Eight simple rules for determining if Martin Spanjers is gay

  

Link to the n*de photos

Rule 1: Does his character gawk at guys in the shower?

This is a still from Epiosde 3.1 of the  TGIF sitcom Eight Simple Rules (2002-2005).  It was originally Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, about an overprotective Dad played by John Ritter, but when Ritter died, it became a general family-angst dramedy.  I never watched, but in 2004 you could hardly turn on your computer without seeing Martin Spanjers as the teenage Rory gawking at Sam Horrigan.  

Only Seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Disney Plus, so I don't know what's going on in the scene, except that Rory doesn't want to shower after gym class due to his less than adequate package.  Maybe Sam Horrigan is a high school jock?  

2. Does he play a gay-vague teenager?

Fan consensus is that Rory is one of those gay-vague sitcom kids, soft, shy, pretty, and struggling valiantly to act girl-crazy because on American sitcoms, all teenage boys must be girl-crazy.

3. Does he show his stuff on screen?

The next time I saw Martin Spanjers, he was still naked, playing the teenage shapeshifter Sam Merlotte in a 2009 episode of True Blood, about vampires, werewolves, and various other magical beings in rural Louisiana.  When you shift back to human form, you lose your clothes, so he's n*ked when he breaks into a house looking for food or something to steal.

4. Does he have a gay-subtext role?

The house happens to belong to a maenid (minor goddess) named Maryanne, who naturally wants to have sex with him.  He steals $10,000 on his way out, which causes the adult Sam Merlotte a lot of headaches.  

Although the encounter is heterosexual, we can still see a gay subtext. Sam was thrown out of the house when his parents discovered his "secret," like gay kids ejected by homophobic parents. About 40% of homeless youth are LGBT.

5. Does he avoid roles involving hetero-romance?

After Eight Simple Rules, Martin did the usual guest star bit, appearing on as a barista 90210, a chicken restaurant employee on Good Luck Charlie, a kid accused of killing cows on Saving Grace, a rich boy who the Griffins eat on Family Guy,  Well, he had already frozen to death while trying to climb Mount Everest.

He had minor roles in Just Peck, about teen angst, and Little Fish, Strange Pond, about existential angst.

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The Secrets of Sulphur Springs: three boys with girlfriends, time travel, and future hunkoids. Just another day on the Disney Channel

 

When The Secrets of Sulphur Springs premiered on the Disney Channel, I did a key word search on the title and "gay" yields: "this series is about two married gay men who get a divorce so they can marry other men."  Unlikely for a Disney Channel teen com, but maybe there are some gay subtexts.

No, it's a ghost story-time travel mystery written by people who can't spell "sulfur."

Ben (Josh Braaten, top photo) and his children, Griffin (Preston Oliver),  Wyatt (Landon Gordon, left),and some girls, move from the Big City to the tourist trap...er, resort of Sulphur Springs, Lousiana, where Ben  grew up. They are going to re-open the creepy, haunted Tarant Inn.

Thirty years ago, young Ben and a girl named Savannah sneaked into the Tarant Inn.  He heard an odd noise and went off to investigate, and when he returned, she was gone!  He is trying to work through the trauma and guilt, and the suspicions of the townsfolk, who think that he...well, this is the Disney Channel, so let's just say "knows something about the disappearance."    So he decided to come back?

This is a teen series, so eldest son Griffin is the focus character.  He immediately meets the Girl of His Dreams, who happens to be mystery obsessed and anxious to help investigate the mystery.  They discover a secret room at the inn that leads to the distant-past year of 1990.  There they meet Savannah, alive and well, but constantly being pestered/hit on by the young Ben.  

It's a soap opera all around, back then: Young Ben (Jake Melrose, left) has an abusive father (Jim Gleason) and a stalker, the Mean Girl Jess, who is constantly trying to sabotage his budding romance with Savannah so she can seduce him.  These are 13-14 year olds on the Disney Channel, so no s*x acts will actually occur, but all the tropes are there.

Meanwhile Griffin's sibs, paranormal enthusiasts, try to contact the ghost of Savannah to find out how she...um...disappeared.

More after the break

True Blood: Vampires come out of the closet amid a Southern Gothic soap opera, with some n*de vampires

  

Link to the n*de photos

Last night we latched onto True Blood, which ran from 2008 to 2014 on HBO.

This is the stereotypic South of Eudora Welty and Mama's Family, where people named Hoyt Fortenberry shop at the Piggly-Wiggly and drink sweet tea on the veranda, where everyone is related to everybody else's great-grand daddy once removed, and where the War means the Civil War...um, I mean the War of Yankee Aggression.   

It starts in media res, two years after vampires have "come out of the coffin," har har -- yep, the connection with LGBT people is just that heavy-handed -- due to the invention of artificial blood, brand name True Blood, which some humans have developed a taste for.  Snooty fratboy Brett (Josh Kelly, top photo), looking for a store that sells it, learns too late that every long-haired, multi-ringed Goth isn't a vampire; and sometimes chubby rednecks are.

We switch to the problems of Tara, who gets fired from or quits every job because she doesn't abide idiots and her best friend Sookie, who can read minds.  Sookie and soon Tara work at Merlotte's Bar, where the owner, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), is in love with her.  He won't come out with it, but of course Sookie can read his mind.

The only gay character so far is the bar's swishy cook, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a stereotyped flamboyant, promiscuous queen who  claims he's done most of the men in town, and likes to flirt with racist, homophobic rednecks to get them all scared. He doesn't get a boyfriend until late in the series.

That same evening, the bar's other waitress, Maudette, hooks up with Sookie's brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten).  She's a fangbanger, a human who likes sex with vampires, because they get rough.  She offers to show him the video, which turns him on so much that he wants to do rough sex, including strangling her...a little too enthusiastically.  And she's taping the encounter!

Ryan Kwanten shows his stuff on  RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

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