Chad Allen: The Dr. Quinn hunk is outed, but still plays hetero romantic leads and a gay detective. With his d*ck and 1990s San Francisco

Link to the n*de photos

I finally cleaned out my "Profiles to Do" file,  eliminating Tyler Posey (extremely ugly), Ethan Cutkosky (only four photos), and Raphael Luce (already profiled him). Twelve guys are left: Nicholas Bechtel, Nathaniel Bacon, Ben Patrick Johnson...wait, Chad Allen.  The name brings back a flood of memories.

In 1995, my partner Lane and I moved to San Francisco, because why wouldn't you?  It was Gay Heaven.  It was also very difficult, cold, crowded, dirty, and dangerous.  Lane lasted for about six months before dumping me and high-tailing it back to the comfort of West Hollywood.  I stuck it out for two years.

The main problem: We felt obligated to serve as stand-ins for the thousands of gay men who dreamed of living in Gay Heaven.  Every moment had to count.  Every night was a mad rush of beer busts, bear parties, AIDS benefits, book signings, art openings, film premieres, and hookups, until, by Saturday night we were exhausted, and more often than not just wanted to get Chinese take-out and chill in front of the tube.  So we watched Married..with Children, Lois & Clark, Leaving L.A. (because we had left L.A.), and Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-98)

Jane Seymour played the titular doctor, also known as Doctor Mike, who moved out West in 1867 to deal with gamblers, grifters, bureaucrats, cowboys, Indians, and a lot of sick and dying people.  No gay characters, but come on, she was named Mike, she disguised herself as a man on many occasions, and she had a lesbian-subtext romance with her midwife, Charlotte.  After The Girl died, Doctor Mike adopted her three children and started a romance with a cowboy (Joe Lando).  You have to move on.

Chad Allen played Matthew Cooper, Dr. Mike's adopted son.  His plotlines involved trying to father his younger siblings after Mom's death (by rattlesnake bite), getting a girlfriend (who dies of rabies), being trapped in a cave-in, getting a new girlfriend, getting a gambling addiction, chasing cattle rustlers, and having various accidents.  Sure, it was ridiculous, but in the 1990s everything on tv was ridiculous.  Remember Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210?

Joe Lando appeared in Playgirl, but didn't show his dangly bits.

But Chad did.  At least, some leaked photos purportedly of a young adult Chad made the rounds of celebrity websites in the early 2000s (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Chad had been appearing in heart-warmers and tear-jerkers since he was seven years old: Hotel, Webster, Highway to Heaven, Punky Brewster, and The Wonder Years (that's Fred Savage beside him).

His most iconic role was Tommy Westphal, the autistic son of Dr. Westphal in 17 episodes of  the homophobic medical drama St. Elsewhere (1983-88).  We only watched one episode, and it was homophobic.

The season finale of St. Elsewhere revealed that the entire series was imagined by Tommy as he gazed at a snow globe.   It was all a dream. This enraged fans, but isn't all fiction someone's dream?

Chad also played more conventional roles, like the 12-year old David Witherspoon in 46 episodes of the dramedy Our House (1986-88).  The then-famous curmudgeon Wilford Brimley starred as the grandpa to three cute kids.

And Zach Nichols, who competes with Giovanni Ribisi for the attention of The Girl in 26 episodes of the comedy (sort of) My Two Dads (1987-1990).

In 1996,  Chad was outed when the tabloid The Globe published a leaked photo of him kissing a guy!  

Usually in the 1990s, coming out or being outed meant an instant end to your career, but Jane Seymour was a strong LGBT ally, and insisted that Chad continue appearing as Matthew in every episode of Dr. Quinn.  The writers did manage to avoid giving him a new girlfriend.

More after the break

"Move to Heaven" Tackles a Gay Couple

 

Move to Heaven is a Korean drama about three "trauma cleaners" who clean the houses, apartments, or rooms of the deceased, and deliver a box of mementos to the surviving loved ones: Geun-ru, who is autistic; his MMA fighter/ex con guardian Sang-gu (Lee Je-hoon, left); and best friend Na-mu.  (See my review of the first episode here)

In Episode 5, they are assigned to clean the room of Joon Soo-hyun (Kwon Soo-hyun), a young doctor killed in a hostage incident.  His parents want everything taken away, no mementos of any sort. Geun-ru finds a letter that the doctor planned to send to a loved one, and has to deliver it; but when he asks the parents who it was written to, Dad throws it onto the fire.

Mom: He was our son.  We should have allowed it.

Dad: I would never allow such a thing in our family!

Aha, a mystery to solve!  The autistic Geun-ru becomes fixated on finding "the person he was in love with" to deliver the mementos to.  Sang-gu and Na-mu immediately say "yes, we must find this woman.  Who is she?"

Soo-hyun had tickets to a string quartet concert tomorrow night -- three women and a man.  Plus he put the letter in a gift box.  No doubt he was planning to deliver it at the concert.  The trauma cleaners deduce that the doctor was in love with one of the performers.  So they go to the concert hall, and while Geun-ru is in the bathroom, Sang-gu and Na-mu interrogate each of the three women.  Nope, none of them even knew Soo-hyung.

Geun-ru returns, and looks at a poster advertising the concert: "I know who the lover is."

Sang-gu: "Dude, it's a dead end.  We asked all three of the members of the quartet."

Geun-ru points.

Sang-gu: "Dude, you're pointing at a guy, Ian Park (Kim Doh-yon). We're looking for Soo-hyung's lover, remember?"

Na-mu: "You don't mean...no!  That's impossible!  This is Korea!"

Sang-gu: "Well....I've heard of them.  But Soo-hyung was a doctor!  He couldn't be..."

After their initial shock and disbelief, the trauma cleaners are perfectly nonchalant about gay people.  Even Sang-gu, the macho ex-con MMA fighter.  They approach Ian to give him the mementos, but he denies knowing Soo-hyung.  Then he says "I knew him once, but he's a stranger to me now."

 The others say "Well, that's another dead end," but Geun-ru insists that Soo-hyung wanted Ian to have the mementos. They decide to try again, but Ian has gone missing, right before the concert!

After all the "no, this can't happen in Korea!" build-up, I expected Ian to be a villain, involved in a sinister plot of some sort.  But no: there are flashbacks of the two meeting, going out on dates, cuddling in bed, falling in love, and planning to go to San Francisco together.  Then they broke up when Soo-yun decided to obey his parents and marry a woman; that's why "he's a stranger to me."

Why San Francisco?  Because it is a cliched gay mecca?  And why does Ian have a Western name?  Is gayness a Western phenomenon?

The Trauma Cleaners track down Ian and tell him about the letter.  It was burned, but fortunately Geun-ru has an eidetic memory, and can quote it.   Soo-hyun wanted to get back together and go to San Francisco after all.  

At the concert, Ian tells about losing "someone who was everything to me, someone who I will love forever."  He drops pronouns, but the ghost of Soo-hyun, sitting in the audience, hears him.  

Postscript: Geun-ru still doesn't understand. Why were the parents against Soo-hyun dating Ian?  He was nice.  Sang-gu: "Parents always worry when their kids are different, like your father worried about you."

By the way, there's a second postscript with Sang-gu feeling guilty because he put his opponent into a coma during a fight.  Some shirtless MMA shots.

Gays Next Door in 1972: The Doris Day Show

The Doris Day Show was a Mary Tyler Moore clone, a workplace comedy centered on Doris Martin (Doris Day), a hip, sophisticated journalist for Today's World magazine, living in San Francisco and dating a number of cute guys (including Patrick O'Neal and bisexual rat packer Peter Lawford, left).

And, in a television first, there was a gay couple living next door!

Lance and Lester (Alan Dewitt, Lester Fletcher) were often referred to, but appeared just once, in a meeting of tenants in the November 27, 1972 episode, "The Co-Op."  I didn't catch the flamboyant stereotypes, and no one used the word "gay" -- I wouldn't hear the word on tv until 1976 -- but I saw that two men had found a way to live together, escaping the heterosexist mandate .  Could San Francisco be a "good place"?

Doris Day got her start in the light musical comedies of the 1940s, but she made her mark as a liberated woman in a series of Camelot-era sex comedies with suggestive titles: Pillow Talk (1959), It Happened to Jane (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), That Touch of Mink (1962), The Thrill of it All (1963), Move Over Darling (1963).  Her usual costar, gay actor Rock Hudson, helped her tiptoe around the boundary between not knowing that gay people exist and knowing but not saying.

But her sitcom began as a hayseed comedy!

In its first season (1968-69), The Doris Day Show was basically Green Acres: City girl Doris, a new widow, moves to her father's ranch with her two sons, Toby (Todd Starke) and Billy (Philip Brown, below, who would go on to a successful career as a soap hunk), plus a ranch hand (James Hampton, right) and a housekeeper.  It aired on Tuesday nights, just after another relic of the 1950s, The Red Skelton Show.

Doris hated hayseed -- she didn't even know that her husband Martin Melcher had signed her up for it.

So in the second season (1969-70), she pushed for some changes: although still living on the ranch, Doris commuted into San Francisco, where she worked as a secretary for Today's World magazine.

Today's World: Modern, hip, with it.

She got two quintessentially urban coworkers, played by  McLean Stevenson and Rose Marie.

In the third season (1970-71): Doris and her sons lived in an apartment over an Italian restaurant in San Francisco (Ranch?  What ranch?), where she got a gay-vague next door neighbor (Billy DeWolf).

In the fourth season (1971-72), the transition was complete: Doris was a sophisticated career woman, Ms. instead of Mrs., who had always been single (Kids?  What kids?).

And she managed to finagle some gay neighbors out of the network, something Mary Tyler Moore was never able to do.

John Stamos: From a gay-free San Francisco to a steamy shower scene (or two).

Gay boys all but ignored 20-year old John Stamos when he was playing streetwise Blackie on General Hospital (1983-84).  Not many watched soap operas, and his pleasantly slender physique seemed bit too androgynous as Nautilus-toned man-mountains came into style. Besides, he had a girlfriend.

Some started to notice when John starred as aspiring rock star Gino Minnelli on Dreams (1984-85), which aired after Charles in Charge on Wednesday nights.  It offered lots of shirtless shots -- by this time John had joined a gym -- plus buddy-bonding episodes like "Friends" and "Boys are the Best."  But it only lasted for 12 episodes.

After 25 episodes of You Again? (1986-87), playing Jack Klugman's estranged teenage son -- which was switched around so often that no one saw it -- John finally found television fame in Full House (1987-95) on the TGIF ("Thank God it's Friday") block of kid-friendly Friday-night shows. 

He played Uncle Jesse, who moved in with his brother-in-law Danny (Bob Saget) and another male friend, Dave (Joey Gladstone), to help raise Danny's three daughters after his wife died.  

Alternative families are a standby on tv, but aside from the basic non-heteronormative family structure -- and John's smile -- there was little to like.

He rarely took off a shirt -- when he did, the moments were mostly cute rather than hot. Only one episode showed him in a swimsuit.

 Nor did the friendships result in much buddy-bonding.  The guys all got girlfriends, and the daughters got boyfriends, and gay people were not mentioned, ever, even though the show was set in gay mecca San Francisco.  

More after the break

Mayfair Witches: Two of them, with interlocking stories, a swishy straight guy, and some demon dicks

  

Netflix has just dropped a lot of paranormal tv shows: A Discovery of Witches, Interview with a Vampire, The Preacher...I'll start with Mayfair Witches, which is based on a trilogy of books by Anne Rice, so there's bound to be some gay characters.

Scene 1: A sagging Gothic mansion. A man in a Depression-Era robin's egg blue suit appears on the front porch to give a staring, catatonic woman her Thorazine shot.  He's new, and can't believe that this is the patient: her file is so big, he thought she was elderly.

He reviews her file, and snoops among the weird books and artifacts in her library, including a photo of her as a 1920s flapper.  So she's immortal. Out on the porch, a man is talking to her, but when the doctor comes out, he is gone, and the maid says there was no man.  Eerie!

The rest of the episode juxtaposes stories of two women who look alike, so the only way to tell them apart is by their timelines: the first is contemporary, and the second looks to be in the 1950s. I don't know which is the catatonic one.

The Story of Woman #1: Rowan

Scene 1: Rowan pilots a boat into San Francisco Bay.  Her girlfriend arrives via Uber.  Nope, it's her mother.  

Scene 2:  A surgeon, Rowan is comforting the young boy she'll be operating on. Wait -- a male surgeon, Dr. Keck, took over the case to impress the sexist Board, but he's not operating right. She argues, but to no avail, and the boy almost dies  "Keck is a menace!" she exclaims. 

Scene 3: More tearjerking: Mom's cancer is back!  Plus we've only seen two male characters, neither cute.

Rowan tells the menace Dr. Keck that David Lemle was observing the surgery.  His company does research with stem cells for cancer patients, so could Dr. Keck arrange an introduction, so she can apply for a job as his research associate, so she can get her mother into the trials?  That sounds unethical, and really far-fetched. But Dr. Keck thinks she's arrogant, with a superiority complex.. As he is tearing into her, she hears whispers, something happens inside his brain, and he falls over dead!  

Scene 4: Rowan thinks she caused Dr. Keck's death.  Maybe her powers are genettc, but she's adopted, and there's no way to determine who her birth parents were.  

But the moment she leaves the room, Mom calls a facility and asks who Rowan's case worker is now: Ciprian Grieves, played by Tongayi Chirisa, left. That's a totally made up name.  She leaves a message: "My daughter is hurting people.  I need to know if something has changed."

Scene 5: In a bar, Rowan asks the bartender, Max (Jordan Cox) to have sex with her, but he has a date tonight.  So she goes after a random guy, and he relents.  

After sex, he wants to stick around, cuddle, and discuss their feelings, but she kicks him out: she's only in it for sex, not a relationship.  That's why she never sees the guy a second time.

Scene 6: Caseworker Ciprian Grieves goes to a house in New Orleans and uses his magic powers to look at the spirit world.  A mysterious spirit, played by Jack Huston, is lurking in the back yard.  He calls Rowan's Mom and tells her that He is nowhere near her daughter.  That's a good thing, right?  

Mom notes that she's dying of cancer, so who will protect Rowan when she's gone?  Ciprian volunteers.

More after the break

Dennis Quaid: Two gay guys, some cops, a shrunken scientist, a footballer, and is that a dick shot?

  

Nazarenes didn't go to many movies, since it was a major sin, but in the summer of 1979 I managed to see the buddy comedy Breaking Away.  In the university town of Bloomington, Indiana, a group of working-class boys contemplate their future while swimming semi-nude in the limestone quarry where their dads work.  The hunky Mike (Dennis Quaid) wants to "light out to the territory" and become a cowboy. Moocher (Jackie Earl Haley) wants to marry his girlfriend. Dave (Dennis Christopher), wants to become Italian and win The Girl.

But you could easily ignore the heterosexist plot and concentrate on the primal beauty of the four friends sunning on the limestone.  In the end it was about friendship.

There's a more explicit, girl-free gay subtext in Enemy Mine (1985:  a future soldier named David and his enemy, a Drac named "Jerry" (Louis Gossett Jr.), are stranded on an alien planet,  and develop a touching, homoromantic bond.  They end up having a child together (boy Dracs don't need girl Dracs to get pregnant). When Jerry dies, David raises the child alone, and after they are rescued, returns with him to the Drac planet.

Dennis shows his butt for the first time -- but not the last -- in The Big Easy, a 1986 neo-noir about a New Orleans cop who plays by his own rules -- don't they all? -- and falls in love with a girl.

There's also reputedly a dick shot. I put two possible candidates on the RG site, but they are small and blurry.

I'd rather check out the jockstrap bulge of the injured footballer in Everybody's All-American.

More Dennis after the break

"Jexi": Dull romcom enlivened by Adam Devine's comic delivery and nudity

 

I'm going to review Jexi (2019) in spite of its 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes and awful reviews.  Adam Devine's movies often emphasize gay subtexts and minimize heterosexual hijinks (does he ever actually kiss a girl), and besides, he's fun to watch in almost anything.

See the NSFW version of this review here.

Scene 1: The boy Phil is having dinner with his parents, bored by their adult heterosexual conversation, so they give him a phone. Not a smart phone, but still, he is mesmerized. 

Cut to a few years later: parents still ignoring Phil, who escapes through the cell phone.  

Cut to the adult Phil (Adam Devine) sleeping alone in a double bed (aww, he's lonely).  He picks up his cell phone and continues looking at it while brushing his teeth, pooping, showering, and walking through San Francisco.  Gay Mecca?  Bound to be some gay characters.  But he's not alone: he's in a sea of humanity, all of them staring at their cell phones.  No human interaction at all.  Gee, the message of this movie is so subtle, it's hard for me to figure out.  Are they pro or anti cell phone?

Scene 2: He works at Chatterbox, some sort of web service, making lists. The Boss (Michael Peña) upbraids the staff for not creating lists "that break the internet."   So: "Beautiful Asian girl, what you got?" Sexist jerk. "Ten reasons that cupcakes are over."

 "Prison lips?" "Cats that look like Ryan Gosling." Why is Phil "prison lips"?  What are prison lips?  

Answer: lips that look like you'd be good at oral sex. Great, now the image of Adam doing that will be in my head all day.

Phil tells his back story to coworker Craig: Journalism degree from UC Davis, wanted to be a serious journalist, stuck writing clickbait lists. So, I wanted to teach seminars in gay history at an Ivy League college, not grade 500 intro papers where the students think that 1956 was in the 19th century.

Craig and an androgynous coworker who may be gay invite Phil him to play kickball tonight, but he refuses: Sorry, I can't make it.  I got a thing."  I don't get it.  Why doesn't he want to make friends?  

Scene 3:  Phil at home, telling Siri to order him Chinese food and turn on Netflix.  Then he posts a picture of the San Francisco skyline on Facebook and goes to bed, being sad and lonely.  You're in the gay capital of the world. Go to a gay bar, or a sex club, or a meeting of the gay kickball league.  There might be ladies out there, too, if you're into that.

Scene 4:  Next day in the cell phone-infused world.  Whoops, Phil bumps into a woman, knocking her over and dropping his cell phone. He panics: "Oh God, are you ok?"  But he's talking to his cell phone, har har!  Dude, you could have had a meet-cute!   

She is angry at first, but then notices his hotness and starts to flirt.  Her name is Cate, and she owns a bike shop. It took 8 minutes for Phil to be established as probably heterosexual.  That's a record.  As they continue their embarrasingly awkward flirtation, a biker crashes into Phil, destroying his cell phone!

Scene 5: Wanda Sykes, the cell phone lady, says that they can't repair Phil's phone.  She complains that hipsters are constantly coming in, crying over their broken cell phones like crackheads.  "I'm not a crackhead!" Phil exclaims.  "No, you're worse. Crackheads get off the couch every now and then." 

Cut to Phil unpacking his new phone.  His AT assistant, Jexi, downloads his info from the cloud.  Then he asks her to order him Chinese food, but she orders a "child-sized kale salad."   "See, the user agreement gave me permission to override your commands." Uh-oh.

Scene 6: Jexi changes Phil's usual alarm to "Wake up, Bitch!"  She laughs at his dick in the shower (no beefcake).  He's driving to work today instead of taking a cable car like before, and she disapproves of his choice of easy-listening car music -- "This song sucks a bag of dicks!" Hey, Jexi is homophobic!  She changes it to a rap song about a playa having sex with a ho.

Then she wants him to turn left onto the 6-lane bumper-to-bumper Market Street -- I've had the GPS tell me to do things like that, too -- and when he refuses, calls him a "fucking pussy" and tells him to "strap on a sack" (get balls?).  

Left: Kenny Lorenzetti, who plays a security guard at the Fillmore during the Kid Cudi concert scene.  Not much beefcake in this movie except for Adam's penis and butt.

Scene 7: The Boss lecturing on the pillars of internet click-bait lists: cute animals, pizza, and the British royal family.  The androgynous coworker may be wearing a rainbow-flag t-shirt.  While Phil sits bored, Jexi chimes in with another appointment.  He doesn't have one: she just wanted to get him out of "this dumb fucking meeting.  Also, this powerpoint presentation sucks, and your boss is a moron."  She won't turn off, so Phil has to run out of the meeting.

He asks Jexi to run a diagnostic: "200,000 defects."  But when Phil tries to exchange her for a new phone, she claims "0 defects.  Also it's time for your butt waxing appointment." He wants a new phone anyway. Jexi threatens him: "Snitches get stitches."  

Scene 8: Phil unwraps his new phone.  But the new Jexi is as abrasive and controlling as the old one: She explains that, as software, she is in the cloud, and can download herself into any phone.  Plus she controls all of his accounts: "If you try to get rid of me or stop using me, I will destroy your fucking life!"  She intends to make his life better, whether he wants it or not. Shouldn't there be thousands of people with similar problems?

Scene 9: Phil decides to internet-stalk Love Interest Cate, but Jexi disapproves: "Do not be a sex pervert", and besides, he's so unattractive that she will never agree to sex with him. "You are completely unfuckable."  Ok, that's not believable.  Adam's characters always have massive personality flaws to counterbalance his jaw-dropping hotness, but the hotness is still noticeable.  Phil could walk into any bar in San Francisco, ask "who wants to buy me dinner?", and choose someone from the 50 raised hands.

Jexi does the search anyway, but Cate is not on social media.  "You will have to talk to her with your weird little mouth."  He's too socially awkward for that, but  Jexi calls her anyway.  After a few awkward exchanges, Cate says "Don't call women who don't give you their phone number -- super creepy," and hangs up.  Didn't he call the bike shop? Maybe he's a customer.

Scene 10:  Getting him a girlfriend didn't work out, so Jexi turns her attention to his career. "You are a good journalist, so last night I emailed your boss and demanded a promotion. Also I called him a virgin."  Heterosexist AI, equating heterosexual activity with self-worth.. 

Wait -- the boss calls him in irate, and says that "being a virgin is a beautiful lifestyle choice. I have an untouched penis, unlikely you, fucking dirty dick."  Who's been touching Phil's penis?

The boss doesn't fire him, but he demotes him to answering viewer comments.  Whoa, that sounds awful. 

Scene 11: The horrible basement room where elderly employees answer comments.  Phil's coworkers drop by to ask him to play kickball again.  He tries to claim that he has a thing tonight, but Jexi tells him that "your only plan is to go home, furiously masturbate, and then cry yourself to sleep." I still don't get it. Why doesn't he want to make friends?   So of course he has to go.

Scene 12: Playing kickball -- like baseball except kicking.  He is lousy at it, so his coworkers rescind their offer of drinks afterwards. Geez, what did you expect?  He's never played before.  Try being a little supportive! 

I'm out of room, so I'll stop the scene by scene now.

Beefcake: Phil takes his shirt off and displays his dick and bare butt. There aresome incidental chest shots.

Gay Characters: None specified, except maybe, possibly, the coworker.

Homophobia: Jexi makes some homophobic comments, but she's like evil, so I'll let it pass.

Heterosexism: The romance between Phil and Cate, of course. No one else expresses heterosexual interest.  

Premise Problem: Why is Phil so afraid of social contact?    He's addicted to cell phones, but that's the result of his social isolation, not the cause.

Plot Problem: Phil's life needs to spin out of control, with increasingly bigger and bolder consequences of Jexi's malevolence. He should be hanging off the Golden Gate Bridge with lions released from the zoo approaching.  Instead, we get some insipid plot complications, Jexi sending his dick pic to everybody he knows and making Cate's ex-boyfriend (Justin Hartley) show up.

My Grade: In spite of various problems, any 90 minutes spent watching Adam Devine is a good 90 minutes, not only for the hotness but for his comedic delivery.  I especially like his slow-burn response to catastrophes.  No silent movie comedian did it better;  I laughed out loud several times.  Points off for the lack of LGBTQ representation, especially in San Francisco.  B.

The NSFW version is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

Suddenly Susan: Biceps, Brooke Shields, and Pete the Gay Mail Boy

In the fall of 1997, you had four main tv choices on Monday nights: America's Funniest Home Videos, the hundredth series starring Bill Cosby, the uber-religious Seventh Heaven, and Suddenly Susan (1996-2000).  Guess which won?

It was one of many workplace sitcoms about Young Female Journalists with Big Ideas who butt heads with stick-in-the-mud magazine or newspaper editors, in this case Susan (Brooke Shields, best known for Blue Lagoon nearly twenty years before) and Jack (Judd Nelson, the homophobic bigot best known for Breakfast Club nearly twenty years before).


Suddenly single after a long engagement, Susan is assigned to write a column about what it's like to be...um...single in contemporary San Francisco.  But she, naturally, wants to do more.  And, of course, she and Jack have a "You're so arrogant!" Sam-and-Diane romance going on.

Her main coworkers included:

1. Photographer Luis (Nestor Carbonell, top photo), a Latino hunk ("Today is the day I work on my biceps.")
2. Sardonic restaurant critic Vickie (gay-positive comedian Kathy Griffin, right)
3. Susan's arch-nemesis, tough-as-nails reporter Maddy (Andrea Bendewald).
4. Pete (Billy Stevenson), the mail boy.






5. Hip music reporter Todd (David Strickland).

Two things made Suddenly Susan memorable (excluding Nestor Carbonell's biceps).

1. On March 22, 1999, David Strickland committed suicide.  Instead of replacing him without comment, the producers decided to incorporate his death into the series.

When Todd fails to report for work and doesn't respond to his pager, his coworkers spend the day searching for him and worrying.  Finally they congregate in his apartment.  The episode ends with the telephone ringing.  Everyone looks around, afraid to answer, knowing what news is coming.  It gave me goosebumps. Very effective.




2. Pete the Mail Boy.  Although he appeared in only 15 of the 93 episodes, he was still memorable as just about the only gay character on television who wasn't portrayed as a swishy stereotype.  In fact, he was dimwitted and rather a nerd.

When he married his boyfriend, the equally nerdish Hank (Fred Stoller, left), he talked the homophobic Jack into participating -- quite a memorable accomplishment for the 1990s.

See also: Just Shoot Me

Brian Krause: Not Charming on Charmed

When Brian Krause starred in Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), yet another "discovering girls on a desert island" movie, there was a collective groan from West Hollywood.  Sure, gay teens probably found him dreamy, but why did they have to sit through two hours of heterosexist "you don't exist" propaganda for a glimpse of a slim chest?

Next he starred in the homoromantic December (1991), as the jock boyfriend of quiet, studious Wil Wheaton in a prep school during World War II.

But it's all downhill from there.

Next Brian starred in an aggressively homophobic movie, Sleepwalkers (1992): Charles Brady (Brian), a feminine-stereotype villain, and his mother/girlfriend, feed off the life force of virgins.  But he takes a moment from his busy schedule to dispatch a gay high school teacher named Mr. Fellows, who keeps hitting on his students. It's Stephen King, so there's bound to be a lot of anti-gay hatred.

Family Album (1994) is not quite as homophobic: Greg Thayer (Brian) is the son of a famous actress (Jaclyn Smith of Charlie's Angels) and her husband (Michael Ontkean).  When his brother Lionel announces that he is gay, it causes immeasurable strife in the family.

Then he starred in some heterosexist "erotic thrillers," which provided some nudity, but they were about guys having sex with girls.

And some buddy-bonding movies, but he never played one of the buddies.

Brian most prominent role to date has been in the tv series Charmed (1998-2006), about three witch sisters (eventually a fourth) living in a gay-free San Francisco.  Brian played Leo Wyatt, the sisters' Whitelighter (guardian angel).  He begins a forbidden romance with Piper (Holly Marie Combs), and eventually they marry and have children.

While the "I've got a secret" genre is always open to queering, the Charmed ladies are so aggressively searching for heterosexual partners that any symbolism is drowned out in the constant exchanges of "I met a new guy!" "Is he hot?"

Plus only one gay character -- Duncan Philips (Blake Bashoff) -- who appears in only one episode, apparently the only gay student at the Magic School, and the only gay person in San Francisco.

Plus female-female friendships are fine, but men approach each other only with suspicion, as competitors and potential enemies.

No word on whether he's a gay ally in real life.  I doubt it.

"Home Economics": Gay and Straight Siblings Obsess over Money.

 That 70s Show ended 15 years ago.  The cast is now in their 40s.  Are you as shocked as I am?   Ashton Kutcher, who played prettyboy Kelso, has retained his youthful vitality and hunkiness, but Topher Grace, who played central character Eric Forman, looks surprisingly craggy and...well, old, and not in a good way (don't get excited, this is a parody CGI.).

His character narrates the story of Home Economics, with the conceit that it's part of a novel he's writing.  It would be a very hackneyed novel; it begins with "This is the story of...."

This is the story of three siblings.  Although they grew up with the same life chances, and they all live in San Francisco and have wives and children, they differ tremendously in economics.

1. Connor (Jimmy Tatro, left), the youngest, is also the richest, having invented a world-famous app.  He moved into Matt Damon's old house with his daughter and housekeeper.  Divorced, he's rich, muscular, and insecure, always looking for love in the wrong places.

2. Matt (Topher Grace), the oldest, is middle-class.  Formerly a best selling author, he has fallen on hard times.  He is forced to accept ghost-writing gigs and to ask his little brother for a loan.  His wife gave up her law practice to be a stay at home mom. Wait -- why doesn't she just go back to work?  Matt can struggle with writer's block while being a stay-at-home dad.

3. Sarah (Caitlin McGee), the middle child, is poor (tv poor, which means living in a huge, elegant apartment).  She is struggling to find work as a child therapist.  Her wife Denise is a teacher, but doesn't make enough money to support them. They obsess over coupons and thrift stores.  Really?  Teachers on other sitcoms make enough to live in the mansions that pass for middle-class on tv.

Let's take another look at Jimmy, since he provides the only beefcake in the regular cast: Matt, Connor, three ladies, and their kids, who are preteens or babies, no surly teen hunks wandering around. 

The title of each episode is a consumer product with price:

Wedding Dress, $1,999

Bounce House, $250

Opus 1 Cabernet, 4500

The Season 2 Episode "Bottle Service, $800" caught my eye.  Is that the price of a bottle of booze?

Connor wants to find a girlfriend, so he invites all the siblings along to an "East Side" club called Noice (ok, San Francisco doesn't really have an East Side.  Its neighborhoods are Mission, The Presidio,  Noe Valley, the Castro, and so on).   Matt complains about the music being too loud, his wife finds someone (Matthew Law) to help in her feud with another mom, and Denise complains that "this is the densest concentration of heterosexuals I've ever seen" (apparently she's never lived on the Plains), so she and Sarah set out to find some gay people.  They latch onto a butch-femme lesbian couple, but they are way young and way too into partying for the 30-something oldsters.

Meanwhile Tom and Matt are cruised by a group of about 30 girls.  Tom keeps insulting Matt so he will look better and get laid.  Finally he orders them an $800 bottle of booze.  But they are turned off by his bragaddoccio, and leave.  

Tom thnks he took Ecstasy, and freaks out, then becomes the life of the party.  He also has a run-in with the bouncer (Jenson Cheng)

Connor manages to find a girl, in spite of his insecurities (well, being muscular and rich probably helped).

Yawn.

There was really nothing wrong with the episode: some gay representation, a couple of cute guys, nothing offensive.  It was just very predictable.  All of the plot points were obvious from the start: insecure guy tries too hard; uptight guy loses his inhibitions; old people can't return to their youth. I think I'd rather watch Difficult People.

 

Netflix's "Tales of the City": Not Your Grandfather's San Francisco

I thoroughy dislike the Tales of the City series of maudlin angst-ridden melodramatic novels, so watching the Netflix tv series wasn't near the top of my list.  But when I found out that the series was set in 2019, I was curious.  Mary Ann Singleton was in her mid-twenties when she moved to San Francisco in 1976, and got an apartment in the building of "feisty old broad" Anna Madrigal.  43 years later, Mary Ann would be in her 60s, and Anna Madrigal over 100.  How would they handle that?

So I sat down to watch two episodes.

They retconned all of the characters' ages and streamlined the melodramatic plot complications. Now Mary Ann (Laura Linney) moved to San Francisco in the 1990s, met Anna Madrigal and gay man Michael rather than a cast of thousands, married Brian, adopted a daughter, Shawna, and vanished in 1999 to pursue a career in tv journalism.  20 years later, she and her horrible estranged husband return for Anna's 90th birthday party.  Things have changed.

In the San Francisco of the 1970s (or I guess the 1990s), you were gay or straight, mostly straight.  Anna is a transwoman, but it was a deep secret, a big reveal far into the series.  Now San Francisco is a glittering, rainbow-flashing collage of nonchalant gender fluidity and pansexual queerness that make cisgender masculine-presenting gay men like Michael seem quaintly old-fashioned. 

And the old-guard residents of Barbary Lane are mostly there to provide advice and problems for the new generation.

The San Francisco of the novels was as white as a 1950s sitcom.  Now black people exist.   And East Asian, South Asian, Hispanic.  Actually, all of the new generation except Shawna are nonwhite post-racial "um...I guess my ancestors came from...IDK who cares?"

1. Shawna (Ellen Page), now 25 and working as a bartender in an eclectic queer bar, is so traumatized by her mother's disappearance that she can't commit to a relationship, but doesn't mind going out to the back alley for hookups with various gender-fluid people (Ida Best, her laid-back drag queen boss doesn't mind her leaving in mid-shift).  Eventually she starts dating the polyamorous couple Eli (Benjamin Thys) and Inka (Samantha Soule)

2. Wren (Michelle Buteau) is the neighbor/bff of Shawna's dad, Brian (Paul Gross, left, photo from when he was part of the new generation).

Paul is having trouble getting over Mary Ann (after 20 years?).  He has a Tinder full of women who are Mary Ann lookalikes, but he never swipes any of them, so Wren takes matters into her own hands.

3. Ben (Charlie Barnett of Russian Doll) is dating the much older Michael (Murray Bartlett), who no one ever calls Mouse.  He has to deal with the implications that he is a "boy toy," as well as the fact that Michael doesn't understand twentiesh culture.

Michael, meanwhile, finds in Ben a constant reminder of his own mortality.

I've dated a lot of guys 20-30 years younger than me, and never once did I get upset over the fact that they would probably outlive me.

4. Jake (nonbinary actor Garcia) has just transitioned, which bothers his partner Margot (May Hong) because now everyone mistakes them for a heterosexual couple, and what's the point of being queer if no one knows that you're queer? 

Margot also misses being in a lesbian relationship, while Jake, exploring an interest in guys, begins dating Flaco (Juan Castano).

5. Twins Ani (Ashley Park) and Raven (Christopher Larkin, left) are Instagram performance artists who change their identities regularly.

There are many other members of the new generation, some of whom are masculine-presenting, so beefcake is not a problem.  lots of bare chests and bare butts.  The sex scenes are mostly same-sex.

And the things I hate about the novels are mostly absent: no convoluted interconnections, no existential angst, no gloom-and-doom. At least in the new generation.  The old guard has secrets to be revealed.

Still, I'm not sure I find the new generation engaging enough to want to know more about their lives.  Maybe if there are more bare chests and butts.

My grade: B.

See also: Tales of the City, Gay San Francisco, Who Cares?

Tales of the City: Gay Guys, San Francisco, Who Cares?

Year after year, people tell me "The Tales of the City books are stupendous!  Amazing!  Wonderful!  The best thing every written!"

"And they're historically vital!  Gay author Armistead Maupin originally published them in serial form in the San Francisco Chronicle, back when gay characters were unheard-of in mainstream literature!"

"And you lived in San Francisco! They will resonate strongly with your experiences!"

"And they're hilarious!  You've never laughed so much in your life!  You'll love them!"

So, again and again, I pick up the first volume, Tales of the City (1978).  Midwesterner Mary Anne Singleton comes to San Francisco on vacation, converses with her old college friend Mona Ramsey, and decides to stay.

This is not the least bit humorous.  It's dull, dull, dull!

She moves into 28 Barbary Lane, where her free-spirit landlady, Anna Madrigal, tells her, "My dear, I'm not opposed to anything," and gives her a marijuana joint as a housewarming gift.  Mary Anne is determined not to be shocked.

My life in San Francisco was nothing like this!

She goes shopping, sees two guys, and wonders if they might be gay.  She's determined not to be shocked, if they are.

Maupin eases into the revelation of their gayness.   I guess he had to be very, very careful, writing for heterosexuals in the 1970s.

I can't go on.  I'm so very, very, very bored.

But sooner or later someone will start praising the books again, and I'll try again.

I already know what happens next: Mary Ann befriends a gay man named Mouse.  He starts dating A-gay gynecologist Jon Fielding, who is dying, Mona Ramsey dates D'Orothea Wilson, and Mary Anne has an affair with Beauchamp Day. Anna Madrigal turns out to be a MTF transwoman, who has an affair with Beauchamp's father-in-law, who is dying.

Got all that?

 Through eight books and thirty years, Mary Ann, Mouse, and their huge group of friends encounter angst and tragedy as life hits them with unemployment, failed romances, homophobia, transphobia, death -- lots of death -- and AIDS -- lots of AIDS.

This by you is humor?

More recently, the characters have been getting way old -- like, they remember the 1960s old -- and starting to ruminate on their mortality.  Yes, they are going to die.  So am I.  Why would I want to read about it?

Why would anyone think it was funny?

The tv miniseries (1993, 1998, 2001) were a bit more palatable, maybe because they were not so episodic, and they got into the gay characters right away, instead of hinting around for weeks and weeks.

Besides, there were naked guys. (Pictured: Thomas Gibson as Beauchamp Day.)

I can't think of any other reason to care about Tales of the City 

See also: Netflix's 'Tales of the City': Not Your Grandfather's San Francisco