"Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun": Gay-Inclusive or Just Anarchic?

Aunty Donna is an Australian comedy troupe featuring Zach Ruane, Mark Bonanno, and Broden Kelly, who met as university students in 2011. They have performed at comedy festivals in Australia and Britain, and produced several web series and a music album.  And now a new series, Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun, is streaming on Netflix.   

Reviews called it "goofy," "good natured," and "anarchic," reminiscent of The Kids in the Hall. One reviewer even compared the troupe to the Marx Brothers.  

The episode "Dating" has the the plot synopsis:"the boys score a date."  

Just one person for the three of them?  And is it a boy or a girl?  Surely they wouldn't be dating a boy?  

On the off chance that there was some gay representation, I turned it on.

Scene 1:  A suburban house where the boys apparently live together. Broden (bald), Mark (glasses), and Baron Gabrel de Franc, an 18th century French aristocrat who stumbled in through a time warp, are playing the "that's relatable" game: when you think you're out of beans, so you buy five cans, but then you get home and you had beans after all, so now you have too many beans. The aristocrat loses. 

Suddenly they get an email, and call in Zach (long hair) to tell him the good news: someone responded to their online profile.  They have a date!  Yes, all three with the same person. 

The French aristocrat leaves.  They celebrate.  "I hope I get a kiss!"

They haven't specified if the date is a boy or a girl.  Is this a deliberate attempt to promote inclusivity by leaving the gender open, or just an oversigh, with the heteronormative assumption that it will obviously be a girl?

Scene 2: They watch Hunk and Dork on tv.  Hunk (Broden) has lots of friends (boys and girls) and prom dates (a girl); Dork (Mark) has none.

Scene 3: Mark is nervous because he has never been on a date before, so Zach tells a made-up story about his dating succes: At a hip club he saw three people he liked (man and two women), so he invited them to dance, and they liked dancing with him so much that they invited him to a hipper club.  Then he went home and danced with the King of Dance (Carl Tart)

Zach was dating both men and women, and ended up going home with a man.

Scene 4: Broden stops in at The Men Gentlemen's Barber, Where Men Can Be Gentlemen and Manly and Men.  He notes that they have a date tonight, and the barber says "Don't worry, when I'm done with you, she will ___ you, and ___, and ___."  But he also offers to give him an espresso, a tattoo,  a "tit magazine," "a fuck,," and pale ale, "Our house blend of Jack Daniels, sriracha, and hawk semen."  Broden is horrified by the toxic masculinity, but at least they give him a good haircut.

The barber assumes that the date is with a girl, which one might expect of a man who drinks hawk semen.  Broden neither confirms nor denies.

Scene 5:   Mark is so excited about the upcoming date that he pantomimes kissing them, playing both roles.  They grab each other's butts, and one gives the other a blow job (I can't tell which).  Then there's some thrusting going on, but I can't tell who is thrusting into what.     

It is impossible to tell if he is imagining sex with a man or a woman. His pantomine could go either way.  This has to be deliberate.

Scene 6: Mark watches Moogie Woogie Boogie.  Two guys in suits (Broden, Mark) itneract with a muppet-like creature whose childish repartee gradually turns dark ("Moogie found a lump on his testicle.  Moogie was scared.").  

"Someday I'm going to fuck Moogie," Mark exclaims. Ok, Moogie is a boy muppet.  Mark likes boys or boys and girls both.

Scene 7:  They receive an email from their date which turns out to be a pfishing spam.  Their date is a spambot!  They decide to go anyway.

Scene 8: Dinner at a fancy restaurant, where they are flirting with the Spambot, which is actually an alien robot planning to conquer the world.  "Kneel before the great Spambot!" he orders..

They are excited, assuming that he means kneel for sex.  

Deep male voice. Their date was with a boy.  

The end.

Grossness: There are some cringe-inducing sight gags especially in the two tv shows.

Beefcake: None (Antony Starr, top photo, guest stars in another episode). The boys are not attractive, probably deliberately (it's hard to be funny when everyone is staring at your biceps or bulge).

Gay Characters: This was quite an anxiety-provoking episode.  I've been fooled before by minutes or hours of guys dropping pronouns, saying "the person I'm interested in," only to discover in the last scene that the person is a girl.  But here they keep up the indeterminancy throughout.

I'm still not sure why. Are they really being inclusive, or are they presenting their characters as too clueless to realize that dates must always be boy-girl?  

My Grade: I'll have to watch another episode to make up my mind.