You: What's Worse, a Predatory Lesbian or a Hetero Stalker?

I don't usually watch romance movies, and I didn't even know that romance tv shows were a thing, but when you're visiting relatives, you watch what they watch, and what they watched was You.

A tv series with a title that makes internet searches extremely difficult.

It's a bland anxiety-stalker romance with not enough twists to keep your interested past the first episode.  Unless your relatives insist.

Manhattan used-bookstore manager Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley, who I originally confused with comedian/atheism activist Penn Gillette) falls in love at first sight with customer Beck (Elizabeth Lail), a creative writing student. Through a combination of traditional stalking and social media mining, he manages to arrange some meet-cutes and tries to push his way into becoming her boyfriend.

Beck has some problems: she's insecure about her writing, a gold-digger, and a sex addict with a penchant for authority figures.  And that's just obvious: there are dark secrets in her past.  But nobody's perfect.

Of course, there are obstacles on the way to True Love.  Joe kidnaps, and eventually kills, Beck's ex-boyfriend Benji (Lou Taylor Pucci, left), manhandles her harassing academic advisor (Reg Rogers) and the therapist she's having an affair with (John Stamos).

Rich friend Peach (Shay Mitchell), a predatory lesbian with designs on Beck, is the worst threat, suspecting Joe from the beginning.  So Joe kills her, too, both to keep his secret safe and to keep Beck out of her clutches.

Meanwhile he befriends Paco, the kid next door who is living with a druggie mom and her abusive boyfriend (Daniel Cosgrove, left).  See, he's not such a bad guy.  Besides, he has a dark back story of his own.

I expected more plot twists to maintain audience interest.  I expected Beck to turn the tables and be a stalker-murderer of her own, like on the episode of Amazing Stories where a serial killer discovers that his intended victim is another serial killer who's been targeting him!

But nothing that clever.  I only saw 4 episodes before leaving Indianapolis, but back home I watched Episode 8, and it's still still "Oh, gee, that guy's a threat, I think I'll kill him, and then go buddy-bond with Paco."

Gay characters: A predatory lesbian, but otherwise this is a gay-free Manhattan.  I expected more from Greg Berlanti, who is gay in real life.

Beefcake: A lot of chests and butts of the guys Beck screws.  A lot of hunky cops, bookstore patrons, party guests, and bohemians. And don't forget the cheery, lacking-in-dark-secrets Ethan (Zach Cherry).  Frankly, I'd rather date him than any of jerks-with-muscles on the show.

"God Friended Me": God Friends Gay People, Too

TV dramas often sent the protagonist out on the road, to encounter new people in different settings every episode.  It provides for more plot possibilities than the "what else can we have happen at that radio station?" of situation-bound dramas. and famous guest stars can draw in the viewers. 

Sometimes the wandering busybody is an angel, or sent by God in some way.  I tend to avoid those shows, as they tend to be treacly "learn to live every moment!" nonsense. 

God Friended Me gives the heavenly helper a twist.  Miles (Brandon Micheal Hall), who runs a popular atheism podcast, gets a Facebook friend request from "God."  Obviously not the Creator of the Universe, but some provocateur, so Miles accepts.  "God" suggests other Facebook friends, all of whom have problems that Miles can solve.

1. A doctor planning to commit suicide.

2. A writer with writer's block and an estranged mother gets into an auto accident, and is assisted by the doctor from Miracle #1.

3. A single mother with an autistic son.

4. A motherless teenager (Jason Genao) and a police office with a dead wife (auto accident) find each other.

5. A woman with a lost love, who turns out to be a lonely gay guy (Will Rogers, left).  They are happy to reconnect as friends.







 

6. An alcoholic artist with a sister who died in an auto accident feels guilty.

7. A Muslim cab driver who disapproves of his daughter's Jewish boyfriend (Etai Benson, right).

8. Miles' own estranged father, a minister who disapproves of his atheism, and whose wife died in an...auto accident.

And so on.  By the way, what's with all the auto accidents?  Sloppy writing, or is Miles in some sort of coma after an...auto accident? 

Meanwhile Miles (center) tries determine the identity of this "God" person, along with his Scoobies:

1. Cara (left), the writer from Miracle #2.
2. Ali, Miles' sister.
3. Rakesh (Suraj Sharma, right and top photo), a computer hacker.
4. Jaya, his girlfriend
5. Arthur, from Miracle #8

There's a lesbian couple and a gay man among the miracles, which raises the ire of fundamentalist Christian fans:  "But...but...it's about God!  It shouldn't be forcing deviant lifestyles down our throat!"   

Fundie fans also tend to believe that "God" is actually God, communicating out of an updated Burning Bush.  After all, who else would be able to get Miles to the exact location he needs to be in to meet the person who is connected to another person who will help them reconnect with their estranged whoever?

"Bird Box": One Gay Character, Who Dies.

Bird Box appears in articles on "LGBT Movies to Watch on Netflix in December" and "Top LGBT Movie on Netflix."  It even appeared on a Decider list of the "Top 50 LGBT Characters."   So I watched.  Well, I fast forwarded through some of the gross stuff.

The opening: Malorie (Sandra Bullock) tells two children, named Boy and Girl, that they are going on a perilous journey down the river to safety, and they must never take their blindfolds off, or they will die.

Interspliced with the perilous blindfold journey is the back story:

Depressed painter Malorie, who is pregnant with a baby she doesn't want, is meeting her sister, Jessica (Sarah Paulson, who works with horses. Neither of them seems to have much room for other people in theiir lives.   I'm pretty sure they were written as a lesbian couple, and changed to sisters at the last minute. 

They dismiss tv reports of mass suicides in Europe  and mass hysteria in the U.S., and head out to see their obstretician, Dr. Lapham (Parminder Nagra).

Lapham?  Got a problem with Indian names?

Parminder...um...I mean Dr. Lapham...is offended by their many jokes about how much they hate the baby.  She suggests that they give it up for adoption.

On the way out of the appointment, Melonie and Jessica run headlong into the Apocalypse.  Something or some things appear.  Anyone who sees them, including Jessica, immediately commits suicide.  Start running, and don't look back.

We don't know what they look like.  People who see them say "What the hell is that?," "Mom?", and "They're not so bad."  One guy says that they show you the worst of yourself, but that's just speculation.

Melonie takes refuge in the very well appointed house of Greg (B.D. Wong), along with a ragtag band of whoever happened to be running past and invited in.  They're familiar from other stories of Apocalypse survivors:

1. Born leader Tom (Trevante Rhodes, top photo)

2. Survivalist Douglas (John Malkovich).

3. Druggie Felix (rapper Machine Gun Kelly, below)

4. Religious fanatic (Lil Rel Howery, left)


5. Teenage boy.

6. Elderly lady who talks about her dead husband

7. A woman who was out jogging

8. Another pregnant girl

Sorry, I lost track of character names.

Besides, Tom, Charlie, Greg, Gary, Rick?  What's with the whitewashing of everybody's name?

Standard survival stuff ensues -- go on a food run blindfolded, give birth without any medical care, and so on.

A twist comes when some of the people who see the things don't immediately commit suicide.  They stay sentient long enough to force other people to look.  One of those shows up at the house, talks his way inside, and begins tearing down the curtains so they have to look.

Eventually all of the survivors die except Melonie, Tom, and the two kids, who form a nuclear family.  Then Tom dies, too, and Melonie takes the kids on the perilous journey to the sanctuary, which happens to be a school for the blind.

The survivors are mostly blind children, who are immune to the things.

Among the residents is Dr. Lapham, who smiles approvingly at Melonie's two children.

Wait -- has all this been a lengthy morality tale to convince Melonie that having kids is worthwhile?  That the goal of all women's lives should be to reproduce?

Ugh.

No beefcake.  Felix takes his shirt off, but that doesn't count as beefcake, not by a long shot.

Oh, by the way, Greg, whose house they crash in, is gay.  We know because Douglas states that his husband was an architect.

He's the first of the survivors to die (bury your gays).

This by you is a LGBT movie?

The Protector: Turkish Superhero TV

The new Netflix series The Protector (2018-) is set in Istanbul, which is sort of interesting, but not very.  This is an Istanbul with no sign of Islam anywhere, which is almost as annoying as the standard gay-free San Francisco of American tv.

It's filmed in Turkish but dubbed in English, specifically an annoying colloquial "hey, dude, whazzup?" American.  Netflix uses subtitles for Basque, Catalan, and Hebrew.  Why Turkish?

I like Cagatay Ulusoy, but I do not like his character, Hasan, at all.  He's an annoyingly chipper post-teen operator with Big Dreams.

He and his buddy Memo (Cankat Aydos) hope to get the contract for renovating Hagia Sofia, the former Greek Orthodox Cathedral that is the most famous landmark in Turkey. 

Fat chance.   Turns out that rival contractor Faysal Erdem (Okan Yalabik) is killing off the competiton. 

Hasan keeps butting heads with his traditional father, who owns an antique shop: "We've got to be modern!"  I've only seen this a thousand times before.

And he's a stereotyped 1970s horndog, double-taking and jaw-dropping at ladies every five seconds, and getting cruised constantly with the absurd intensity of a shaving cream commercial, where the guy has to fight off armies of women driven to a sexual frenzy by the sight of his clean-shaven face.

But on to the plot:Hassan finds an ancient talismanic t-shirt which names him the Protector, a superhero destined to protect the world from the evil Immortal.  En route he has to find several more emblems of power.  He is assisted by a pharmacist named Kemal (Yurdaer Okur), the standard hero's mentor (think Mr. Miyagi and Yoda) and his daughter Zaynib.

Meanwhile the mysterious Leyla, who works for Erdem, joins the team, and...well, I don't need to finish that sentence, do I?

I don't expect any gay characters in a tv series filmed in the Middle East, but there isn't really much buddy-bonding, either.  Other than Memo, who is killed early on, Hasan's associates are all women or elderly men. 

Beefcake is also rather limited.  Hasan takes his shirt off a lot, to show the talisman burned into his chest, but the characters are usually shown in business suits.

I suggest skipping the stream and going for a pin-up of  Cagatay Ulusoy and a Google Earth tour of Hagia Sofia.

12 Hunks of "12 Monkeys"

12 Monkeys (1995) was a turgid, incomprehensible mess starring Bruce Willis as a depressed guy traveling through time to prevent an apocalypse.  Toned down and made a bit less depressing, it became a Sci-Fi Channel tv series in 2015. 

Rogue scientists Mulder and Scully...um, I mean Cole and Cassandra (Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull) travel back from the post-apocalyptic future to our era to stop the Army of the 12 Monkeys from initiating the apocalypse.

Wait -- didn't we just see that plot on American Horror Story?  And Terminator?

Their quest takes them to the 1980s, the 1940s, back to 2043, to the 1920s, to the Middle Ages.  They try to assassinate their younger selves; their younger selves try to assassinate them.  They fall in love in record time (no Sam and Diane "will they or won't they?" or these two!), but their timeline is dissolved, and they have to fall in love all over again.

There's lots of other heterosexualizing, and no gay characters, except the Season 1 Big Bad, a stereotyped gay villain with a husband and everything.

Even the beefcake is second rate.

1. Aaron Stanford plays Cole with a slezoid style.

2. Ramse (Kirk Acevedo, right), Cole's heterosexual buddy who turns traitor, naturally. Was there ever a heterosexual buddy who didn't?

3. Aaron (Noah Bean), Cassie's ex.  Sorry, I couldn't find any photos of him where he wasn't attached to a woman.  We get it: Mr. Bean likes ladies, and he wants the world to know.

4. Deacon (Todd Stashwick, left), the Big Bad of Season 2, who dates Cassie while she and Cole are on a break.

5. Dr. Julian Adler (Andrew Giles), the head of the time travel project.  Think Rupert from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

6.  Whitley (Demore Barnes).  Out of 100 characters, you need at least one black guy.  He's a soldier in the future, straight outta Compton, but if Demore Barnes doesn't mind the stereotyping, why should we?

7.You need at least one guy with chest hair, too.

 Robert Gale (Jay Karnes), an FBI Agent in the 1940s sequence who suspects that Cole is a time traveler.

8. Oliver (Ramon De Ocampo), the Season 1 Big Bad with a husband.  De Ocampo is straight in real life, but he's played gay characters before.  Well, not gay villains, but if he doesn't mind the stereotyping, why should we?

9. Mallick (Faran Tahir), an evil terrorist.  If Pakistani-American actor Faran Tahir doesn't mind the stereotyping, why should we?

10. Athan (James Callis), Cole and Cassie's son (see the resemblance?),  who was raised by the Army of the 12 Monkeys to be their prophet, called the Witness.  He lives with Sebastian.

Another gay Big Bad?  I don't know: I didn't get that far.

11. Sebastian (Dylan Colton)

12.The Witness (Andrew Lichte-Lee).  Wait -- I thought Athan was the Witness.  Maybe there are two of them, or maybe he splits in half, or...who knows?  Let's just concentrate on Andrew Lichti-Lee, a model, actor, and tech nerd with 1,500 followers on instagram.

Laying it Bare in Key West

This is an interesting post from 2012, one of the first I posted to this blog.  What's interesting are the comments.  Back then I was much more forgiving of comments like "He can't be gay!  He's not wearing a sign!"  and "He can't be gay!  He's only 12."

The implications, of course, are odious:  everyone must be taken as heterosexual unless the authors explicitly that they are gay. 

There are no gay children; we are all straight until we decide to "turn gay" sometime in adulthood.

Today I would just delete them automatically, but back in 2012, a newbie, I let them stand.

So here's the post:

I have 3 questions about CrissCross (1992), the downbeat but very brightly-lit movie starring David Arnott as a 12-year old boy whose mom works as a topless dancer.  And that's the least of his problems.  His biggest: his name is actually Criss Cross.

1. Who decided to cast decidedly homophobic Goldie Hawn as the mother of a gay kid?

Ok, maybe the producers weren't expecting a gay reading.  But it's hard to miss: as Criss (David Arnott) rides his bike down the mean streets of Key West, searching for a way to make money so Mom won't have to strip anymore (he hits on a plan to steal drugs being smuggled in on a fishing boat, with tragic results), he tries again and again to establish a same-sex bond.

First a male peer, Buggs (Damian Vantriglia); then the grizzled Emmett (James Gammon), who advises him that "The only thing worse than being lonely with yourself is being lonely with someone."

If you're trying to make gay mecca Key West gay-free, shouldn't you patrol for same-sex friendships, and give the kid a girlfriend (he does have a girl who's a friend)?

2.  Why the nudity?

I know it's hot in Florida,  and it's nice that all the male actors are barechested all the time.  It's understandable, I guess, that the kid rides around shirtless, in Daisy Duke short-shorts. But why the nude butt, when the movie is R-rated, so gay kids can't even get in to see it?

50 years ago, preteens were commonly filmed nude in movies to signify their innocence.  But this kid is anything but innocent.

3. What happened to David Arnott?

He gives a good, understated performance, reminiscent of Chris Makepeace in Meatballs (although that's a completely different genre).  He handles the gay-vague subtext with panache.  One one expects him to have a long career as a serious actor, or at least some ecstatic "fave rave" articles in Tiger Beat.  But this was his first movie -- he beat out 3,000 hopefuls in open auditions -- and his last.  Maybe he didn't like acting.

Lutte, Lucha, and Ringen: Graeco-Roman Wrestling for Grown-Ups

The high school and college wrestling we know, with adolescents in very revealing singlets trying to pin each other, is purely American, not practiced anywhere else except in a few Canadian schools.

In Europe, it's all Graeco-Roman wrestling. lutte in France, Ringen in Germany, borroka in Basque.  And practiced primarily by adults, not as a school sport.

I never did see the point in displaying the biceps and bulges of teenagers to an audience of strangers.  It makes more sense to wait until they're adults, and are more able to handle the knowledge that they are objects of admiration.

Besides, grown-up physiques are far superior to thin, lanky, barely post-pubescent puppy-dog muscles.

Teenagers do participate in Lutte on occasion, but it's not a usual thing, and they don't seem to be very good at it.  Here Nazaryan from Bulgaria beat Nifri from France 9 to 0.

Of course, grown-ups don't display their beneath-the-belt parts quite as much, or as aggressively, as the high schoolers, but that's not necessary a bad thing.  No embarrassing "Should I pretend not to notice?" moments.



















Besides, they are open for dating.  Or at least a romantic fantasy about dating them.

















Grownups are less likely to be proficient in English, so if you are going to cruise, a familiarity with French helps.  Or Greek.

Big Mouth: The Hormone Monster Strikes Again

Big Mouth is an adult animated sitcom a 7th grader named Nick Birch (co-creator Nick Kroll), who is going through puberty with the help or hindrance of Maurice the Hormone Monster and, in the second season, the Shame Wizard.

This is the puberty of your sex ed books, with nothing to do with voice changes or body hair in weird areas, and everything to do with "discovering the opposite sex": awkward boners, boobs, wet dreams, boobs, masturbation, boobs, and boobs.  Did I mention boobs?

Nick has a coterie of male friends, allies, and frenemies, all of whom are facing their own Hormone Monsters and Shame Wizards as they negotiate their own awkward boners, wet dreams, boobs, masturbation, boobs, and so on.  The major players are:

1. Best bud Andrew Glouberman, left (co-creator John Mulaney), who masturbates every chance he can get, but also gets some girlfriends, with whom he engages in the Princeton Rub.

2. Jay Bilzarian, right (Jason Mantzoukas), who is a bit more advanced in the masturbation and boobs department.  He lusts after older women and has sex with pillows, along with dating girls and hinting about liking guys.  He accepts the offer of a blow job from Nick, for instance, as long as he doesn't "make it gay." (They don't follow through).

Meanwhile, the girls are also dealing with puberty, although theirs is less overtly erotic: cute boys, menstruation, cute boys, gossipy best friends, cute boys, first kisses, cute boys, women's empowerment, cute boys, and cute boys.  Did I mention cute boys?

1. Jessi Glasser, left (Jessie Klein), who is interested in both Nick and Jay.

2. Missy Foreman-Greenwald, a girl with braces who is everybody's "just friend."

3. Gina Alvarez (Gina Rodriguez), who has big boobs and knows how to use them.

So basically the distaff side of Nick, Andrew, and Jay.

These tightly balanced heteronormative boy-girl pairs experience sexual arousal or romantic desire in episodes with titles like "Requiem for a Wet Dream,"  "Girls are Horny, Too,"  "What is it about Boobs?" and "Steve the Virgin," with occasionally other pitfalls of adolescence appearing:  sleepovers, failing grades, bullying big brothers, juvenile delinquency.  Is there any room for same-sex desire?

Well, a little.  Early on, Nick wonders if he might be gay because he likes Andrew -- a lot.  But he realizes that he can love a guy without wanting to see his weiner.

Then there's Matthew (Andrew Rannels), a swishy, snarky, "let's do brunch" gay kid.  Of course, only the swishiest of kids stands a chance of overcoming the masturbation, boobs, erections, boobs, boobs, and boobs of the dominant puberty discourse. 

He appears in only a few episodes, as a supporting player and snark, taking center stage only twice, in Season 2:

In the Season 2 episode "Guy Town," he finds himself having a "gay-off" with a gay resident of a seedy apartment complex (Harvey Fierstein), who suggests that he tone down the snark if he wants to have any friends.

In "Smooch or Share," the Season 2 finale, Matthew and Jay have to kiss during a spin-the-bottle type game.  Later both reveal that it was their first kiss, and Jay surprises him with another. 

So maybe the two will be dating in Season 3. 

Jason Dolley in the House

22-year old Jason Dolley has spent most of his career at the Disney Channel, where heterosexist boy-obsessed-with-girl is the order of the day, so he hasn't had many opportunities for gay projects.  But he's had his share of gay subtexts.  And shirtless, semi-nude and underwear shots.

Saving Shiloh (2006): Teenage Marty (Jason) and his dog Shiloh must team up to save Shiloh's evil ex-owner, Judd (Scott Wilson), when he is accused of killing a man.  They both end up befriending the reformed nogoodnik, because, "When you open your heart, anything is possible."

Minutemen (2008): Virgil (Jason) and the nerdish genius Charlie (Luke Benward) have an intense, passionate buddy-bond that leaks through in spite of the scripted girl-craziness.

Cory in the House (2007-2008).  Cory Baxter (Kyle Massey), the son of the head chef at the White House, goes to an exclusive private school, where he crushes on an ambassador's daughter and becomes best friends with Newt (Jason), son of a Supreme Court Justice. Jake Thomas played their snippy antagonist.

Though both boys were scripted as standard Disney girl-crazy, subtexts abounded.  Cory thinks that another boy is asking him out, and says "Sorry, you're not my type."  Newt sees Cory at the mall with another boy, and accuses him of "cheating.




Even Cory's Dad, Victor, gets into the act.  After a comedy of errors, he ends up in bed in the Lincoln Bedroom with the President, just as a tour group approaches.  "We can't let them see us!" Victor cries.  "They'll think we're...." Long pause while the studio audience howls at the awareness of what two men in bed signifies.  "They'll think we're. . .lazy, sleeping during the day!"

Good Luck, Charlie (2010-): A rare Disney Channel nuclear comedy sitcom. Jason plays the oldest son, PJ, who has another black best friend, the nerdish Emmett (Micah Williams).

Bradley Steven Perry (right) plays his younger brother, the preteen operator Gabe.

Lots of rumors about Jason being gay in real life, but so far in print and video interviews he's only talked about girls.

Steve Burton: Out of This World

During the 1960s, there was a fad of tv programs about adults who were "different" and had to keep their secret lives hidden from the world.  During the 1980s, there was a fad of tv programs about teens with secret lives that they had to keep hidden from the world: My Secret Identity, Harry and the Hendersons, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, Alf, Small Wonder, Teen Angel.

On Out of This World (1987-91), the teenage Evie (Maureen Flannigan) discovers that she is half-alien.  She lives with her human mother, and her father, Troy from the planet Antares (voiced by Burt Reynolds), communicates with her through a cube. Aliens have all sorts of magical powers, from freezing time to controlling the weather, and disastrous misuse or accidental use of powers fuels the plots.





Along with Evie's attempts to live a "normal" life and her ongoing fear of discovery.

Gay kids could always relate to tv programs about being different and having secrets, but there was more.

A lot more.

Evie's on-off boyfriend, Chris, was played by Steve Burton, age 17 when the show began, blond, buffed, with six-pack abs and biceps that seemed to get bigger every episode.

And when the plotlines didn't call for his shirt to come off, the teen magazines obligingly plastered his shirtless and swimsuit-clad body over almost every page.

After Out of This World, Steve landed the role of mob enforcer turned body guard turned coffee importer Jason Morgan on the soap General Hospital.  But he still had time for beefcake photos, including the cover of Playgirl.

















From 2013 to 2017, he played Dylan McAvoy on The Young and the Restless.  He also moved into voice work, performing the character Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy video games.

In 2018, Steve left General Hospital to work on other projects.  Hopefully involving beefcake photos.