"Merli": Catalan boy studies philosophy, gets with cougars, displays his backside

In college I took a class in "Modern Philosophy," assuming that the philosophy would be modern.  No, it's 18th century.  All I remember about it is: "Berkeley" is pronounced "Barkeley."  But the teaser to Merli, a Spanish teen drama about a philosophy student, shows a guy gawking at another guy's backside, so I'll give it a try.

Scene 1: Score!  Closeup of the backside of Pol (Carlos Cuevas) as he showers!  We see most of the rest of him, too, as he dresses while getting a plot dump: He and Dad have just moved into an apartment together, he's going to work instead of applying to Uni, and his friend Bruno has just lost his Dad. I thought this was a Spanish series, but I don't understand anything they're saying.

Bruno appears. More plot dump: Pol hooked up with Bruno once, but he's actually straight.  Bruno doesn't really believe him, but what can you do?

Scene 2: Pol runs into Dad and his new girlfriend, and decides that he should get on with his life, too.  He applies to Uni after all, in philosophy.

Scene 3:   First day of class at the amazingly ornate Universitat de Barcelona.  That explains the language: not Spanish, Catalan!    Pol has a meet-cute with Biel (Pere Valribera), who guides him to the wrong class: math, not philosophy.  Finally they find the correct class, Philosophical Issues, with a jaded, world-weary professor (world-weary after just 10 years on the job?  Get back to me after 30 years!).   They also take classes in the History of Culture (all Marxist) and Symbolic Logic (which sounds like gibberish), and meet a Just-Friends Girl.

Scene 4: In the library, they get all-tongue tied over the Girl of Their Dreams, Minerva.  Unfortunately, she already has a Rich Jerk boyfriend, Rai (actor not in the cast list).

Scene 5: Ethics Class with another world-weary philosophy prof.  She makes a bigoted joke to see if the students understand freedom of speech, and brings in a janitor to explain social inequality, and half the class walks out.    

Scene 6: They all hang out after class.  Pol sees Bruno eating Rainbow Flag cake with his new LGBT friends.  Rich Jerk Rai (Pablo Capuz) stops by their table for a few minutes, then accidentally takes Pol's wallet!

Scene 7:  In a palatial mansion, a rich blond lady is giving a blow job to a chunky working-class guy.  Did I accidentally switch channels?  This doesn't seem to be the same series at all.  Someone rings the bell, so she sends working-class guy -- Henry -- to answer the door.  It's Pol, bringing Rich Jerk Rai's wallet.

Mom comes downstairs and flirts with Pol before Rich Jerk Rai appears -- in a swimsuit!

Scene 8:  They go up to Rai's room  -- erm, suite --  to exchange wallets.   Rai invites Pol to take a swim, but he refuses -- he has to work.  But he sticks around long enough to gawk at Rai's backside as he dives into the pool.

Scene 9: Just Friends Girl goes to visit Minerva, who has a flat in the Temple of Augustus. Imagine living in a museum, looking out your window at the crowds on tour.  We are introduced to roommates: Amy, a bubbly American, and Etin, a musician.  Then on to Minerva's room, where she admits that she has a crush on Rich Jerk Rai.   Wait -- I thought they were already dating?  

Scene 10: Rich Jerk Rai's Mom having cupcakes with her friends.  Rai comes in: Mom criticizes him for dropping out of Business to study...ugh...Philosophy.  "Now you have somewhere to vomit your existentialism about being different from everyone else."  So Rai is gay?

Nope: one of the friends excuses herself and goes to the bathroom to get with him with him. (No beefcake.)

Scene 11: Pol at his job. mopping the floor at a parking garage, when a middle-aged woman drives up: she needs help parking.  They do stuff.  Wow, two college boys doing stuff with cougars, one after the other.  I guess the director has a f*tish. 

Scene 12:  Back to class.  World-Weary Prof asks if it's ethical to discriminate against people because they are ugly.   Then she has pastries with her friend and complains that students used to enroll in her classes because she was beautiful; now she's ugly, and attendance has dropped off.  10 to 1 Pol starts dating her before the term is over. We already know that he's into older ladies.

Scene 13:  World Weary Prof meets her daughter, who appears to have Down's Syndrome.  They discuss her chances of becoming Chancellor -- nil.   Meanwhile Pol's Dad discusses moving in with his girlfriend, which makes Pol furiouos.  

Scene 14: The pool at the palatial mansion.  Rich Jerk Rai is pretending to be dead, but Mom isn't falling for his prank.  They argue: "I've spent years tolerating your eccentricities, and the calls from school about your bad attitude and stupidity."  "You should talk!"  And so on, while Henry watches.

Scene 15: Pol and Bruno (David Solans) , his friend from Scene 1, talking over the recent events in Pol's life.  They flirt.  Bruno: "When you hook up with guys and girls, you're bi."  Pol: "It was one time, and there was a girl between us.  I only like girls. Besides, I'm not into labels." I've heard that one before.  It means: I'm into guys, but I don't want to suffer the discrimination that comes from being out as gay.  

He takes off his clothes and runs naked into the ocean (nice rear).  Bruno muses: "I'm going to get you, Pol.  In the end, all roads lead to Bruno."  He strips and runs naked into the ocean, too.  They frolick.   The end.

Beefcake: A lot of backsides, no lady parts (which is a good thing).

Other Sights: A lot of Barcelona.

Gay Characters: Bruno, the possibly bi Pol, and maybe Rai.

Heterosexism: Two cougar bedroom scenes.

Character Dump:  There are about 20 named characters in this episode, impossible to keep track of them all, or to decide which ones are connected. Especially the middle-aged blond women who want to do bedroom stuff with college boys.  The director definitely has a f*tish.

Merli: In the last scene, Pol says that he wants to get a scholarship, graduate, and become "a merli,"  so I assumed that Merli was a Catalan term for a kind of philosopher.  But Google Translate is not familiar with the term.

IMDB lists a tv series called Merli, about an inspiring high school philosophy teacher.  It has a Pol, but otherwise the characters are all different. This must be a sequel or a remake or something.  So they named a tv series after a character who doesn't appear and is only mentioned once? 

Plot Arc:  No paranormal, no secret society, no mystery of any sort.  What is this series about, Pol's  LGBTQ identity?

My Grade: C- for the plot, A for the beefcake.

See also: Off Campus: Hannah must choose between a hocky star with a nice backside and a bad boy with tats. Plus a gay bestie and fratboy c*cks

"After the Hunt": Pretentious philosophy professors have problems, with some penises and Will Price

Connor Newall: The Hottest Property in Fashion buddies with Alfie Williams, models in gay ads, plays gay guys, shows his....

The Red Band Society: Buddy-Bonding Teens in a Barcelona Hospital

Kid Cosmic: Why is "Fry and Hamburg are gay!" big news? So are Craig and Eric, Nergal and Irwin, George and the Secret Keeper....

Kid Cosmic, on Nickelodeon, stars Jack Fisher (left) as "Kid," a comic book-obsessed orphan boy  living in a desolate world consisting of his trailer, his Grandpa's junkyard, a retro 1950s diner, and an endless desert.  

Suddenly, for reasons, everyone who happens to be in the diner develops superpowers, and is tasked with finding the Rings of Power.  Stuck Chuck, a gay-stereotype alien baddie, eventually joins the team.

Just before Season 3 dropped, on February 2nd, 2022, showrunner Craig McCracken announced in a Twitter post that Fry and Hamburg are a romantic couple.

Who?

 

They're the diner cooks, visible on the right of this character photo.

 Fry (voiced by Eric Bauza, below) is a skinny, tattooed Italian guy  with super-stretching ability, and Hamburg (voiced by Fred Tatsciore) is a blond German hunk with the ability to exude multiple arm

On February 5th, McCracken further specified on his Instagram "how they met and fell in love": Hamburg graduated from a top culinary school in Europe, but wanted to cook "real food," so he got a job at the dingy diner in the endless desert, and fell in love with his coworker, Fry. 

They are very minor characters.  They didn't even get superpowers until Season 2, and even then, they were #10 and #11 in the superhero list, with no lines in most episodes.  I saw no gay hints about them in Seasons 1 and 2, but then, I wasn't looking closely: they were mostly background.  

So, on to Season 3.  I'll check every appearance of Fry and Hamburg, looking for holding hands, hugging, dancing together, a shared apartment, any hint, however minuscule, that they are being presented as a canonical romantic couple.

Back Story: In Season 2, the Galactic Heroes worked at an interplanetary diner as a cover while they tried to track down the missing Rings of Power.   When the Rings were all accounted for, they used them to defeat the Planet Destroyer, a planet-sized Big Bad.  In the fracas, the Rings were scattered all over Earth.

More after the break

Eldon Jones: Dancing Atreyu, drawing penguins, learning to snap, bringing gay promise. With n*de co-stars and Patrick Swayze's bum

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Eldon Jones as Cody,  grandson of focus character Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) , was the one bright spot in the overwhelming heterosexism of  the Netflix paranormal series The Boroughs.  While enduring the endless "My wife! My wife! My wife", it was a relief to check out the photos his mom posted of Eldon in feminine outfits, hanging with his gay brother, and attending Pride events.  Maybe the kid is gay in real life, maybe not, but he provides a reminder that LGBT people exist, no matter how aggressively they are erased.

Eldon was born in 2011, son of Neal Jones, best known for Dirty Dancing (1987): he plays the "kind-hearted" Billy, who gets his cousin Johnny (Patrick Swayze, left) a job at the Borscht Belt resort, and introduces him to "dirty dancing."   

The family lives in Albuquerque.  Older brother Jax (right) graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in fine arts in May 2026.  Mom often posts photos of him and his boyfriend.  

Eldon is remarkably accomplished.

A member of the permanent company of the National Dance Institute of New Mexico.

Studies piano at the New Mexico School of Music.

An artist, interested in penguin comics and watercolors.

A chef, baking bread and making soup for the family.

A fashionista.  He attended the Copenhagen Fashion Week in 2023.

Literary.  When they visited London, he checked out the bookstores (that's the first thing I look for, too).  He was reading Herman Hesse at age 12.

I've read some Hesse (Siddhartha and Steppenwolf), but I never even heard of the book he's reading: Knulp, about a "carefree vagabond who lives outside societal rules." 

And of course Eldon is an actor.

He started as a background player in three 2022 episodes of Walker: Independence, about a woman in the Old West searching for the guy who murdered her husband. Apparently there's a gay character.

I couldn't find the gay guy in the cast list, but I found Jeff Pierre, who played Cameron Monaghan's boyfriend on Shameless (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

More after the break

A Roland for an Oliver: Gay Medieval Lovers

"A Roland for an Oliver" is apparently a common expression, although I've only seen it in British fiction.  It means that you're equally matched (for instance, these brothers can both bench press exactly 320 pounds each).

It's derived from the Medieval gay lovers that I first read about in The Young Folks' Shelf of Books during my early childhood.

I heard about them again in college, when my French Literature class was assigned a modern version of the 12th century Chanson de Roland, the national epic of France.





During the siege of Viana, Emperor Charlemagne agreed to let the outcome rest on single combat between two champions.  He sent his nephew, the bold, heavily-muscled Roland, the Prince Valiant of France.  Count Gerard of Viana sent his grandson, the handsome, quick-witted Oliver (or Olivier).  Their talents were complementary; they were perfectly matched.

As they fought, an angel appeared, separated them, and bade them become friends (the same thing happened to Simon and Milo a few generations later).

They spent the rest of their lives together, fighting side by side, and their love, with its divine mandate, was acclaimed in every corner of Charlemagne's Empire.

Then the Saracens began wending their way through Basque country,  In 778, the approached the pass at Roncevaux, Spain, in the Pyrenees.  If they entered France, they would take all of Europe.  Charlemagne and his troops tried to stop them.  In the heat of battle, Oliver was killed, and the distraught Roland cried:

So many days and years gone by
We lived together.
Since thou art dead, to live is pain.

Then he died as well.

Actually, the battle had nothing to do with the Moorish caliphate; Basque guerillas ambushed Charlemagne's troops, in retribution for his destructiion of their capital, to rob them.   Roland really existed, the leader of the Franks' invasion of Brittany, but there's no historical evidence for the existence of Oliver.  The Chanson de Roland  created him to be Roland's true love.

I didn't bother to point out the homoromance to my French professor, who no doubt would have insisted that Roland, like Aschenbach in Death in Venice,  wasn't Wearing a Sign.  He was betrothed to Oliver's sister, after all, and in the Italian epic Orlando Furioso, he falls in love with a woman (and flies to the moon).  

More after the break

Skyler Gisondo's Hot/H*ng Photos, Part 5: A bathtub, a glory h*le, b*ndage with Scotty, bonus Corenswet and Hoult

   

 Link to the n***de photos

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of  Skyler Gisondo, star of The Santa Clarita Diet, The Righteous Gemstones, and Superman

1. "Another photo collection?  Haven't you seen enough of me?"

I can't help it, buddy.  You keep posting interesting pics.

2. And now that you're starring in Superman, we have interesting photos of David Corenswet to worry about, too.

3. And Nicholas Hoult

4. "Hey, I thought this was a photo collection about me."

Sorry.  How about a long-hair bathtub pic? 

5. "Have you met my girlfriend?"

Odd time to introduce her.

More after the break

Off Campus: Hannah must choose between a hocky star with a backside and a bad boy with tats. Plus a gay bestie and fratboy c*cks

Link to the n*de photos

Apparently the success of Heated Rivalry has started a trend. Producers thought, "Ok, viewers want to see more hockey players," not "viewers want to see more gay romance," so we're getting a lot of hockey player hetero romance.  I'm watching Off Campus (2026), on Amazon Prime, in spite of the annoying commercial breaks, in case there's a  gay character -- or some dicks.

Scene 1:Hockey Star Garrett (Belmont Cameli, left)  puts on his uniform, listens to "Dancing By Myself," and practices, while Hannah does janitorial work, listening to the same song.  

Finished, he takes off his shirt -- the tattoo says Nullum Gratuitum Prandium, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," which presumably will become important later.  He langorously showers.  Hannah, wearing headphones, can't hear the shower, and accidentally sees his backside -- and his front, when he turns around.  She hurriedly exits, grinnng.

Belmont states in an interview, "Obviously I'm being sexualized to some extent, but I never felt exploited." 

Scene 2:  90% of viewers tune in to see Cameli's backside (and hopefully front), so they got it out of the way. Now we can get on to the plot.  At a hoity-toity university, the philosophy professor explains to the class that C means C, so 70% of the students got C+ or lower on their papers.  Hannah's gay bff Dexter (Miles Gutierrez-Riley, the boyfriend on Agatha All Along) complains that it's a jock class, so why should he bother?  Philosophy is a jock class?

Jock Beau (Khobe Maxwell, who played a gay guy in Cruel Intentions), looks at his grade and wonders if he can still drop the class.  His bro, Garrett from Scene 1, points out that they need it for their major, but not to worry, the coach will talk to the prof about "creative grading."  

When I was an undergrad, every student had to take a philosophy class.  I took "Modern Philosophy." assuming that it would be, like, modern.  Nope, it was about Kant, Hume, and Berkeley (pronounced Barkeley; that's the only thing I remember from the class).

BFF Dexter gawks at them: "Jocks -- so pretty, so entitled."

"Aren't you above stereotypes?"

"Girl, I'm beneath stereotypes."  He takes another look at  Beau.  "Maybe behind."  This will become important for shipping later.

Hannah got an A, but tells BFF Dexter that her grade was "not good."  Hockey Star Garrett looks over her shoulder and exclaims "You aced it!"  This angers Hannah, for some reason.  You forgot to complain that "He's arrogant!"

Scene 3: On the way out, BFF Dexter points out bad-boy music major Justin Kohl (Josh Heuston, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), Hannah's crush  Their third friend joins them and asked if Hannah has made a move yet.  "He doesn't know who I am.  Am I supposed to fling myself at him?"  "Yes!!!"

Hockey Star Garrett joins them.  After they criticize him for being rich and goodlooking, he tells Hannah that he's failing the class, and wants her help on the next assignment, n oral presentation.  "Nope." Why not?  Just because he's arrogant?  

"But you owe me for the sneak peek.  Tons of girls would have paid for that view."  What about guys, heteronormative jerk?

Scene 4: Hannah leaves them to bike across the campus of Briar University (actually the University of British Columbia).  She stops at Kaufman Center, where Professor Daveed (Brandon Scott, left), is conducting the student orchestra.  He glares at her for being late.

After class tells her that her scholarship for the year has been cut.  Not because she was late, because the government thinks that the fine arts are useless.

"But this is the third week of the semester!  My only hope of staying in school is to get another scholarship!" 

There aren't any other classical music composition scholarships, but what if she changes her major to performance?  Nope, she's a lousy clarinet player.  

So what about pop music composition?  Lots of scholarships there, given out at the Pop Music Showcase

"I can write pop music.  How hard can it be?"  Famous last words.

Scene 5: The frat house.  The guys, Tucker, Dean, and Logan (Jalen Thomas Brooks, Stephen Kalyn, Antonio Cipriano) are bickering as they prepare for the party tonight.  There are shirtless shots and discussions of cooking.  

Hockey Star Garrett comes in later, when the party is already going on.  Tucker is cooking "dippables."  Dean is kissing a girl.  Other party guests are playing video games and...chess?  I thought frat parties were all beer pong and hetero bedroom stuff.  

They criticize Hockey Star Garrett's taste in music -- it's old-fashioned, from the 1990s. So he's a pop music fan.  Maybe he and Hannah can help each other.

Meanwhile, at Malone's, Bad Boy Justin and his band are performing, while Hannah, working the bar, is having a fantasy about him.  Her friend asks what she's going to compose for the Pop Showcase: "Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga?"

"I'm more Taylor."

"So be Taylor, and go talk to your crush, Bad Boy Justin."  

He's singing "A little less talking, a little more 'touch me," which is basically what Olivia Newton John sang in "Physical," and Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady.

Never do I ever want to hear another word
There isn't one I haven't heard
Here we are together in what ought to be a dream
Say one more word and I'll scream

"Nope, I'm too scared." 

"Ok, then.  Everybody is going to the Block Party tomorrow.  You can talk to him then."  They have block parties at universities?

More after the break

"Tracker," Episode 3.1: Tracker tracks a probably gay teenager. With Pride flags, Greek tavernas, a Canadian wrestler, and Bryant c*ck

 

 Link to the n*de photos

 Tracker (2023-) not to be confused with Duster (2025-6) and Reacher (2022-5), is about a guy who "tracks" missing people, usually in the square red states.  I went through the first season in search of gay characters awhile back, and didn't find much (Tracker's assistants are a lesbian couple, but the missing people seem to be all hetero).  

Tonight I have nothing to do while waiting for  my partner to get back from the gym (and bring food), so I'm going through Season 3.  Episodes about "Randy's close friend vanishes" and "a hidden relationship in a lawless desert town" have been disappointing, but Episode 3.11, "an 18 year old with a secret life" looks promising.   It stars Ben Krieger, a Broadway star who is obviously gay: he goes to Pride events, performed magic in a gay bar, and spent his 21st birthday with a male companion.

Scene 1:  Queens, New York. Stepho's Greek Taverna. Ben is cleaning up his parents' restaurant after closing.  A girl invites him to a party, but he refuses.  Your first sentence is rejecting a girl?  A nice queer code. 

He locks the back door, sets his bag of food aside, and walks over to the dumpster to throw out the trash.  Suddenly a car zooms up with its headlights glaring.

Scene 2:  The parents call for Tracker (Justin Hartley): Ben didn't come home last night, and because he's 18, the police won't do anything.  He also failed to deposit the day's receipts, several thousand dollars. In cash?  Doesn't everyone pay by card nowadays?

Tracker suggests that maybe he took the money and vanished, but the parents dismiss that idea.  He would never just leave.  But he didn't want to work in the restaurant forever.  He was interested in social justice issues.  Like LGBTQ rights, for instance?

 They open his locker, and find a taser cartridge.  Dude needed to protect himself for some reason.

Scene 3:  Next they check the back.  Notice the Pride Flag on the building next door.  It is visible in several scenes, certainly a deliberate background choice to hint that Ben is gay.

A homeless lady is eating the food that Ben dropped off.  She saw him arguing with a guy, and then being loaded into the car.

Next they find Ben's cell phone: he must have dropped it during the scuffle.  Tracker gets his associate, the Hacker, to hack into it.

Left: Google says that the Hacker is played by Eric Graise, a gay actor best known for the new Queer as Folk.  He may be disabled: some sources say that he's a bilateral amputee, and others, that it's his character.

The IMDB says that Eric left at the end of Season 2, replaced by "Cousin Randy" (Chris Lee), who is straight in real life.  

The new, straight Hacker tells Tracker that yesterday Ben called Ellis Brawner (Alex Barima from Daniel Spellbound, straight in real life) a dozen times.

The parents know him: he used to work at the restaurant, but was fired for stealing.  Could he have gotten revenge by kidnapping Ben?

Scene 4: The B-Plot, back at headquarters. A lady is buttering up another lady, who praises her work on previous cases.

Alex Barima (right), seen here in a non-romantic scene in The Exorcist, has no n*de or beefcake photos online.

The Hacker looks up Brawner's address, and Tracker breaks in.  A lot of fake passports and drivers' licenses.  No posters of bikini babes?  A good sign. When Brawner arrives and sees Tracker, he runs, but Tracker chases him down. 

He explains that he and Ben-Ben are partners in the fake id business. Ben-Ben?  Sounds like they're boyfriends.  

Last night Ben called and told him to get to the restaurant fast.  They were yelling because Brawner was angry over being awakened in the middle of the night.  It was just after a restaurant closed, and one of the staff was heading to a party.  Do you go to bed at 7:00 pm?

He needed some ids and a car right away, and paid for it with the money he took from the restaurant.

"Was it about the fake id business?"

"No, I think it was about a girl.  I heard him talking."  Ulp, heterosexual identity established at Minute 15.  

Ben left his laptop at Brower's place.  Tracker confiscates it.

More after the break.