Justin Ellings: Kyle from the awful clown episode of "Modern Family" plays Corey Haim and Sean Giambrone, shows his physique and his d*ck

 

Link to the n*de photos

In Modern Family Episode 11.1 (2019), high school vice principal Cam invites a group of "wayward teens" to his house to gain their trust by being the "cool mentor."  Things go wrong when his beloved, awful clown figurine goes missing, and he accuses them of stealing it, horrifying the viewers and his husband Mitchell with his increasingly vituperative insults: "You're trash! You're garbage!  Everyone has given up on you!"   Finally Mitchell can't stand it anymore, and announces that they are innocent: he threw out the figurine because it was incredibly ugly.  

Then Cam comes clean -- the kids are actually the high school drama club, playing wayward teens to force Mitchell to confess.  

I'm not happy with the plotline.  Seeing Cam lash out was rough.  And why would  you destroy something that your husband valued?  Something that was on prominent display in the living room?  But it was worth it to see  drama club member Kyle, played by Justin Ellings.

19 years old when he filmed the episode.

A Short Guy, 5'6"  Forget the five feet; tell me more about the six inches. 

Endless beefcake photos on his Instagram and Facebook pages. 

Interestingly, Justin's official website shows a map of his location (so you can stalk him?).  He's on Cahuenga just north of Lexington, near my old gym in West Hollywood.  Cue the nostalgic reminiscences of my years in the gay mecca.

Justin grew up in Milwaukee, where he starred in The Music Man (2011) and The Sound of Music (2012) at the Skylight Opera Theatre Center.  He graduated from Arrowhead High School at age 16, then moved to L.A. to pursue his acting career.

His first major acting role was on the Nickelodeon teencom Sam & Cat (2013): he played Jarvis, one of the kids that the former ICarly star and her girlfriend babysit.  According to the fan wiki, Jarvis is gay.

I doubt that a Nickelodeon show would have a canonical gay character, but even if it was subtext, it's a great beginning.  Unfortunately, Justin's characters in other tv programs, on Girl Meets World (2015). Game Shakers (2017), American Housewife (2018), and Wandavision (2021), don't appear in the plot synopses. 

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Justin is primarily interested in stunt work.  He has 33 stunting credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of The Middle, Young Sheldon, 13 Reasons Why (where he was presumably Miles Heizer's b*tt double), 9-1-1, Stranger Things, and The Fabelmans.

 He was Sean Giambrone's stunt double on 19 episodes of The Goldbergs.

More after the break. 

In Bed with Mason Cook

In Speechless, the sitcom about a nonverbal special needs kid and his crazy family, gay people generally do not exist.  I guess you can have only one Special Thing per series.  The only reference to LGBT identities I have seen is, admittedly, a good one:

In a Halloween episode, operator-in-training Ray (Mason Cook) and his sarcastic younger sister Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) change bodies.

Ray in Dylan's body experiences not a hint of macho panic  ("Gross!  I'm a girl!), nor does he spend his time heterosexualizing ("I can see all the boobs I want).  Instead, he enjoys being brainy and popular, and refuses to switch back.

Dylan in Ray's body doesn't enjoy being considered stupid and an outcast, so she seeks advice from their father:  "What do you do when you're trapped in the wrong body?"

Dad, naturally, assumes that "Ray" is coming out as transgender.  "I don't know enough about this to comment," he says, "But your mother and I will always love you no matter..."

Later he tells his wife "I think I'm woke."

The juxtaposition of the old fashioned "trapped in the wrong body" and the contemporary "woke" is jarring, but otherwise the sequence perfectly avoids all of the homophobic and heterosexist jokes one usually finds in "boy turns into a girl" stories.

Naturally, I wanted to know more about Mason Cook, who plays Ray.

18 years old, born in Oklahoma City although he says he's from Arkansas, acting since age 9.    He played the young Jimmy on Raising Hope and Eddie Munster in the Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane,  guested on a lot of Disney and Nickelodeon teencoms, and had recurring roles on Legends and The Goldbergs.  His movie credits include Spy Kids 4, The Lone Ranger, Spy, and some tv-movie tearjerkers. 

More after the break

Quite a full resume for someone of his age.

Extremely progressive in his politics, anxious to take back the country from the alt-right.

Quick to call out homophobia.  Didn't go to see The Ender's Game because the author of the original novel, Orson Scott Card, hates gay people.

In this picture, he is in bed.  But it doesn't look like  a selfie -- the arms are positioned wrong. Someone else took it.

I wonder who was in bed with Mason Cook?

See also: Speechless, Season 2

Mason Cook: The "Speechless" star grows up, turns bohemian-hipster, and shows his biceps and d*ck

Shayne Topp: Nickelodeon teen, Barry's buddy, bodybuilder, sketch comedian who pretends to be gay and have a massive d*ck. We'll see.

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and shows his d*ck

Starfleet Academy: Finally we get to see the fabled space school. But will they explore strange new worlds, or will it be "who's dating who"?

 One of the iconic moments of my childhood was seeing a shirtless Sulu (George Takei) sword-playing his way across the Enterprise while high on alien water on Star Trek (Episode 1.4, "The Naked Time"). I was a big fan of the original series, and occasionally watched The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine: Exploring "strange new worlds" was so intriguing that you could easily ignore the crewmen kissing different alien babes every week, and forgive the utter absence of LGBT persons. 

Sooner or later, viewers were told that every crew member -- without exception -- "graduated at the top of your class at Starfleet Academy."  Apparently the classes were very, very small, and they had ten graduations per year.  

We don't learn much more about the Academy: you have to take a class in "Ancient Mythology and Religion"; they teach the Kobayashi Maru no-win test (save your own ship or a ship full of civilians?); and the entrance exam is staggeringly difficult. Even future space-time voyager Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton, left) and Greatest Captain of All Time Contender Jean-Luc Picard failed on their first try.

So I was excited when I heard that that Paramount Plus would be airing a new tv series, Starfleet Academy.  

The premise: Around 3069, 800 years after the original series, dilithium crystals across the galaxy failed.  That means no faster-than -light travel: everyone was stuck in their solar systems, and Star Fleet (and the United Federation of Planets) collapsed. Now it's around 3300, the crystals have been restored, Star Fleet has returned, and the first class of cadets arrive at Starfleet Academy.  

Maybe we'll see some of those incredibly difficult classes.  There'll be some new species as well as old favorites like Klingons and Romulans, and...

Uh-oh, it looks like we're going to get a major dose of boy-girl romance, and once again the utter absence of LGBT characters. The promo shows three boy-girl couples.

Sam is a Kasquian, a new species: a sort of sentient hologram, only a few weeks old but created as a young adult.  She has to deal with anti-hologram prejudice. The trailer shows her being effervescent and on a date with:

Jay-Den Kraag, a Klingon who wants to become a medical officer. There were evil Klingon villains on Star Trek from the beginning, and allies beginning with Whorf on The Next Generation.

 Jay-Den is played by Karim Diané, who has a femme look here, but is actually straight, bringing the Love of His Life on a vacation to Tulum.

Tarima Sandal, is a Betazoid, the daughter of the president of her planet, who wants to become a starship captain (don't they all).  We've had telepathic Betazoids since Deanna Troi of The Next Generation.

The trailer shows her falling in love with, kissing, on a date with, on a battlefield with, kissing, and kissing:

Caleb Mir: a human outcast/outsider/rebel who hates Starfleet, but the Chancellor promised that if he joined, she would help him find his missing mother.  Why does she care so much?  That appears to be the main mystery of the season.

More after the break

Tyler Alvarez: The "Witch Way" chuy and "American Vandal" p*nis investigator is gay, but wild about girls. With n*de Hispanic dudes.

  

In Ghosts Episode 2.20 (2023), the attic ghost Stephanie, a teenager murdered on her prom night in 1987, learns that her crush Trevor (Asher Grodman) is dating someone else (he's not interested anyway, since she's 17, and he died at age 33).   The irate Stephanie schemes to break up all of the "happy couples" at Woodstone. This doesn't work, of course, and basement ghost Nancy saves the day by introducing her to teenage cholera victim Ralph (Tyler Alvarez).

Wow, cute face and an insouciant tease of a muscular chest. He's getting a closer look.

Tyler was born in 1997 in the Bronx.  His first major screen role was in the Nickelodeon telenovela Every Witch Way (2014-15).  Focus character Emma discovers that she is a witch (and the Chosen One, naturally).  She has various teen angst and Harry Potter-style adventures, and is torn between two boys: the rebellious, "arrogant" wizard Jax (Rahart Adams) and the responsible but human Daniel (Nick Merico)

Tyler plays Diego, a chuy (magical being who can control the Four Elements).  He has an on-off girlfriend, but he also has a gay-subtext buddy-bond with Mac (Mavrick Moreno), at least before the showrunners noticed and wrote him out of the story.

Not a bad start.

Next came The Fosters, about a family of foster and adopted children.  In Season 5 (2018), he played Declan Rivers, an online gamer who starts flirting with Jude (Hayden Byerly), causing tension with his boyfriend Noah (Kalama Epstein).  

American Vandal (2017-18) sounds like it's about the Vandals motorcycle gang, but actually some high school vandals painted p*nises on 27 teachers' cars.  Journalists Peter (Tyler) and Sam (Griffin Gluck) investigate the crime.

I figured that they must have a gay-subtext buddy bond, but according to Reddit, there is an animosity between them, and one turns out to be the culprit.

More after the break