"From", on MGM Plus: "Lost" in a Small Town, with Real Men Protecting their Wives and Kids

 

Amazon Prime has been pushing me to watch an episode of a series called From, a one-word title that's impossible to research, but apparently it's about a small town where "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." LGBT people who grew up trapped in homophobic small towns can relate. 

 It stars Harold Perrineau, Michael on Lost, so doubtless it has some intriguing mysteries inside mysteries.  And hopefully, 18 years since Lost premiered, more gay characters.

Only problem: this is a drug-dealer "first taste is free" setup.  One free episode to get you hooked, and then you have to pay.  I'm not paying, but I'll take the first taste.

Opening: MGM tells us that this is a MGM production, that MGM has always produced the world's best movies, that this is a MGM production, and that you need to subscribe to watch the other episodes.

Scene 1: A very run-down rural community, rusty cars, unpainted buildings.  Michael from Lost walks down the dirt road, ringing a bell.  People walk toward their houses. A waitress kicks two customers out of the diner -- closing time -- and touches a strange icon handing from the wall.  Michael passes a terribly cliched little girl on a swingset holding a doll. She's obviously a goner, but the background song broadcasts it: "Little girl, so young and pretty, you'll be dead before your time is due."  

In an old person's home, Deputy Kenny (Ricky He) tries to convince his eldery father, who has dementia, to go into the basement.  The nurse pulls him down; Kenny flirts with her and leaves.  

Some hippies are playing with a ball outside an old mansion.  They drop it and go inside.

Deputy Kenny joins Michael from Lost -- I guess the character is named Boyd -- and asks if it is all clear.  Yep.  Sheriff Boyd goes into the post office -- "96 nights without incident."

Scene 2:  A bearded guy tries to rouse the drunken, sleeping Frank.  His boyfriend?  No such luck -- he's the father of the swingset girl.  Bearded guy can't rouse him, so he puts tarps over the window and touches his weird icon.

Meanwhile, Swingset Girl and her Mom are wondering what's keeping Frank -- it's getting dark!  Mom sends Swingset Girl upstairs to say her prayers  -- "If I should die before I wake," hint hint.  Suddenly Grandma calls to her from outside the window: "Let me in!  I'm so lonely!"  The idiotic Swingset Girl opens the window, whereupon Grandma turns into a screaming monster.  

Opening Theme: Ahh!  It's most horribly sad, depressing song ever recorded! End of the world, end of everything, no hope, darkness, despair.  Who in his right mind would use that song for an opening theme? Do they want the audience to commit suicide?  I fast forward past, but still, I heard a few words... Now I'm going to be depressed all day.  

No, I'm not going to tell you what the song is.  That would require me to think about it.  

Scene 3: Ok, on to the much less disturbing show.  A nuclear family driving down the highway in a huge RV -- the behomoth actually has a hallway!  Teenage daughter is torturing her little brother by claiming that one of his finger puppets is dead, killed by a monster.  Foreshadowing, anyone?  Mom calms him down by pointing out that monsters don't exist, so the puppet must be alive. Foreshadowing, anyone? Dad (Eion Bailey) congratulates her on her parenting skills. 

Scene 4: Morning.  Frank (Bob Mann), who was too drunk to go home, stumbles toward his house.  Everyone is gathered round.  Sheriff Boyd attacks him: "You're a Man!  A Man takes care of his wife and kids!"  How stultifyingly sexist.  "Your wife and daughter were killed last night, and it's your fault!"  How could he have helped?  Swingset Girl let the monster in.  Sheriff  Boyd sentences him to lock-up, which will become a death sentence if he is detained overnight.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Family is stopped by a giant tree blocking the road. Dad, who is a Man, tries to muscle it aside, but is unsuccessful.  They have no choice but to turn around. 

Scene 5:  Sheriff Boyd visits the hippie commune.  Head hippie Donna points out that he's not welcome there, but he asks to see his son.  Ok, just this once. Ok, the sheriff is hetero, but maybe the son is gay?

No such luck: Son Ellis (Corteon Moore) is in his art studio, painting a lady's portrait.  He points out how beautiful she is.  At least his shirt is open, so we get some beefcake.

Son Ellis is shocked to find out that they lost "Lauren" to the monsters last night. "Lauren is..." "I know who she is!" Lost-style mystery for its own sake.  Most of them were never resolved. 

Scene 6: The Nuclear Family driving back the way they came.  But it looks all different. Where's the highway?  They end up at the town, where everyone is gathered for the funeral of Swingset Girl and her Mom, with a priest giving the eulogy (tv tropes: all Christians are Catholic).  They all glare at the newcomers and scatter.  Sheriff Boyd gives them directions back to the highway.

They drive, but end up back at the town!  They stop to ask for directions again, and are ignored.   A girl in a 1930s sun dress complains to her overall-wearing brother that it's always bad for the new arrivals, who think that they will be able to leave.   He goes out to the barn to feed the animals.  I was wondering how they eat in this town.

The Nuclear Family ends up back in town a third time!  They argue.  Mom criticizes Dad's ability to follow directions, a major insult for a Man.  They turn around and head out again, while the townsfolk watch.  Deputy Kenny: "You think they're ready?"  Sheriff Boyd: "Go get the strip." Comic strip? No, he means a spike strip, used to stop cars.

Scene 7: During their fourth try, they hit an oncoming car and crash into a ravine!  They are all ok, except for the preteen boy, who has a table leg through his thigh! (Another inch, and he'd have been castrated, which might have impacted his chances of growing up to be a Man).  

The driver of the other car (Tobey), dazed from a head injury, stumbles toward town.  Deputy Kenny takes him to the clinic, while Sheriff Boyd investigates.  A passenger, Jade (David Alpay, left), is unhurt but obviously high.  "You have an amazing face," he tells the Sheriff, who recoils in homophobic disgust and handcuffs him to the car door.  So Jade is gay?  No such luck: Jade says that all of his rescuers are "so beautiful!"  

The Sheriff then tries to rescue the Nuclear Family. Son Ellis, Town Priest, and an EMT help.

Meanwhile, at the clinic, 1930s Sun Dress girl approaches Tobey, the driver of the other car, and reassures him that the accident wasn't his fault.  She kisses him, then stabs him through the jaw!  

Scene 8:  The Nuclear Family is all rescued, except for the preteen son: it will take two hours to extricate him from the table leg, and the sun will set in one hour!  The Sheriff tries to convince Dad that a Man takes care of his family, so his wife and daughter should go into town, where it's safe.  Ok, but Dad is staying.  So they block the windows and put up the weird icon (gee, even upside-down, that RV is the size of a house!).

Meanwhile, on the way back with  Mom, Daughter, and "You're all so beautiful!" Jade, Son Ellis and the Town Priest accidentally run over the spike strip!  And it's almost dark!  They have to run to the hippie commune: "No matter what you see, no matter what you hear, do not stop!"  So the monsters have to lure you?  They can't just grab anyone outside? 

Scene 9:  Back in the RV,  Preteen Son has a seizure.  While Dad and the EMT try to help, Sheriff Boyd looks out the window.  "They're coming," he says, as the monsters converge.  They look like people: a blond woman in a dress, a guy in a workman's suit, an old-fashioned lady librarian-type.  The end.

Beefcake: Just Son Ellis semi-shirtless.

Heterosexism: Two nuclear families, two boy-girl flirtations.

Sexism: Male-female gender polarization everywhere, with a lot of patriarchy, strong, powerful men protecting weak, passive women.

Drinking Game: Every time someone says one of these phrases, you take a drink.  You'll be drunk by minute 45: each appears about 20 times per episode.

1. Can I ask you something?

2. Are you alright?  Not really. 

3. It's not your fault.

Also closeups of people holding hands.

Gay Characters: The town doctor has a girlfriend back home. Fatima makes out with men and women both.  Daughter Julie has a crush on Fatima.  Lots of lesbian/bi women, no gay men.

My Grade: I might continue watching, just for the mystery, and it might be interesting to see the characters' lives before they were trapped on the Island (um,..I mean, in the small town).  If it weren't for the horrible sexism.  And the paywall.  And that depressing theme song....

Update after three episodes: Jade and Deputy Kenny have a little spark, but they both express heterosexual interest as well.  No beefcake except a guy having sex with a woman, and she's on top.  I think the monsters decide to bring people into the village that they think will be fun to hunt; like when the nuclear family mom and daughter got killed, they immediately brought in a new pair.

The 9 Worst TV Series Finales in History

If you watch every episode of a 100-episode sitcom, you've spend 2300 minutes or nearly 40 hours, not including reruns.  That's the equivalent of 19 feature-length movies or 11 novels. A suzeable chunk of your life.

If it was a 60-minute dramatic series, make that 38 feature length movies and 22 novels.  

Then comes the series finale.  There will be no more episodes.

You know the characters better than many of your real-life friends.  Saying goodbye is going to be painful.

For years you've set aside a special part of your week for the program.  You rarely missed it, and when you did, you taped it to watch later.  You watched all of the summer reruns.There will be a hole in your life for quite some time.

So you sit down for the series finale, hoping for a warm, funny, memorable sendoff.  But instead, you get garbage.  Mind-destroying, depressing, confusing, WTF garbage.

May 10, 1983: Laverne and Shirley (1976-1983).  A sitcom about two bromantic "girlfriends" sharing an apartment in 1950s Milwaukee, right?  Except by 1983, there was just Laverne, it was Los Angeles, and the heart of the 1960s (Laverne's boyfriend is a Star Trek fan).  Way to destroy your premise.

But the series finale isn't even about that; it's about Laverne's singer/dancer/male prostitute friend Carmine going to New York to audition for Hair.  

We don't find out if he got the role or not. And we don't see his nude scene.

May 21, 1990: Newhart (1982-1990): For eight years, Bob Newhart played the owner of a bed and breakfast in a small New England town full of quirky residents, whom you grew fond of over the years.  Who can forget "I'm Larry, and this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl?"

But on May 21st, 1990, Bob wakes up in bed as Dr. Bob Hartley, the psychologist in his old series, and tells his old wife, Emily, "What a dream I had!"  Way to destroy beloved characters, Bob!

July 20, 1994: Dinosaurs (1991-1994).  A nuclear family spoof starring cute, cuddly dinosaurs in ABC's kid-friendly Friday night lineup.  Remember "I'm the baby, gotta love me"?

How best to end the hearwarming series:  how about with a eco-catastrophe that kills every dinosaur on the planet?  Including the entire Sinclair family?  Including the baby?

May 20, 1997: Roseanne (1988-1997).  The queen of lower-middle class urban blight and her ragtag family spent eight seasons being the anti-Cosbys, not affluent, or educated, or elegant.  It featured Johnny Galecki as a teenager with a terrible hairdo.  Then Roseanne wins the lottery, and spends the last season hob-nobbing with the rich and famous.

That's not the worst of it, though -- in the last episode, we are told that this has all been a story that Roseanne has written.  The real people are all different.  Dan is dead.  Jackie is a lesbian, so her husband and child don't exist.  But Mom isn't a lesbian.  The daughters switch husbands.  Everything we thought we knew about the show is wrong.

More terrible finales after the break

"La Brea": As Many Plot Holes as "Lost," But Not as Much Beefcake

 

I've been dying to watch the first episode of La Brea, the new tv series on Hulu: according to the horrendous reviews,  a "cliched, amateurish, inept rip-off of Lost"  with "a cliche gay couple."  11% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Where are Joel and the Bots when you need them?

Scene 1:  Stuck in traffic outside the La Brea Tar Pits in L.A., Mom intermittently honks her horn, complains about her job,  and displays her wedding-ring necklace (so she and Dad are divorced so they can get back together again). Teenage daughter Izzy has a prosthetic leg.  Teenage son Josh (Jack Martin, left) demonstrates that he is heterosexual by cruising a girl in the next car (aren't you glad we got that out of the way?). 

Suddenly the pavement cracks, and cars and buildings fall into a gigantic, rapidly-expanding sinkhole.  Mom reverses the car and drives down the sidewalk until she crashes. Hundreds of people run past stopped cars (but no one actually gets out of the cars?).   Josh falls in.  Mom falls in, but Izzy grabs her arm.  Instead of "Pull me up!", Mom orders her to "Let go!"  Huh?   The sinkhole obligingly waits for her to think it over, drop Mom, and run away in slow motion.

Scene 2:  U.S. Air Force Base, El Segundo, California.  Disgraced ex-pilot Gavin (Eoin Macken) in a car, intermittently drinking, getting a vision of a giant condor, and gazing at a photo of his estranged family.  He goes in to apply for a job.  The interviewer doesn't want a pilot who has crazy hallucinations (and drinks...and discusses his marital problems in detail), but she promises to find him something else to do.

On the way out, he sees a news story about the sinkhole on tv (helpfully set up in the lobby), and Izzy calls.  Before she has a chance to say anything, he yells "Stay there.  I'm on my way."  How do you know she was in the disaster?  How do you know where she is?  

Scene 3: The disaster site.  Izzy in an ambulance, being examined.  Why is she the only one?  Wouldn't there be hundreds of evacuees?  Dad arrives.  Wait -- it's 24 miles from El Segundo to L.A., How did he get there so fast?   They hug.  Suddenly giant condors, just like the ones in Dad's hallucinations, fly from the sinkhole.  One stops and caws ominously: "Nice seeing you again, Gavin."

Scene 4:  Mom fell through a glowing rift into a new world, barren except for a single "Wilshire Boulevard" sign and a weird pictograph on a rock.  And her wedding-ring necklace, on the ground nearby.   Why isn't she pulverized by the fall?  And where are the other people and objects that fell with her?    She starts running at random, yelling "Josh!"

Eventually she runs into a black guy with a gun (whoa, racism!), traumatized by the fall.  They both run toward some smoke -- oh, here's where everything else landed, in a convenient clearing!  Why are the cars and buildings all mangled, but the people are fine?

Scene 5: Josh has apparently been there much longer than Mom. He's already got a sidekick -- Riley, the girl he cruised earlier!  They also meet a gung-ho woman and a giggling stoned dude (Scott), who thinks they're in an episode of Lost.  A convenient Doctor (Jon Seda) takes charge, and sends them all out looking for supplies.  

There's also a gay couple, half of which is played by Pacharo Mzembe.  The other half has lost his glasses, and is literally blind without them.  They're on the scene for about 10 seconds. 

Riley and Scott find a cache of heroin in one of the cars.  Ulp!  There's a drug dealer among them!

Uh-oh, giant CGI wolves attack!  Riley's dad is killed and eaten.  Jack is bitten.   The others take refuge in cars until Black Guy with Gun shoots the wolves.  

Scene 6:  At the sinkhole, Homeland Security lady holds a press conference.  It was...um...er...a natural disaster.  There are no plans to search for survivors: "no one could have survived that fall."  But Gavin gets a vision of Mom in the prehistoric world: "This sounds crazy, but Mom and Josh are still alive.  And what about the condors?"

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Lady talks to Adam (Toby Truslove, left), a senior official who worked on a similar incident in the Mojave Desert: "Yep, I told them what they wanted to hear.  No way they can know the truth!"  They go into a command center tent and look at drone images of the glowing rift.  Suddenly the images vanish.

Scene 7: At the prehistoric world, Doctor treats Josh's wound -- he needs antibiotics, or he will die in like a few minutes (that's not how infections work).  The Black Guy with a Gun, traumatized by using his gun, runs into the woods.  Mom and Doctor drop their search for antibiotics to follow.  Just let him go?  Keeping Josh alive is more important than telling a stranger "Everything is going to be ok?"

Coincidentally, Black Guy with Gun knows where an ambulance is -- inconveniently distant from the rest of the debris. 

Scene 8: Dad  Gavin tries to talk to Adam and Homeland Security Lady: "I know something.  I've been having hallucinations, see, but I'm not crazy.  And not very drunk yet.."  They dismiss him.  "I saw the serial number of your drone."  They pretend not to care, but secretly investigate him.

Dad Gavin, Izzy, and Aunt Jessica go home -- extremely ornate rich-person house.  Dad sorts through a shoebox of old photos to find a picture of the boulder with the pictograph, which would prove that there are sinkhole survivors, I guess.

Scene 9:  On the way to the ambulance, Doctor conveniently walks ahead, so Black Guy with Gun (Ty) reveals that he has an ex-wife (of course), and he's a psychologist (who carries a gun with him at all times?). He immediately stops being traumatized and asks if Mom wants to start an imprompto therapy session.  

Ok!  About a year ago, she was running late, so she asked a neighbor to pick up Izzy from school, and there was an accident, and Izzy lost her leg.  

"You can't blame yourself," Ty responds. Gee, I could have said that without a Ph.D. in psychology!

Scene 10:  Dad Gavin sneaks out in the middle of the night to find the boulder with the pictograph.  And he digs around, and finds the wedding ring necklace!  Are they going with the survivors in the prehistoric past, before the first humans came to North America (over 23,000 years ago)?  No way that ring would be so close to the surface.

Meanwhile, at the survivor camp, Scott and Riley try to keep Josh awake so he won't die (that's head injuries, not infected wounds).  Gung-ho lady fires a flare.  Someone notices -- a prehistoric person with the pictograph on his cloak!

Meanwhile, at the command center, they discover that the condors belong to a prehistoric species.

Scene 11: Mom, Doctor, and Ty finally reach the ambulance.  Suddenly Mom notices that they're still in the L.A. basin.  Ulp, a saber-tooth tiger attacks!   Saber-tooth tigers became extinct about 10,000 years ago, so they're definitely in the past. The end.

Beefcake: None.

Gay characters: One couple, for ten seconds.

Heterosexism:  Nearly all interactions, even professional and familial interactions, are between men and women.  I can't recall a single line of dialogue spoken between men (except the gay guy says "It will be ok, Sweetheart" to his partner).

Plot Inanities: Lots.

Will I Keep Watching:  What for?  Everybody is divided into boy-girl dyads, and no one took off his clothes, and the mystery has already been solved: they're in the prehistoric past.

"The A-List": Bingeworthy "Lost" Meets "Riverdale"

I sat down to watch The A-List at 12:30, planning on watching one episode before going to work.  Two hours later, I said "Well, maybe one more episode."  And another.  And another.

It begins as Riverdale on an island.  Some British teens show up on Peregrine Island for a summer holiday:

1. Rich bitch Mia (Lisa Ambalavanar)

2. It-boy Dev (Jacob Dudman, whom no one can look at without imagining taking him to senior prom)

3. Heterosexual life partners Brendan and Zac (Micheal Ward, Jack Kane), who can bench press 100 kg (220 pounds).  Big deal; I do 300, and I'm twice their age.

4. Genderqueer but female-presenting Alex (Rosie Dwyer)

5. Clutzy Harry (Benjamin Nugent)

And the rest, all led by over-chirpy counselors,Dave (Cian Barry) and Mags (Nneka Okoye).

Mia is quickly overshadowed by a new It-Girl, Amber (Ellie Duckles), who gathers a coterie of followers with her mind-control powers.

And the weird things keep happening:
1. A mysterious bunker in the woods, like the one on Lost.
2. A growling beast like the Smoke Monster on Lost.
3. A mysterious stalker.
4. A sobbing sound coming from nowhere.
5. Human teeth on a tree.
6. Memories of things that haven't happened.
7. An older photograph of the campers.  This has all happened before!

The mysterious stalker turns out to be Luka (Max Lohan) who has been living in the woods on his own since the camp closed down!

I didn't want to give away that spoiler, but I had to get in a picture of Max Lohan.  It's impossible to look at him without wanting to kiss him.

This actually isn't Lost.  The mysteries within mysteries are eventually resolved.  Well, maybe not the final WTF cliffhanger.

Nor is it Riverdale.  Not a lot of nudity: a shirt off here and there.  No one goes swimming (Peregrine Island is in the Scottish Highlands, where it's cold).

 But, on the bright side, no sex: the most these  teenagers do is kiss. 

No gay male characters, that I can tell; the Brendan-Zac pair is subverted by their hetero-horny exploits, and they don't even hug.

But the genderqueer Alex points out the heteronormative bias in selecting a Midsummer King and Queen, and gets a girlfriend, after struggling to come out. (A genderqueer person has a problem with being attracted to girls?).

The A-List certainly has got its share of "WTF!!!!" cliffhangers.  Don't start watching unless you have a free afternoon.

See also: The 9 Worst Finales in Tv History

The Hollywood Legacy of Zane Danton

In "The End," the first episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse, high schooler Timothy Campbell finds out that he has received a prestigious college scholarship.  A moment later, the sirens go off.  The bombs are going to start falling.  Representatives of the mysterious Collective arrive, tell him that he has been chosen to survive due to his superior DNA, and whisk him away.  The rest of the family vanishes from the story..for now.  Maybe they'll return in flashbacks.


Timothy's dad is played by Travis Schuldt, born in 1974 in Topeka, Kansas, best known as Ben in Always Sunny in Philadelphia  and Keith on Scrubs.

Timothy's brother Edward is played by Zane Danton in his first acting role.  His appearance on screen was short but memorable -- I especially liked the full-body hug, as Edward realizes that his brother is going away forever (and that he's going to be dead in an hour).

Zane certainly has what it takes to become a teen idol.

He's a National Honors Student in math.

He does modeling, represented by the Young Artist's Studio.

He won the long jump competition at an event sponsored by the Pacific Palisades YMCA.

No social media presence; I couldn't find a facebook, instagram, or twitter account; this is someone with the same name.

But Zane has the most important criterion for becoming a teen idol: connections.  A Hollywood legacy extending back three generations.

Zane's father is Steve Danton.  He appeared in a few 1980s movies, such as Fever Pitch and Trouble in Mind, but his main career has been in directing.  A lot of rom-coms and female buddy movies: Thelma and Louise, When a Man Loves a Woman, How Stella Got Her Groove Back.   Also Seventh Son, The Fantastic Four, and The Originals.

His mother, Darragh Danton (born Croyle), was a production assistant on Boys on the Side, The Edge, and some other movies.

At the beginning of The Edge (1997), Anthony Hopkins is seen reading a book about wilderness survival by D. Croyle, an in-joke by the prop department.

Zane also has an uncle in show biz. Mitchell Danton has appeared on screen a few times, but he is primarily known as an Emmy-winning film editor, with credits including Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson's Creek, Survivor, and The Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce.  He...um...edited a book on the topic, Cutting it in Hollywood.

Steve and Mitchell's father, Zane's grandfather, was Ray Danton (1931-1992), suave leading man of the 1950s; a biography is entitled The Epitome of Cool.   He appeared in many Westerns and cop shows through the 1970s, and directed episodes of Quincy, Fame, Cagney and Lacey, and Dynasty.  

He also produced, wrote, and directed the two-fisted New Mike Hammer (1984-89), starring Stacey Keach, a muscle hunk of the day.

I haven't heard any gay rumors about Ray Danton, but most of the beefcake stars of the 1950s were at least open to the idea of gay-for-pay.

Ray's ex-wife, Zane's grandmother, is Julie Adams (1928-), not to be confused with Julie Andrews.  She was terrorized in a swimsuit in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and had a long career in dramas, Westerns, and the occasional comedy.   You may recognize her as Amelia, a member of the wacky book club run by the Others on Lost (2008), hinted to be the long-lost Amelia Earhart.

With such an illustrious Hollywood heritage, how can you refuse to become a star?

See also: The Hunk from the Black Lagoon.

Wrecked is a Wreck

Lost (2004-2010), about plane crash survivors facing paranormal peril on a desert island, was great.  Well, it started out great, and went downhill with the secrets-with-a-secret, most of which would be easily answered in the course of ordinary conversation.

"I thought there were five other survivors in your group."
"There were."
"....well, so tell me what happened to them?"

Instead of saying "Locke has risen from the dead," they make some cryptic reference to shadows.

My favorite is are the twin demigods or whatever, Jacob and ___. Everyone takes great pains to not say ___'s name, even though it's obviously Esau.

And the writers wrote themselves into so many inescapable corners that they had to fall back on a cop-out "They were all in Purgatory" ending.  I think...

Sorry, lost my train of thought.

Anyway, it's been 8 years, so a Lost parody hardly seems relevant.  I went in to Wrecked with low expectations, thinking maybe I would get a little beefcake and maybe some bonding.  I didn't.  Not much, anyway.

A disparate group of people are stranded on a desert island in a plane crash.  Danny (Brian Sacca, left), the slacker son of a rich businessman, and shy flight attendant Owen (Zach Kregger, top photo), see their chance to shine, and take charge.

They also develop a lovey-dovey gay-subtext bromance, in spite of their pursuit of ladies.

There are many other gay subtexts on the island.

Florence and Emma have a gal-pal romance.

Everyone, male and female, is in love with the British special agent who is squashed by the airplane fuselage during the first episode.

Todd (Will Greenberg, left) is mourning the loss of his golf clubs, but fey New Zealander Steve (Rhys Darby) thinks he's lost a child.  He tries to be supportive, offering hands-on-shoulders and gifts, which Todd interprets as sexual come-ons.

Sports agent Pack (Asif Ali) doesn't display any heterosexual interest or pursue any heterosexual relationships.

Unfortunately, no actual, honest-to-goodness, canonical gay characters, just subtexts.

There is some beefcake, but not as much as on Lost, where every male castaway was a fitness model.

Is there any other reason to watch Wrecked?

There is no paranormal peril on the island; minor mysteries turn out to be just that: minor.  Most plots involve struggling to survive: food shortages, tainted water, medical emergencies.  A very gross episode about not being able to poop in the jungle.  Some people die.  That just isn't funny.

Other than a few brief call-outs, like the episode title "All is Not Lost," Wrecked  doesn't try to parody Lost.  And it's not funny enough to make it alone.

I suggest holding out for a program with real gay characters.  Or fitness models.