"The Club": Dynasty, Ecstasy, and Gay-Positive Hunks

What's with Netflix and the nondescript one-word titles.  According to Wikipedia, "The Club" is the title of 4 movies, 4 tv series, 2 video games, and a radio show

This one, originally entitled El Club (2019), is the writing/directing debut of Mexican actress Camila Ibarra, otherwise known as Ruth Martin in the prison drama Capadocia (2008-2012).  It's every telenovela you've ever seen:  impossibly beautiful people arguing in impossibly elegant houses (every room must have at least five chandeliers), then stomping out in anger and driving off their impossibly fancy cars.   Forbidden romance, generational conflict, blackmail, betrayal, murder.  And, in this case, drogas.

Trust fund baby Pablo (Alejandro Speitzer, top photo) is trying to distance himself from his domineering, bigoted, ultra-wealthy Dad (Omar Germenos, left).

So, along with sometime girlfriend Sofia and computer whiz Matias, he starts a business selling Ecstasy.  Of course, plot complications ensue: a drug cartel has already cornered the Ecstasy trade, and its jefe, El Monkey, doesn't like the competition.

Ok, Mexican drug cartels produce heroin and some marijuana, and transport cocaine.  They don't handle Ecstasy because it's a party drug, easily substitutable and not very expensive.  But whatever.


In a gay plotline,younger brother Santiago (Alejandro Puente) goes off to Stanford and finds a boyfriend.  The evil Nico sends a film of the two going at it to all of Dad's friends, resulting in a conflagration at Christmastime.  "In my family there are no queers!" Dad yells.  Santiago decks him.  "I'm not queer, I'm gay!"

Rather an old-fashioned storyline, considering that same-sex marriage has been legal in Mexico City and many Mexican states since 2010. It reminds me of Dynasty, 30 years ago.

But the cast is super-gay positive.

1. Alejandro Speiser as Pablo.  In June 2019, Alejandro and fellow actor Erik Elias celebrated Gay Pride by kissing.  "I'm not gay, but love is love," he told the startled tabloid reporters.

2. Omar Germenos as the family patriarch.  Omar played a gay character in Donde está Elisa?

3. Jorge Caballero (left), seen here with his boyfriend, Colombian singer Esteman, as Matias, the computer whiz.

4. Axel Arenas, who starred in the gay-themed Tremulo, as Jonás. In non-gay news, in 2018, Arenas was arrested for the murder of a female escort, but released after he proved that he was not in the country at the time.

5. Martin Saracho as Max.  Martin starred in Estupida historia de amor en Winnipeg, about a gay couple trying to find a new life in a small town in Canada.

6. Nacho Tahhan, who starred in the Spanish version of the gay-themed Angels in America,  as Gonzalo Cisneros

7. Marco Tostado as Diego, Sofia's anti-drug boyfriend.   He played  a gay character in a telenovela.  And he has a chest.