"A Million Little Things": A Million Little Tearjerkers, One Gay Kid

 

A Million Little Things appeared on my Hulu recommendations, so I started researching, and discovered that I reviewed it two years ago:

"They say that friendship isn't a big thing -- it's a million little things."  I never heard that saying until it was used as the title of a tv series on Hulu about a group of elite, entitled, self-absorbed young adults "dealing with life's curveballs."  

So, is A Million Little Things a Friends clone?  Remember: Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA.   

Nope. The episode synopses reveal angst, pain, and trauma ad nauseam.  This is a major tearjerker!

Let's see how many terrible things happen to the friends.

1. Jon (Ron Livingston) starts the chain of angst by killing himself in the first scene.  Trying to determine his motive fuels some of the plot. Well, there's some shady business deals, and a woman he had an affair with, who shows up with a teenage son in tow.

And his daughter, Sophie, is sexually abused by her music teacher.

 His widow, #2. Delilah, was having an affair, and got pregnant by: 

3. Eddie (David Giutoni, top), an aspiring musician and recovering alcoholic, is cheating on #4: his wife Katherine, a lawyer.

Jon and Delilah's son Danny (Chance Hurstfield) is gay, and a drama club kid (of course).  For a change of pace, his biggest angst is worrying that his first kiss will be with a girl on stage (he's been cast as Danny in Grease) instead of with a boy.

#5. Rome (Romany Malco, left), an aspiring filmmaker, is suffering from drug addiction.  He is dating Gina, who is suffering from financial woes. 

Rome's wife, #6 Regina, is traumatized by being sexually assaulted by her uncle Neill at age 12, so she tracks him down, but he dies before she can confront him. Her mother is also a victim.  

#7 Gary (James Roday), a breast cancer survivor, is dating fellow cancer survivor #8 Maggie, whose cancer returns and gives her six months to live.  She dumps him because she doesn't want a boyfriend at her deathbed

Later, Gary starts dating Floriana, a soldier suffering from PTSD.

Maggie, by the way, has brother, Chad, who died in a car crash due to DUI.  Eric (Jason Ritter) shows up, claiming to have Chad's transplanted heart, but he actually has his sister's.  She died in the car crash, too.

Keeping track?  I counted 18 tearjerkers.  And I skipped over some of the boring "stalled music career" and "can't get a bank loan to open my ritzy restaurant" woes

The Land of Ziggy Zaggy

 

When I was in kindergarten, first, and second grade, we lived in Racine, Wisconsin, 70 miles north of Chicago.   I have only a few memories from that period: going to the beach a few blocks from our house, going to the zoo, marrying the boy next door, my second grade teacher making me stand in the corner for refusing to square dance (she wouldn't believe that it was forbidden for Nazarenes, and at the age of 7 I was in no position to ask the preacher to telephone her).

And a very weird memory of my Dad being proud of me for watching a children's tv program.

Dad was in his late 20s, just out of the Navy, rather athletic, a stalwart Democrat and an avid Nazarene.  He worked on the assembly line at the J. I. Case Company, a job he would keep for the next 30 years.

The memory is vague:  Dad is sitting on the couch, half reading the newspaper, half snoozing, so he must have just gotten home from work, around 4:00 pm.  My brother and I are watching tv.  

Mom comes in from the kitchen and asks "What do you want to watch now?  Romper Room?"

"No," I say.  "The Land of Ziggy Zaggy."

Dad looks up.  "Ziggy Zaggy?  What kind of kookie show is that?"

Mom changes the channel, and we see a woman walking onto the stage, singing about the mystical land.

Dad laughs.  "Ok, I get it now!  You're starting early, just like your old dad!  A chip off the old block!  Come up here and sit by me."

I sit on the couch, and he puts his arm around me.  I'm thrilled.  Dad is usually kind of critical,but today I'm a chip off the old block!  I did something right, something that made him proud of me. But what?

50 years later, I don't remember anything about the show except for a woman singing an invitation to visit "The land of Ziggy Zaggy."  That title doesn't exist, but after a few searches on alternates (zaggo, zongi, zuggi), I found it:

It was a local Chicago children's program, The Land of Ziggy Zoggo. Also called The Nancy Berg Show, after the host.  

There's a full episode on youtube.  Very amateurish, painted backdrop for a set, only one performer.  Three sketches, about 5 minutes each.

1. Miss Nancy visits a Middle Eastern country, where she meets a Go-Go Genie (herself) selling magic carpets in a parody of talky used-car salespeople.  She buys the carpet, but it doesn't fly!  She criticizes herself for being conned, then kicks the carpet.  Now it works!  She then flies through the clouds while singing. 

2. The kimono-clad Miss Sukayaki (Nancy again), with a stereotyped "Ah so" accent, goofs on the  "ancient Japanese custom of flower arrangement." 

3. Miss Nancy flies a balloon to the African jungle to show film footage of various animals: a rhinocerous, a lion, a leopard.

No beefcake, no buddy-bonding, actually no male characters, but the exotic locations must have been appealing to me as a kindergartener.  And maybe the hint of social satire: you may get conned by a fast-talking salesperson.

But why was Dad so pleased?  Why was I "starting early" and a "chip off the block" for wanting to watch The Land of Ziggy Zoggo?

After watching the episode, I conclude that he was pushing heteronormativity at  me.  He assumed that, at the age of  4 1/2, I was crushing on Miss Nancy.  

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Ask any male boomer when he realized that he was gay, and he’ll most likely say when he saw Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). I saw it in the spring of 1968, on the family’s brand new color tv set.

The plot is obviously a version of Robinson Crusoe: after crash landing on the frigid Red Planet, astronaut Kit Draper (Paul Mantee) builds a cave habitat so warm he can walk around shirtless or in a tight-black t-shirt, displaying an amazingly buff, hairy chest.

He has food, water, and a pet monkey, but he is intensely lonely. Then an alien mining company establishes a beachhead nearby, and he helps himself to one of their slaves. “I prayed for a companion,” Kit exclaims, “And I finally got one!” 

Somewhat Aztec in appearance, “Friday” (Victor Lundin) is so accustomed to the Martian cold that he can comfortably walk around in nothing but a kilt, displaying a massive, sculpted body, with golden skin, thick arms and shoulders, and a smooth, hard chest.

The two men are extremely physical in their interaction. Shortly after they meet, Kit takes Friday’s hand and places it on his own knee, an image that is intensely intimate and sensual. Kit is buried in a shower of space debris and nearly suffocates, and Friday rescues him. As they walk away, Kit wraps his arm around Friday’s waist.  At the end of the movie, they are rescued, and go back to Earth together, permanent partners.

Who would produce such a film, about two men who love each other and build a home together, in the dark homophobic days of 1964?

This was Paul Mantee’s first credited acting role; he went on to make dozens of two-fisted movies, sometimes with “man” in the title to emphasize the intended audience, such as A Man Called Dagger (1967) and That Man Bolt (1973), and he then settled down to write novels about heterosexual Italian-American adolescents.  And he obviously stayed in shape.

Victor Lundin played a series of Klingons, Indians, savages, and bad guys, and cut some country-western records. Today, on his website, he sells a cd with a song about how much he likes girl-watching.

Neither of the writers seem obvious gay allies, but when we look at the director, Byron Haskin, we find movie after movie set in steaming jungles, where men wear next to nothing and fall into each other’s arms a lot: Man Eater of Kumaon (1948), Tarzan’s Peril (1951), His Majesty O’Keefe (1953), Little Savage (1959). That explains the beefcake; what explains the bonding?

"Los Espookys": Who You Gonna Call?

I've been posting about a lot of disappointing tv series -- gay teases that don't follow through, gushing praise that masks endless boy-girl kissing.  It's high time we get to a series that it's actually good -- interesting, humorous, gay inclusive -- Los Espookys (well, that title could use a little work).

In an unspecified Latin American country, one of those magic-realism places where weird things happen so often that they're normal, Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) creates a horror-themed quinceañera for his little sister.  It is so impressive that his Uncle Tico (Fred Armisen), the world's greatest car parker (he can even park two cars at the same time), suggests that he make a career out of creating horror-themed events.

Renaldo conscripts his best friend, the weird blue haired Andrés (Saturday Night Live writer and Great North boyfriend Julio Torres), into the business.

Andrés is the heir to a chocolate empire, immensely wealthy and powerful (what if they started making sugar-free chocolate? every dentist in the country would be unemployed).

His parents and his bulging swimsuit-clad trophy boyfriend (telenovela star José Pablo Minor, top photo) disapprove of his interest in horror, but he agrees to participate.   

By the way, it's not a subtext: they are a canonical gay couple.

Next they conscript their friend Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti), a Goth dentist's assistant; and her delightfully obtuse sister Tati (Ana Fabrega), who has a variety of odd jobs, like running a hand-cranked fan or breaking in people's shoes. (Welcome to the new economy)

They expect to plan horror-themed parties, but for their first gig, Father Francesco (Luis Grieco), the priest at the local orphanage, complains that his new, hot, hip associate Padre Antonio (Cristobal Tapia Montt), is stealing all the glory...of running an orphanage?  He wants to conduct an exorcism to get back into the spotlight.  So Los Espookys create an exorcism for him.

Next up: a millionaire's dying wish is to give his fortune to whoever can spend the night in a haunted house.  Los Espokys are hired to create the house, and ensure that the millionaire's son does not win.

They have found their niche, creating fake paranormal events: a sea monster for a seaside town to use as a tourist attraction; an alien autopsy for a UFO researcher to show her bosses; a magic mirror for "the American ambassador"; a fake dream for an insomniac.

Along the way they have the usual daily hassles of magic-realism life.

1. Andrés is pressured by his family to marry his trophy boyfriend (so his cookie empire can be combined with their chocolate empire).

2. Renaldo is pressured by his mother to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, even though he has explained that he only wants friends.  He's openly asexual!

3. Ursula, who is a lesbian, has any number of hookups.

4. Tati keeps expecting the guys she meets on dating apps to look like their photo.  So the quirky, odd comic-relief is heterosexual.  

Only 6 episodes, but fortunately Season 2 is already in the works.

My grade: A+