"Waterloo Road," Episode 10.1 or 14.1: "What I did last summer," with a new headmaster, a side piece, dark secrets, and d*cks

Link to the d*cks

Amazon Prime recommends its new teen soap, Waterloo Road, set in a private school in Manchester, England, but they are lying.  When I was looking for Adam Thomas, who plays a private school student in Episode 1.1, I found a  "where are they now" article and a n*de photo of someone in his thirties.

Turns out that it's not produced by Amazon, and it's not new.  It premiered on BBC 1 in 2006, and it is now in Season 15 according to the IMDB, and Season 10 according to Amazon.  That's not just a misdirection, it's two outright lies.  Would you like to read my new novel, "Wuthering Heights"?  I didn't write it, and it came out in 1847, but I just bought a copy, so it's new, and it's mine.

But with those two misunderstandings (lies!) cleared up, I could use some British blokes' physiques, so let's go with Episode 14.1 (2024) according to the IMDB, or 10.1 (2014) according to Amazon.

Scene 1: In a kitchen full of boxes, Mr. Absurdly Clueless,  who is about 90 years old, asks if his suit is ok.  His wife, also around 90,  calls him attractive and kisses him.  He's the new headmaster, and she's an art teacher.  She is concerned that the other teachers will think she got the job just because she's living with him, but he insists that he hired her because she was the most attractive...um, best qualified...applicant.  They kiss another 15 times. Ok, they're heterosexual, I get it.  Can we move on?  I'm already running low on time due to watching the first 15 minutes of Episode 1.1 before figuring out the Amazon misdirections (lies!).

Fortunately, their teenage great-grandchildren come in.  Will they hose the hypersexual oldsters down?

No such luck.  "We're going out to dinner so go wait in the car while your great-grandmother and I grind our body parts together and try to swallow each other's faces."  And they do.

It's 10.1, 2014.  Leo Flanagan, who plays teenage great-grandson Floyd, is now a grown adult with a basket.

Scene 2:  They were lying about going to dinner (learning from Amazon?): all four of them arrive at Waterloo Road School.  Only twelve more goodbye kisses.

Mr. Absurdly Clueless parks himself in front of the school and says "Hello" to everyone entering.  They stare like he's looney, and I have to admit, he is. Go to your office!  Kevin, who uses arm braces, can't escape fast enough, so Absurdly Clueless grabs him and congratulates him on being able to move around without an attendant. Exactly what a disabled person wants to hear.

Apparently it's a new disability: when Kevin enters, everyone applauds.  Absurdly Clueless, thinks that they are applauding him. 

Scene 3: A blond woman asks another teacher, George,  if he's heard from the insurance company yet about the cruise.  Apparently they spent three weeks living in a literal sewer pipe. He is tired of her constant questions about the insurance money, and wants to break up. 

Scene 4: A student walks past garbage bins in the poor part of town and enters a flat with terrible wallpaper.  A woman sneaks in, having been beat up by her boyfriend, and he asks why she keeps dating abusive men.  She gives him some money for dinner and that.   

Cut to the teacher's lounge, where Absurdly Clueless welcomes himself and announces that he will be coming 'round to every class today.  He asks everyone to reflect on why they chose to become a teacher (liberal arts major -- no other jobs available) and why they chose Waterloo Road (was offered a job).

Oh, not just reflect: they have to go around the room and say why they became a teacher and chose Waterloo Road.  I hate it when teachers go around the room and force us to say things.

Suddenly Absurdly Clueless's wife shows up at school -- not the side piece he was swallowing the tongue of earlier -- with his two sons.  One hugs him.  The other, named Justin, hugs the wife.  Who died?

More after the break.

The First TV Tarzan

After doing three Tarzan movies, Mike Henry turned down the opportunity to become the first tv Tarzan, so NBC hired tall, lanky 28-year old Ron Ely (no relation to Rick Ely of The Young Rebels) to play the Lord of the Jungle, and 10-year old Manuel Padilla Jr. as his kid sidekick Jai, and scheduled them on Friday nights in the fall of 1966.  They faced stiff competition from the beefcake-heavy Wild Wild West and the overtly homoerotic Green Hornet and Time Tunnel,  but still they did well.

Comic book and novel tie-ins were ordered, and they were renewed for a second season.

This Tarzan was a crime fighter, battling mercenaries and jewel thieves, tracking down fugitives hiding out in the jungle, making sure that traveling missionaries, scientific expeditions, religious pilgrims, and even circuses got to their destination ok.  There was lots of beefcake, of course, but not a lot of bonding -- Jai was too young, and the jungle was otherwise occupied by male scoundrels and females in need of saving.

Gay kids continued to watch Wild Wild West.

At the end of the second season, Ron Ely, who had been injured dozens of times by the "tame" animals he worked with, called it quits.  The network chopped some of the episodes into movies, and that was the last of Tarzan on tv until 1991.

Ron Ely continued to act on television for many years, and in 1975 he portrayed another legendary hero, Doc Savage, on the big screen.  Later he launched a new career as a writer of hardboiled detective novels.

Manuel Padilla, Jr. continued to play soulful-eyed Hispanic or Indian kids through his teens, in The Flying Nun, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and American Graffiti.  His last role was in Scarface (1983).  He died in 2009.

Santa Clarita Diet, Episode 1.9: A medieval Serbian book, a gay subtext, daddy-twink pics, and maybe Skyler

  

Link to the n*de photos

I haven't reviewed an episode of Santa Clarita Diet for awhile, mainly because the first episode I watched was kind of gross.  Also, after posting reviews of twelve of Skyler Gisondo's movies, four photo collections, and a lot of stuff on Gideon Gemstone, I'm running out of pictures of Skyler with his shirt off. 

The premise: Suburban housewife Sheila has become a zombie.  She's fully sentient, but she lacks impulse control, is unusually horny, and has to eat human flesh.  While looking for a cure, her annoyingly amoral family helps her find victims. Skyler plays the guy who knows their secret, next-door neighbor Eric, who happens to be an expert on zombies.

I'm reviewing Episode 1.9, "The Book," because it involves the search for a medieval Serbian manuscript, and who wouldn't be interested in that? 

Scene 1: While Zombie Sheila bags up human meat for later, Husband Joel (Timothy Olyphant, left) has had a breakthrough: Anton, who owns the Medieval Serbian book that mentions a zombie cure, has finally responded to his emails and texts. He can meet them at a paranormal conference in Oxnard today.

But then a cop appears with daughter Abby, who was arrested for runing a stop sign in a motorcycle with no plates or VIN number, wearing a jacket saying "Pussy Magnet."  Hey, the "Pussy Magnet" is legal. The girl likes what she likes.

Abby is obviously in psychological pain from dealing with the zombie situation, so Sheila will spend the day with her.  Husband Joel can go to the paranormal conference with ally Eric. 

I'll review the two plotlines separately.

Mother-Daughter Bonding

Scene 1: Zombie Sheila and Abby return the motorcycle of a guy she killed to his brother, Lonnie (Alex Scuby), who runs a chop shop out of a storage locker. He took Abby's money but didn't fix her bike, so she wants her money back.  Wait, I thoiugh it belonged to the dead guy? Were there two bikes?

Lonnie tells them that his brother was a "stupid fucking idiot" who ripped people off, so they're out of luck.  He closes the garage-door and won't let them in. He's not responsbile for his brother's debts, ladies.

Left: Alex Scuby has appeared in a porno about two older-younger gay couples who swap partners.

Scene 2: In their storage locker, which is the size of a small apartment, Sheila and Daughter Abby look for something to use to get the money back from Lonnie.  There's teargas that Abby stole from Eric's stepfather before Dad killed him, but Sheila wants to teach Abby a life-lesson and use a non-violent solution: how about Raffi, that annoyingly repetitive kids' singer?  What makes you think Lonnie is still in there?

Scene 3: Hours  of playing and singing along to Raffi later, they give up, but Lonnie yells from inside "Turn Raffi back on!" They decide to tear gas him instead, but when they drop the tear gas canister down the vent, it hits the wrong storage locker!  Two innocent guys rush out.

Scene 4: Abby wants to know why Mom  Sheila is so dead-set, so to speak, on teaching her life lessons.  She explains that she is slowly decomposing, so she won't be around much longer, and has to make sure Abby will be ok.  Aww.

The Paranormal Conference

Scene 1: When Dad Joel arrives to pick up Eric, his mom announces "You have a gentleman caller."   Gay joke, har har.  Embarrassed, Eric tells her to not make everything sexual.    

He asks for advice on how to pack a hoodie, and claims to be upset over Joel murdering his stepfather with a shovel, but he's joking: the guy was an asshole. Is this casual attitude toward murder supposed to be humorous?

Scene 2: At the conference, Eric buys a churro-saber, but it's too long to be phallic.  

When Joel is rejected by the first person he talks to, Eric explains: these are all introverts with low self-esteem, and he scares them away by being too aggressive and too handsome: "with those piercing eyes and perfect posture."  So you think he's hot, Eric? 

Scene 3: They find Anton, Derek Waters, talking to a crowd about government conspiracies: During the 1950s, they exploded thousands of nukes over Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.  In 2012, a man in Florida eats another man's face.  Coincidence?  "If you believe that, I've got a Japanese sex doll to sell you. Unused."  Because he gets so many partners that he doesn't need it?

Nerd Ryan, Ravi Patel, asks about an outbreak of the undead in 19th century Poland.  Yep: Rybik, 1870. Three priests walk into a tavern, and get eaten.

Joel asks about the Medieval Serbian book.  Yep, Pozica, 16th Century.  

More after the break. 

Victor Rivera: Summa cum laude theater arts graduate, LARPer, D&D player, stunt d*ck. With bonus Jesse Eisenberg

 

Link to the stunt d*ck

Have you ever  you started off knowing nothing about a guy except what he had in his pants, and found out about the rest of him later?

Don't answer that.

In Righteous Gemstones Episodes 1.1 and 1.7, a video of Jesse's wild party shows Chad (James Dumont), visible from the belly down, walking to the foreground.  Victor Rivera is James Dumont's body double, actually playing the beneath-the-belt stuff.

So who is Victor Rivera?  I expected a Charleston-area amateur with no acting or minimal acting experience, displaying his stuff as a lark.

But Victor actually graduated from Appalachian State University in 2013, summa cum laude, with a 3.98 GPA, a major in theater and a minor in art.  

After performing in communitiy theater in North Carolina for two years, he moved to Atlanta in  2015  to start his career on screen.

The results: 

23 commercials

A lot of shorts: Safe Words (burglars get more than they bargained for),  Mob Rats (a Mafia informant), Acting Out (theater arts major meets the Girl of His Dreams).

 Guest spots on Swamp Murders, The Uncanny X-Men, Good Girls, and Creepshow

The Tomorrow's Monsters podcast

The tv series D&Me, featuring Victor playing Dungeons & Dragons by himself.

Ten movie roles. The most prominent is Civil War Bearded Guy in Zombieland Double Tap (2019), a sequel to the post-Apocalyptic Zombieland (2009), starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg (left), Luke Wilson, and Thomas Middleditch

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Here Victor notes that in one week he saw Zombieland: Double Tap by himself, twith a group of Atlanta friends, in North Carolina with his family, at the Zombieland Scare Zone at a haunted house in Orlando,  back to Atlanta to see it with Peter (a boyfriend?),  then to a Halloween party where he wore a Zombieland costume.

More after the break.