"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 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.

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 (literally), like running a hand-cranked fan or breaking in people's shoes.

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 orphanages.  If he were to conduct an exorcism, he would be back in the spotlight again.  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.  They 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: Andrés is pressured by his family to marry his trophy boyfriend (so his cookie empire can be combined with their chocolate empire).

Renaldo is pressured by his mother to get a girlfriend, even though he has explained that he's not interested in women.

Ursula, who is interested in women, has any number of hookups.

Tati keeps expecting the guys she meets on dating apps to look like their photo.

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

My grade: A+

"The Almighty Johnsons": Norse Gods Kissing Girls in New Zealand

On the eve of his 21st birthday,  Auckland boy Axl Johnson (Emmett Skilton) and his mates are out buying beer, when they stop to watch a meteor shower.  Suddenly a car almost runs him over.  A lady emerges to "apologize" (the viewer sees that it was intentional).  Instead of yelling "You stupid bitch, watch where you're going!", Axl flirts with her and invites her to his party.

Next scene: Axl's older brother Mike (Tim Balme) and his wife emerge from their house to look at the meteor shower.  They discuss lovey stuff and hug and kiss.  

Two establishing-that-they-are-heterosexual scenes in a row? 

But...The Almighty Johnsons, on Amazon Prime, got good reviews.  A mythological-fantasy-comedy, an amiable take on the old "supernatural beings living among us" trope.  It's set in New Zealand, which automatically makes it interesting.  And the tiniest of googles of the cast members reveals countless beefcake photos.  I'll keep going.

Next scene: Axl's quiet, shy brother Ty (Jared Turner)  is being rejected by a girl, who wants to be "just friends."  

Ok, I get it.  He's not gay, either.  Geez, do you have to shove it down my throat?

Next scene: Axl's final brother Anders (Dean O'Gorman) is kissing a girl.

Really?  Four of them?  Is this heterosexual porn?  Five seconds of Norse gods stuff, ten minutes of sex?

Apparently so.  The next three scenes:

1. Axl is having sex with the woman from the car accident, when they are interrrupted by an earthquake.

2.Mike is having sex with his wife, same thing.

3. Anders is having sex with the girl, same thing.  The girl jumps up from the bed.  Naked girl butt.

Lord have mercy!  I'm outta here!

If you have the stomach to continue, you'll find Axl's improbably buffed grandpa having sex with a girl (of course!), then tearing himself away long enough to tell Axl that he is the reincarnation of the Norse god Odin.  

All of his family, and a good number of his mates, are also reincarnated Norse gods, but Axl is the Chosen One: he is destined to find the reincarnation of Frigg, his wife back in Asgard, and thus restore the gods to power.

That's right, it gets even worse: the goal of the quest, the theme of everyone's dreaming, is the Everlasting Feminine.

There are apparently some gay and bi characters, such as Bryn (John Leigh), an exceptionally short giant, and Jacob (Arthur Meek), an exceptionally tall dwarf, the adopted parents of Axl's flatmate/girlfriend Gaia.  Or maybe they're just pretending to be gay to fit in.  The plot synopsis is confusing.

And Zeb (Hayden Frost), Axl's other flatmate, a mortal who isn't aware of the Big Secret.  Or at least he dates girls only when under a spell.

Again, the plot synopsis is confusing.  And I'm definitely not sticking around to find out.

The Top 3 Hunks of "Star Trek: Voyager"

I'm being forced to watch Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001):  the aptly-named starship goes off in search of Maquis rebels, when both are zapped to the other side of the galaxy, 70,000 light years from home.  The crews are quickly integrated, and they sent out on the 40 year long journey back.  En route, they encounter various species that are depressingly identical to us.  Some of the murder-mystery episodes  could be sent in modern day Los Angeles with almost no changes in dialogue.

No gay characters or references to same-sex desire, or even many gay subtext.  When fans suggested one, the actors vehemently denied it.  I still remember a TV Guide article in which Jeri Ryan, who played the ex-cyborg Seven of Nine being humanized by Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), yelled that "Middle America" wasn't ready for gay characters.  This some 20 years after a gay character starred on Soap.

Heterosexist "when a man and a woman fall in love" rhetoric occurs with depressing regularity, and one of the male characters is an annoying horndog who actually dates twins, "The Delany Sisters."  Remember when Fonzie used to date the Del Rubio Triplets?

Well, what about beefcake?  One of their favorite hangouts is a Caribbean resort holodeck program, where the speedo-clad men are hidden in the background, behind the bikini babes.  And the main cast:

1. Robert Beltran (top photo, although he looks more buffed in his Starfleet uniform) as Chakotay, one of the Maquis rebels who becomes second in command on Voyager.  A Native American, he is always talking about ancestral wisdom and going on vision quests.  He's got a thing for Captain Janeway.

2. Robert Duncan McNeill (second photo) as Tom Paris, a young pilot who was sprung from a New Zealand prison to serve on Voyager (I'm not sure what his crime was).  When he's not piloting, he's having sex. He states that he fought to get a gay-themed episode, and when he directed an episode, he hired gay actor Scott Thompson, but was forbidden from making the character gay.

3. Tim Russ (left) as Tuvok, Star Trek's first black Vulcan character, who is always talking about his wife and kids back home, and getting hit on by alien babes ("I've never met anyone like you before.  So...logical.").''

That's all the shirtless photos I could find.  But the 1990s was before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and selfies, so we can't expect a lot.

Here's the rest of the main cast.  See if you think any of them are cute:

4. Garrett Wang as Harry Kim, an ensign just starting his first job when he's zapped across the galaxy.  Tom Paris big-brothers him and tries to get him laid.  This might suggest a gay subtext, but they're too girl-crazy.

In 1993, Wang played a gay Chinese teenager who shoots his lover in the stage play Porcelain: he notes that playing a gay character "was controversial" at the time.

5. Ethan Phillips under a ton of makeup as Neelix, the ship's morale officer, cook, and comic relief.

6. Robert Picardo (older, chunkier, and balder) as an emergency medical hologram who has to transcend his programming to become the ship's full time doctor.  He also learns about human relationships and hooks up with any number of hologram and alien babes (apparently male holograms have penises).

7.  Manu Intiraymi as Icheb, a Borg  boy adopted by the Voyager crew later in the series.  He hangs out with the son of the omnipotent alien Q, and in a 2015 interview states that it would have been cool to have a gay romance blossom.  But gay teenagers?  In 2000?  No way!

8. Alexander Enberg as Ensign Vorick, a Vulcan crewman who appears in 9 episodes, mostly to get a crush on chief engineer B'Elanna Torres.  Who knew that Vulcans got crushes?

Enberg, who ranks at 51,510 on the website Man Crush Monday, played a gay character in the stage play Big Love (no connection to the tv series).





9.  We're getting down to the 3-, 2-, and 1-episode appearances now, with characters named German S. S. Officer and Leonardo Da Vinci, and lots of aliens with k in their names: Brok'Tan, Donik, Korok,  Kejal, Kelis, Rettik.  Does K make someone sound alien?

I've been working on this for 1 1/2 hours, and it's time for breakfast.  So let's finish up with singer and voice artist Hamilton Camp, who played a Ferengi.  I'd date him.

Cowboy and Indian Toys

When I was a kid in the 1960s, cowboys and Indians were has-beens.  Older kids watched Western tv and remembered six shooters and Davy Crockett hats, but my friends and I played at being spies, Jonny Quest and Hadji, or space explorers.  Still, Indians had a penchant for nudity, like Johnny Crawford and his brother Bobby in Indian Paint (1965), or the god Wisakeha, who Bill and I saw in real life at the Pow Wow in 1969, so when a clueless adult happened to give me a cowboy-and-Indian toy, I made good use of it.

Indian action figures were usually naked except for loincloths, making them the second most reliable source of beefcake in toys (Tarzan was first).

Books about Indians were always good for beefcake photos.

Rock Island was the site of Saukenauk, where Chief Black Hawk ruled over the Sauk and Fox Indians, so his picture was everywhere.  This statue, with a phallic spear extending from his belly,  looked over Chippianoc Cemetery ("City of the Dead" in the Sauk language).  It was lit up with red and blue neon at night.

I got in trouble in school for drawing it in my notebook.  My teacher called it "smut," thinking that the phallic symbol was a real phallus.

I didn't really know who the Lone Ranger and Tonto were, but the idea of cowboy-Indian boyfriends was appealing.  Their arms could be bent, so they could put their arms around each other and kiss.

The 1970s Debacle of "Mrs. Columbo"

Columbo (1971-1979, and many movies thereafter) turned the whodunit on its head.  Instead of a two-fisted man's man detective, Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) is frumpy, disheveled, disorganized.  And the viewer knows who the murderer is; the fun is seeing Columbo outwit them with his scatterbrained persona ("Just one more thing...I can't understand how...")

Columbo often mentions his wife, a frumpy, disheveled, middle-aged housewife cooking pasta fazool in the kitchen and saying "Bring your sweater, it's cold outside."

So, the suits at NBC thought, wouldn't it be fun to have Mr.s Columbo solving some murders of her own?

Who did they cast as the frumpy, disheveled, middle-aged housewife cooking pasta fazool in the kitchen?  Glamorous, elegantly-attired  24-year old soap star Kate Mulgrew, later to become Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager and Red on Orange is the New Black

WTF?  There is no way on Earth that Kate Mulgrew could be the Mrs. Columbo described in the series. Al Molinaro from Happy Days would make more sense, and have a lot more chemistry with Peter Falk.

Fortunately, Mr. Columbo never appeared in the series.  That would have been a painful interaction.

Mrs. Columbo premiered on February 28, 1979, a Thursday night, up against Barnaby Jones (an old person solves crimes) and Family (angst).

The plot was hackneyed: Kate overhears her neighbor plotting to murder his wife (Didn't I Love Lucy it, and before that My Favorite Wife on radio?  )

Next episode: the author of a book on perfect murders is accused of murder.  Why is Kate investigating this?  Why not call her husband, who, you know, is like a real detective?

After two episodes of horrible ratings, the suits realized that they had made a mistake, and tried to divest Mrs. Columbo from Columbo.

On March 15th, 1979, the show was suddenly called Kate Columbo, and a line added to the script explaining that Kate was divorced from Lt. Columbo.  That was fast! 

The plot: A ventriloquist's dummy is commiting murder.  Seen it!

The ventriloquist is played by Jay Johnson, who starred in Soap.

Two more episodes of atrocious ratings (a caterer plans to murder her husband, a psychic is accused of murdering her husband), and the show was yanked.

The suits reasoned that the problem couldn't be the cliched plots and horrible writing.  It must be Columbo. 

So when the show returned on October 18. 1979, it was called Kate the Detective.  No mention of Columbo, and Kate has a new ex-husband. Philip.  She works for a newspaper, which gives her an opportunity to actually investigate cases rather than overhearing someone plotting murder.  And 1970s hunk Don Stroud joins the cast as Lt. Varick, a police officer for Kate to bat ideas off of.

Did that help the ratings?  Nope.  Maybe the fact that Kate wasn't actually a detective?

After five episodes, the show was retooled again, and appeared on November 22nd (Thanksgiving Day) as Kate Loves a Mystery. Better -- maybe a sort of Murder, She Wrote?

Nope.  A candidate for Congress is accused of murder, but didn't do it.  A psychologist conducting sensitivity training classes is accused of murder, but didn't do it.

How about we just call the whole thing off?

Three more episodes of Kate Loves a Mystery aired.  13 episodes total under 4 titles.  That's got to be a record.

Kate Mulgrew is a gay ally: "I'm flattered to be a lesbian pin-up," she says in 2017.  "Lesbians loved Janeway."

No other gay connection that I can find.  But wasn't the whole debacle wacky?

See also: Peter Falk: When Columbo Played Gay

Justin Morrit, the Guy Who Shared Rob Lowe

Have you seen the famous Rob Lowe sex tape?  It depicts then-Brat Pack star Rob Lowe and a friend having sex with two women in a hotel room in Atlanta in 1988, on the night before the Democratic National Convention.

Only one of the women appears on the tape, plus Rob Lowe and his friend.

I didn't know that heterosexuals had the West Hollywood custom of "sharing."

They don't do anything specifically with each other, but one assumes that they did off-cameras.

Unfortunately, the tape doesn't show much of the second guy other than a muscular silhouette.  This is a better picture.

Not a bad boyfriend candidate.  I can see why Rob invited him to Atlanta.







His name is Justin Moritt.  He doesn't have any credits on IMDB before 1988, so I don't know how he and Rob met.  Since then he's worked as a production assistant, then a production manager, and finally a producer, of films like Ghost (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995).

 He was married to actress Krista Allen from 1996 to 1999.

They have a son, Jake Moritt, born in 1997, now working as a production assistant.

According to his Facebook page, Justin likes Tim Allen, Radiohead, bodybuilder Casa Wilson, and the Marani Hair Salon in L.A.

When you search Google Images for "Justin Morrit," this picture pops up of a tall guy with a tattooed nipple and his pants falling off.  Obviously not our Justin Morrit, but maybe a relation.

And some pictures from one of Rob Lowe's many on-screen homoerotic relationships, this one with Doug Savant in Masquerade (1988).

Is this what was going on in the hotel room in Atlanta that night?

See also: Mario's Date with Rob Lowe

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.

The Gay Tease of "Sinfonia"

I don't know what Sintonia is about -- the title means "Tune" in Portuguese -- but Netflix keeps recommending it to me with a picture of a stunningly beautiful teen idol type with frosted hair and a lot of feminine jewelry -- obviously gay.  So I go through it on fast forward to see if the character is actually gay.

Episode #1:  Two friends from a poor neighborhood of São Paulo have Big Dreams: Nando wants to become a singer, and Doni, to become a drug dealer.  That's right, both are presented as honorable professions.  They sit across a table and give each other longing looks.

A gay couple?  So far, so good.

Their other friend is Rita.

Episode 2:  Nando gets upset when someone steals his music, and Doni gets in trouble with the police.  Who would have guessed?  Meanwhile Rita finds religion.

Episode 3: Nando becomes a success, and it goes to his head, and Doni defends a fellow drug dealer.  Rita is still religious, saying things like "God has a plan for you."

No sex scenes yet, no hetero-romance of any sort -- a good sign.

And we get the first scene of Nando in a swimsuit, in a pool with his boyfriend (I assume) and no one else.  Unfortunately, Netflix will not permit me to take a screen shot.

Episode 4: Nando overcommits to singing gigs, and Doni fears for his life after a drug deal goes badly.  We see him with his shirt off, briefly.

Still no sex scenes or hetero-romance. But Nando and Doni have only a few scenes together, like two friends catching up on the latest gossip: "And then he said....so I told him...."

Episode 5: Doni  has sex with a girl backstage.

 Wait -- he's straight?   And they wait until the 5th of 6th episodes to let viewers know?   What a tease!

But at least he doesn't perform the sex scene convincingly.  It looks like they're trying to eat each other.  Not much experience in kissing girls, Doni?

Meanwhile  Nando is in trouble, and Rita is still religious.

Episode 6: Who cares what Doni the Gay Tease does?

Nando is rewarded by his drug cartel, and Rita is still religious.

Sinfonia turns out to be a dud.

Doni, the stunningly beautiful Gay Tease, is played by MC JottaPê  (João Pedro Carvalho), a 19-year old telenovela star turned singer, known for "Sentou e gostou" ("I sat down and liked it").

His music videos mostly show him dancing with lots of scantily-clad girls, drinking champaign, and showing us money.

His Instagram contains a lot of photos of girls, plus a couple of shirtless pics.

Here he sticks out his tongue for the camera (I forget what it means, but it's common in selfies).  The caption reads "I am from Tommy, my girl of Oakley."

I'm guessing he's heterosexual.

Nando is played by 19-year old actor Christian Malheiros, who has done a lot of stage work and starred in Socrates (2018), about a gay teen left alone after his mother's death.  He can't stay with his homophobic father, so he tries living on his own, and ends up in a romance with his boss.

His instagram doesn't have any photos of girls, but here's one of his biceps and bulge.

I'm guessing gay.

"No Good Nick": The Gay Kid Comes Out

Kamala Epstein played a gay kid on The Fosters, so naturally I was going to watch his new Netflix sitcom, No Good Nick (2019-) Even though it also stars former Sabrina the Teenage Witch Melissa Joan Hart, who is a conservative Christian and reputedly homophobic.

The premise: Nick is a 13-year old girl (Siena Adugong) who shows up on the doorstep of a nuclear family claiming to be a long-lost relative.  Mom and Dad (Sean Astin,  Melissa) immediately drop everything and welcome Nick into the family, and their 13-year old daughter Molly is delighted at the prospect of a new sister, but 15-year old Jeremy (Kamala) is suspicious.

And for good reason.  Nick is a con artist, running various scams for her father in prison (Eddie McClintock), with  the ultimate goal of destroying her new foster family.  Dad, in turn, has a secret agenda of his own, so basically it's scammers all the way down.

As I began watching, I noticed something unusual about Jeremy.  Most teenage boys on sitcoms talk like this:  "Good morning, Mom. Girls!  Good morning, Dad. Girls!  What's for breakfast?  Girls!  I have a test in school today. Girls!  It will help me get girls. Girls!"

Jeremy didn't mention Girls, didn't gaze at the It-Girl from across the hall, didn't scheme to meet any or win any.  Nothing.  Not a glimmer of heterosexual interest.    His main plot in the first season invloved running for Student Council President against the ultra-popular Lisa Hadad (transgender actress Josie Totah), who also didn't have any hetero-romantic interests.  Or same-sex interests, for that matter.

Ultra-popular, but no boyfriend or girlfriend?  What kind of high school is this?

At first I concluded that Jeremy must be asexual.  Surely he couldn't be gay, not in a series starring Melissa Joan Hart!  But in the second season, third episode, Nick catches him kissing a boy!

"I want to come out my own way," he admonishes her.

Nick, who is full of secrets, agrees to keep his.

In Episode 8, Jeremy plans a complex coming-out performance, with powerpoint presentation, and Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out," which of course turns into a disaster.  But he manages to convey the main idea.

The word "gay" is never spoken, and there are no more references to Jeremy's gayness.  It has a 1990s "problem of the week" feel.

But there are so few gay teenage characters on tv -- so few gay men of any age -- that I'll take what I can get.

Especially in a tv series starring Melissa Joan Hart.

"The Boys": Superheroes, Homophobia, and the Girl of His Dreams

The Boys, on Amazon Prime, has been promoted and double-promoted a theatrical experience far superior to anything you have ever experienced before, the best tv series of all time -- no, the greatest work of art ever created in the entire history of humankind.

After all that, if it's just the best thing I've ever seen, it will be a letdown.

But it's free with your Prime membership, and maybe some of the Boys are hot, so...

It starts off promising, with two teenage boys discussing penises, then grabbing at each other when they are nearly killed by a runaway truck and taken hostage, saved by superheroes.

But then we get down to the main plot, about electronics-store nebbish Hughie (Jack Quaid, left) and The Girl of His Dreams, who is killed to provide character motivation.

Yawn.  Haven't I heard this a thousand times before? Action heroes ALWAYS have dead wives, or else estranged wives to reconcile with.  It's disgustingly heterosexist.

Since a superhero killed The Girl, Hughie becomes an anti-superhero vigilante, teaming up with Billie Butcher (Karl Urban, left), whose  -- you guessed it --was also killed by supes.

Wait -- two dead Girls of Their Dreams?  That's two too many.  I give up and read the plot synopsis instead.

 They start a vigilante band, The Boys.

1. Hughie
2. Butcher

3. Mother's Milk (Laz Alonzo, left)
4. Frenchie (Tomer Capon)
5. The Female (Karen Fukuhara), the only Boy who has super powers.  The others get by with paralyzing gas and computer bugs.

The superheroes, created by an evil corporation when they were babies, are all arrogant, self-serving, and corrupt, not above causing the disasters they save people from.  The main group is called The Seven for merchandising purposes:

1. Homelander (Antony Starr, left)
2. Starlight (Erin Moriarty)
3. Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), who is a lesbian ("The first canonical gay superhero!").

Note: I am told that she's not a lesbian at all.  Apparently the Wikipedia article naming another character as her ex-girlfriend was in error.

4. A-Train (Jesse T. Usher, left)
5. The Deep (Chace Crawford)
6. Black Noir (Nathan Miller)

7. Translucent (Alex Hassel, left).

Well, at least the show is equipped in the hunkoid department

Other superheroes of interest are:

8. Mesmer (Haley Joel Osment, who often plays gay characters).

9. The evil Ezekial (Shaun Benson), "a closeted homosexual."  Is this the 1950s?  When did we go back to the term "homosexual" to describe a gay person?  Are we going to start using old, offensive terms for racial minorities, too?

The episode plot summaries are extremely complex, but there seems to be a lot of sex and violence.  Both the Boys and the Supes are morally suspect; not a "truth and justice" type among them.

I'm not willing to find out.  The origin story about the death of not one but two Girls of Their Dreams turned me off, and the  homophobic "closeted homosexual" slur sealed the deal.

If only they had stuck to the gay-subtext buddy-bonding boys in the first scene.