus, some murderers, and Phoebe from "Friends"

   Link to n*de Luke and Denis

Braxton Alexander recommended No Good Deed, a Netflix tv series, so presumably he's in it. The trailer shows Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Lisa Kudrow (Friends) spying on the couples interested in buying their house, no doubt planning something nefarious.  Plus I thought I saw a lesbian couple, so here goes, Episode 1.1:

Scene 1: Establishing shots of Los Feliz, the gentrified L.A. neighborhood. near Dodger Stadium. A Spanish Colonial house for sale.  The swishy real estate agent (Matt Rogers)  tells various couples that the homeowner is very invested in selling, while Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow watch on their cell phone.  Uh-oh, they're up to no good.  Are they trying to find the perfect buyer to kill?

There are four stories, not interconnected, so I'll go through each separately:

The Soap Star:A scary unshaven guy with dark glasses signs his name in the register as John Smithe, but he's not a villain, he just plays one on the soap opera Rising Tides.  A shady handyman who cheated on his stepdaughter and was killed off. The first incest reference.  There will be more.

He's played by Luke Wilson, left.

Later, high-heel shoes enter the house.  I hate that cinematographic cliche.  Then a woman's back, like it will be a big shock when we finally see her face.   Gasp!  It's someone I never saw before!  What a shock!

Swishy Real Estate Agent Greg criticizes her for being a Lookie Louise, looking at houses but never buying one, but her real name is Margo.  

Ray and Lisa, watching from their secret lair, criticize her purse: "She looks like an AI-generated bitch."   They definitely don't want to sell to her, unless she pays cash: "Then I will bend over and take the cash up my *ss," Ray says.  

Cut to the Soap Star talking to his manager on the phone. Back story: he's so deeply in love with his wife that he bought her an expensive house, some cars, and a boat, and now he's going bankrupt. But he can't help it: she wanted them, so what else can he do?  "Maybe buy a house you can afford?"  So that's why he was looking at the Spanish Colonial.

In bed, John's overbearing, painfully elitist, super-snob wife turns out to be high-heel Margo!  They discuss why Ray and Lisa are selling their house. 

Oedipus: A m-f couple, the man O.T. Fagbenle, the woman an architect and highly pregnant, tour the kitchen.  They discuss how much they love each other and smooch a few dozen times until Mom tells them to knock it off.  Way to go, Mom!  

She also complains that they didn't have a wedding, when her son has dreamed of it since he was a kid.  Really?  I thought just girls planned their weddings.  When I was a kid, I was imagining my future career as an astronaut or Indiana Jones-style archaeologist.

Cut to Oedipus and Mom staking out the house.  Mom complains that they used to spend every moment of the day together, but now she sees him barely twice a year.  He explains: she used to be his whole world, his reason for living, but then he fell in love with someone else.  Be thankful for twice a year, Mom.  Some guys don't want to see their ex-lovers at all.

What's going to happen when the baby comes, and they both need to work?  They'll need someone to stay home with the baby, hint hint.  Dude, don't hire your mother/ex lover as your nanny!  She'll try to murder your wife to get you back.

In their next scene, Oedipus tells his wife that they can't afford the house on his novel royalties and her architecture, so why not have Mom chip in?  She is loaded.  Of course, she'll want to live with them.   Wife hates the idea.  Her husband's ex-lover, right there in the house with them? 

The First Lesbian Couple: Leslie, forceful and practical, and Sarah, quiet and mystical, examine the upstairs.  Sarah thinks it's "more of a family house," and it has a "dark vibe." 

They find a locked door.  It leads to the room where Ray and Lisa are hiding out and spying on everyone.  So, they're going to murder whoever buys the house?

On the way out, Practical Leslie is ready to make an offer, but Mystical Sarah doesn't want to spend all their money.  Besides, the neighborhood has a dark vibe.

Back story: They've been trying to get pregnant with IVF, but it doesn't work.  

That night, Practical Leslie drives through the neighborhood to prove that it is safe.  She sneaks into the garden of the house, planning to climb to the secret room's window and look inside, but instead she sets off the security alarm and the sprinklers.  Hiding in the bushes, she sees Homeowner Ray hide a gun in the piano. 

Meanwhile, at home, Mystical Sarah injects herself with something in secret.  She's either dying or a drug addict.

 The Second Lesbian Couple:  In bed, they discuss the house:  They could fix it up, put in a pool, and make a fortune off it.  They hatch an evil scheme to get it for under market value, and smoochify. 

More secrets after the break

"Shardlake": Murder in Tudor England, with a limb-different Sherlock Holmes and a lot of queerbaiting

There are three reasons that Shardlake, a four-episode tv series on Hulu, gives me bad vibes.

1. It is set during the reign of Henry VIII.  Maybe in British schools you get lectured on this every year, but all I know about Henry VIII is that he broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, married a lot -- I'm related to Ann Bolyn -- and was played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, William Cecil, and William Paulet straight.

2. Do you know what a "shard" is in America?

3. It stars Sean Bean, who I thought was Mr. Bean, the annoying Borat-like character. Turns out that Sean Bean has no connection to Mr. Bean. He played Boromir in The Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.  Might as well give it a try.

Prologue: Crows cawing at a gloomy looking monastery.  Sinister looking guy goes down the stairs, crosses the courtyard, unlocks a door, and heads down to the basement -- where a knight slices off his head!

Scene 1: Hunky guy with a upper-body limb difference washes, shows a little chest, gets dressed.  He tells an off-camera Matthew, no doubt his boyfriend, that he's "ready for whatever the day brings."

No boyfriend: he's Matthew Shardlake, talking to himself.

Shardlake is played by Arthur Hughes, left, who is limb-different in real life. He has appeared in a lot of Doctor Who movies, starred in the soap The Archers, and played Richard III.

Meanwhile, a young guy gallops across the countryside for five minutes.  You assume that he's going to be a main character, but he delivers a letter and vanishes from the story.  

It's for Lord Cromwell.  Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded.   

Bad news: "My representative!  My voice!  This cannot go unpunished!"  They must have murdered his representative in the monastery.

Scene 2:  Shardlake snarls through town.  People jump out of his way and cross themselves in fear. He stops to watch a magical parrot say "God save King Harry," but condemns it as a trick.  Harry is Henry VIII. 

A guy tries to pick him up.  After substantial flirtation, he admits that he's actually summoning him to see Lord Cromwell.  He seems to like-like Shardlake.  Maybe a gay-subtext is brewing.

He's Jack Barak, played by Anthony Boyle, left.

 There's been a murder, "a friend of yours. Poor Lord Singleton." Robin Singleton, fictional, sent by Lord Cromwell to investigate the Monastery of St. Donatus, also fictional.  

Scene 3: Their meeting.  Lord Cromwell is in a mood. Back story: Ann Bolyn was executed a few months ago.  This is the fall of 1536.   He shows Shardlake two skulls of Saint Barbara confiscated from monasteries to demonstrate how monks lie about everything, and has him read the letter revealing the murder.

His assignment: They're going to start closing monasteries, confiscating their wealth, and passing it out to the nobility.  But you can only close them if you can prove that the monks are "papists, thieves, or sodomites."  Aren't monks all Roman Catholics, so papists by definition?  That's what Robin Singleton was researching.  So Shardlake must discover who killed him, hopefully a monk, and get on with the investigation of monastic evil.

Jack is assigned to accompany Shardlake.  Being a misanthrope, he doesn't want any traveling companions, but it's an order from Lord Cromwell. Maybe they'll fall in love.

Scene 6: While snarling through town, Shardlake encounters a tough, who tells him to go into that house and up the stairs, then disappears from the story.  Grr.

He meets with Lord Norfolk, Thomas Howard, the uncle of Ann Bolyn. He's my great-great-great, etc. grandfather!  

An opponent of Lord Cromwell, Norfolk wants to know why Shardlake was cozying up to him.  "I'm to investigate a murder at St. Donatus, and then close the monastery so Lord Cromwell can confiscate its wealth." Norfolk disapproves: "It is theft in the name of God."

Norfolk is played by Peter Firth, left, who showed us his equipment in Equus, but is now 70 and a bit crotchety.

More crotchety guys after the break