Among Us: A crew of nonbinary bean-beings face a killer in their midst. With Park's backside, Elijah's junk, Korvo, and Yogi Bear

   

Link to the n*de dudes

Among Us is an adult animation series based on a video game, filmed in 2024 and released on Paramount Plus in 2026.  Showrunner Owen Dennis has been associated with the gay-friendly Regular Show, Infinity Train, and AJ Goes to the Dog Park (and he has Pride wallpaper on his cell phone), so I expect some gay subtexts, or maybe even texts.

The premise: An alien shapeshifter is killing the crew members on the Spaceship Skeld as it travels toward its home planet with a precious cargo.  They have to identify the imposter before it's too late.  

The astronauts are bean-shaped,  about 3.5 feet tall, named after their color (which could present problems in a large group).  They have two legs, no arms, no mouths, floating hands, and large visors that change to express emotions. They are genderless, but they reference hookups and "childbirth," so something like human s*xual activity occurs.  

Since they are nonbinary, the astronauts are all LGBTQ.  But I'm going to gender them through the gender of their voice actors, and check for "same-s*x" desire.

I'm reviewing Episode 1.2, "You Can't Be Hot and Smart," which begins just after the first being, new crew member White (Patton Oswald) , has been sliced neatly in half.  

Scene 1: Everyone screams, retches, slips on the blood. Someone puts a "Wet Floor" notice. They try to notify MIRRA, their company, but comms are down.  Captain Red (Randall Park, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) cautions everyone, "don't panic."

And don't forget your towel (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Then Doctor Blue (Dan Stevens, Korvo on Solar Opposites) arrives, and everyone relaxes, because they inspire confidence.

Scene 2: In the med bay, Captain Red tries to avoid admitting that White was murdered;  maybe it was a work related accident?   Doctor Blue tells them that suddenly being cut in half is quite rare.  They perform some tests. We see swabbing, a petri dish, typing into a computer, and finally they conclude that...White is dead.

Scene 3: Meanwhile, in the cafeteria, everyone agrees that it was a murder. Did White have any enemies?  No, everyone loved them -- except Unpaid Intern Green (Elijah Wood, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) who wanted to steer the ship -- their lifelong dream -- but White stole the job. This aroused their bloodlust!

Green, mopping the floor, claims that they have "no l*st for anything, especially blood."

Scene 4: Captain Red asks Security Officer Purple (Ashley Johnson) to check the security cams for suspicious activity, but they only record in black and white, and without color, you can't tell who is who.  Maybe by costume?

Doctor Blue calls Purple into the medbay for an invasive body scan: they want to compare White's body with every crew member's, to see if the splitting-in-half was caused by an alien pathogen or mutation.  "I won't sleep until I know how to protect the crew!" they announce.

Purple swoons with romantic desire.  M-F voice actors

More after the break

"It's Garry Shandling's Show": Was Garry the world's greatest comedian, bisexual, both, or neither?

I have fond memories of It's Garry Shandling's Show (1986-1990), but it's mostly nostalgia for those heady halcyon days, when I first moved to West Hollywood and everything was fresh and new: brunch at the French Quarter, buying books at the Different Light, cruising at Mugi, Sunday beer-and-soda busts at the Faultline, seeing celebrities at the gym,  and very occasionally visiting someone who had the cable network Showtime for:

This is the theme to Garry's show

The theme to Garry's show

Garry called me up and asked if I would write his theme song

I recall it as pleasant but not remarkable, one of many standup-comic-gets-a-sitcom vehicles from the era.  Garry played himself as a less-successful Seinfeld, with various job and romantic problems.  Sometimes he broke the fourth wall to comment on the situation.   

His George was the nebbish next door neighbor Pete (Michael Tucci), who had a wife and a nebbish teenage son, Grant (Scott Nemes).

His Elaine was "platonic" neighbor Nancy (Molly Cheek), who dated and eventually married Ian McFyfer (Ian Buchanan).

His Kramer was Leonard Smith (Paul Willson), the owner of his condo.

There was a steady stream of other friends and associates, including a lot of Garry's girlfriends, and a lot of celebrities playing themselves: Rob Reiner, Tom Petty, Martin Mull, Red Buttons, Chevy Chase, Norman Fell, Jeff Goldblum, Gilda Radner.

Plots were mostly about "nothing."  Garry babysits.  Garry gets a pet.  Jeff Goldblum visits.

Sometimes they were elaborately self-referential:

Grant wins a trip to Hollywood, where he goes to a taping of his own show.

Grant is accused of beating up a kid at school, but the a member of the studio audience saw what really happened, and tells the principal.

Garry and Pete had a nice gay subtext romance going on, and we all assumed that Pete's son Grant was gay.  Notice his obvious interest in Garry's basket in this shot.

 Like Seinfeld,  he had a "will they or won't they?" love interest and a dumb sidekick, cute next door neighbor  Pete (Michael Tucci).  We all assumed that Pete's teenage son Grant (Scott Nemes) was gay.

The only episode I actually recall involved Grant squashing our gay reading by getting a crush on a girl named Shelby Woo, and serenading her with a song parodying the lyrics of "Hooray for Hollywood."  That character does not appear in the IMDB cast list, so I don't know which episode it was.

After the show ended, I didn't hear anything about Garry Shandling for many years, until word of his death came in 2016.  I assumed that he moved back into stand-up obscurity.

In 2020,  the It's Garry Shandling Book appeared on Amazon.  Oh boy, a small paperback with interesting trivia about the show!  I clicked on "one-click ordering" withou investigating any further. 

More after the break

Callan Farris: The Unsittable Jeremy drops in on Disney teencoms, kisses boys, learns about gigantic d*cks on the darkweb

  

Link to the n*de dudes

This photo on the teen idol site drew my interest. Dude is either gay or pretending. 

His social media offers more photos of the two guys kissing him, plus standard buddies hugging, and no icky girls.  On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, he poses with "I keep my private life a secret, but I'm dating a dude" Pedro Pascal. 

He's Callan Farris,  best known for the Disney Channel teencom Gabby Duran and the Unsittables (2019-21).  13 year old Gabby soon learns that her charges are "unsittable" because they are alien children hiding out as humans. 

Callan plays Jeremy, a shapeless blob who is next in line for the throne of Gor-Monia, on Earth to hide from would-be assassins.  Most of his plots involve misunderstanding human customs, or having his alien powers accidentally cause disasters.  

The episode synopses and fan wikis don't mention any heterosexual interests. But Jeremy considers Gabby's friend Wesley (Maxwell Acee Donovan of  That 90s Show), his "sister" (he doesn't quite understand gendered nouns).  And he is "fond of" Julius (Kheon Clarke), a waiter at the teen hangout.  Sounds like a lot of gay subtext going on.

Callan was born in Los Angeles in 2007.  No other information about his childhood is available, but from his last name ("warrior" in Arabic) and some of his early roles -- Syrian Boy, Kadir Siddiqui, Rafi Elshami -- I'm guessing that he's Arab-American. He started his career in commercials, and moved into television playing "Very Sweet Kid" on a 2016 episode of Dr. Ken.

On the IMDB, Callan lists his "most famous" works as Gabby; Kings (2017), about a family in South Central during the 1990s L.A. riots; a 2018 episode of Grey's Anatomy where Jackson (Jesse Williams, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) treats a boy with cancerous tumors on his scapulae (shoulder blades); and the preschooler series Rocketeer (2019-20)

Two of his pre-Gabby roles have gay content:

In a 2018 episode of The Conners, gay kid Mark goes to the school Halloween party as iconic painter Frida Kahlo, and is turned away for anti-drag reasons.  Callan plays the neighbor boy Kazim. 

In a  2019 episode of Fuller House: Spencer (Kallan) appears in a segment of Wake Up, San Francisco, showing viewers how to up-cycle objects that they would ordinarily throw away, like turning wine bottles into flower vases. He has a love-hate relationship with Max Fuller (Elias Harger, left).

More after the break.  

Finn Bennett: Unexpected beefcake in "Backrooms" leads down a rabbit hole of gay teases. With some n*de Finns and Whishaw backside

 

Link to the n*de photos

Last weekend we saw Backrooms (2026), which  is not about the backrooms of gay bars where you get down with dudes. Based on a creepypasta, it stars Chiwetel Ejofor as Clark, a struggling furniture store owner and failed architect, who stumbles onto an Upside Down: endless yellow-walled office rooms, most empty, some with piles of melting chairs, bloody clothes, a Christmas tree, a mannikin equipped with a recording in Urdu...and misshapen, half-melted humanoids.

Clark recruits his employee Kat and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett), who filmed one of his commercials, to explore with him.  When he knocks on their door, Bobby answers shirtless.

As we have seen with the shirtless parking valets on Suburgatory, unexpected beefcake still has power. .  This screenshot doesn't capture the sudden joy of recognition.  I went home and looked up Finn Bennett.

Preliminary research yielded this photo on his Instagram, with the comment "I'm just a boy who likes to have fun."  I can see that.  

And a Google AI statement that he played a character "implied to be homosexual" in Domina.  

That's enough to start a profile.

I was expecting a recent university graduate with some theatrical experience and a few minor on-screen roles, but it turns out that Finn won the Trophée Chopard at Cannes in 2025, and was named a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International.  

He has his own wikipedia page, and so do his parents:

Ronan Bennett, famous novelist and screenwriter.

Georgina Henry, famous journalist, who died in 2014

Finn was born in December 1999 in Hackney, a rough but rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of East London.  He took acting classes at Stagecoach Performing Arts in Islington, and appeared in a 2013 episode of Top Boy, his dad's show about drugs and gangs in East London.  I know the area very well.

After taking his A-levels in maths, Finn applied to Queen's University, Belfast.  In Britain you have to apply to a field of study, so he found anthropology near the top of the list and figured "that's good enough.  I'll study that."  But then he decided to forego uni altogether in pursuit of an acting career, and worked in pubs and as a landscaper while awaiting his big break.  I'll check the highlights for gay characters.

Four episodes of Liar (2017-20), about a teacher who accuses the guy she went on a date with (Ioan Gruffud) of assault.  He plays Ewen, one of her students.

Finn's ear or his d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Four episodes of National Treasure: Kiri (2018): A black girl is murdered just as she is about to be adopted by a white family.  He plays Simon, the family's teenage son, a suspect (spoiler alert: he didn't do it).

Hope Gap (2019): A husband and wife announce to their adult son (Josh O'Connell) that they're divorcing.  According to the AI, Mom encounters a young man who has just lost his boyfriend, but I don't know if he is Finn's character.

Finn's big break came with the ancient Roman drama Domina (2021): Livia Drusilla struggles to acquire power, eventually becoming the wife of Gaius (Augustus Caesar).   Marcellus (Finn) is forced to marry Gauis' daughter Julia.  Sorry, AI, he's not just "implied," he has an explicitly s*xual realtionship with his slave Aprio (Pedro Leandro).  

The show was criticized for making the only gay character creepy, violent, and "deeply unpleasant." 

His next major role came in Series 4 of the anthology series True Detective (2024),  with Jodie Foster investigating murders in a research station in Alaska.  He plays Peter Prior, her protégé, with a wife and a corrupt cop dad.

In the spy drama Black Doves (2024), Cole Atwood (Finn) is a CIA operative assigned to the British Embassy.  Helen and Sam (Ben Whishaw) think that he murdered the Ambassador, but he turns out to be innocent. Sam is gay (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), but presumably Cole is straight.

More after the break.