Breaking Bad: Everyone Loves Jesse

People kept telling me, "You have to watch Breaking Bad (2008-2013).  It's great!  It's fabulous!  It's colossal!"

I turned on the first episode, in which Albuquerque chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) finds out that he has lung cancer, and in order to provide for his family, decides to produce methamphetamine.  He talks one of his ex-students, a meth dealer named Jesse (Aaron Paul),into being his assistant.

Jesse uses anti-gay slurs.

Click.  Why should I watch a homophobic program?

My friends implore me to watch.

But the program is homophobic!

Recently I have been forced to watch The Shield, which was the most homophobic programs ever, dripping with contempt for homos, and with an actual plotline in which a gay guy turns straight due to the power of prayer!  So I figured I could handle Breaking Bad.

The homophobic slurs are infrequent after the first episode.  I guess the writers figured they had gotten rid of all the gay viewers, and didn't need to bother anymore.

So, what did I find, going incognito into a program exclusively for heterosexuals?

Well, of course, there are no explicitly gay characters.  Like most television drama, Breaking Bad is set in a world where gay people are assumed not to exist.

But, wow!  Walt and Jesse.

They behave like romantic partners.

They are treated like romantic partners.

They break up, date other people, then reconcile.

Jesse is wooed by a new boyfriend, Mike, and Walt roils with jealousy and tries to win him back.

Each says to a bad guy (well, to someone equally bad), "If you kill him, you'll have to kill me, too."

Even other people notice.  When Mike is told "If you kill him, you'll have to kill me too," he says "What is it with you two?"

Even in Season 5, after Walt has betrayed Jesse a dozen times, Jesse still behaves as if he's in love with him.

Jesse says "Why don't you stop pretending that you care about me?"

Walt hugs him.  Jesse breaks down and sobs.

Then there are the gay characters, or at least characters who are well-groomed, sophisticated, and expressing no interest in women.

Including big time meth dealer Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who, in a flashback, sees his lover murdered by cartel head Hector Salamanca. He invites guys he likes, such as Jesse, over for dinner and who-knows-what-else at his house.

At one of the drug cartel's gatherings, the entertainment consists of women, who come in and sit on the laps of the men.  Not Gustavo, though.  He's obviously not interested.

During one of Walt and Jesse's breakups, Gale Boetticher (David Costabile) becomes Walt's new assistant.  Well-groomed, sophisticated, no women around, gives Walt a copy of Leaves of Grass, the famous gay-themed classic, with the inscription: "To my star, my perfect silence"

What, exactly, were they up to after hours?

For that matter, few if any of the characters on Breaking Bad exhibit significant

Walt's teenage son Junior (RJ Mitte) has a best boy friend but never mentions girls, although he gets the standard heterosexist "you must be girl-crazy" gibberish from his dad and uncle.

D
Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz), one of the baddie drug dealers, spends all of his time with men.

Jesse's friends, Badger (Matt L. Jones) and Skinny Pete (Charles Baker), display an interest in women in just one scene.










Hank (Dean Norris), Walt's brother-in-law, who also happens to be a DEA Agent, has a wife, but he spends all of his quality time in the company of men.  He even tries to woo Jesse away from Walt.

Who doesn't?  This show should be called Everybody Loves Jesse.

So that's what heterosexuals are up to when they think there are no gay people watching.

12 Beefcake Stars of "Fringe"

I'm being forced to watch a sci-fi series about FBI agents investigating the paranormal.  No, not the The X-Files, Fringe (2008-2013).  The difference is: Mulder and Scully...um, I mean Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia (Anna Torv)...are assisted by an eccentric scientist/mental patient (John Noble), and the frame story is about parallel worlds, not aliens.

It was produced by J.J. Abrams, who helped eliminate almost all gay people from Lost,  so you have to expect even more heterosexism than usual in sci fi series.  And, indeed, people are always blathering on about "my husband!" or "my wife!", mourning lost heterosexual loves, and assuming universal heterosexual identity.  When Fringe first aired in 2008, I refused to watch because the pilot hit you over the head with "we're all heterosexual! we're all heterosexual!"  in the very first scene.

But I have noticed something interesting.  In every episode, at least one of the guest stars is buffed.  Body by Michelangelo,  Like, built.

A simple whisk through the cast list to take my mind off the "everybody on Earth is heterosexual!" chants reveals an incredible profusion of biceps and bulges.

1, "A New Day in the Old Town": Olivia has an auto accident and disappears for 40 minutes into a parallel world.  Luke Goss of Hellboy as "regular guy" Lloyd Parr.

2. "Momentum Deferred": Shapeshifters from the parallel world appear to steal cryogenically-frozen heads while talking about their wives.  Sebastian Roche (left) as Thomas Jerome Newton, aka Omega Man, a buffed villain from the Other Side.

3. "Dream Logic":  People start acting out their dreams and killing each other. Including men with wives!  A guest FBI agent is played by former soap hunk Travis Schuldt (left).

4. "Snakehead": Drug dealers are smuggling parasitic organisms into the U.S., using the bodies of Asian men (and their wives and children) as hosts.  They need to show the parasitic organism moving around inside the bodies, so lots of hunky Asian men take their shirts off, notably former model Jack Yang.

5. "Unearthed": Dead people comes back to life speaking Russian, which their husbands and wives insist they never knew. One of the dead people is Will Turlough, played by bodybuilder and soap star Mark Dobies (top photo).

6. "Johari Window."  See, there's a town full of deformed people who look normal most of the time, and don't like outsiders.  Including a heterosexual nuclear family, with the dad/husband played by bulgeworthy Canadian hunk Martin Cummins (left).








7. "What Lies Below": A 13,000 year old virus that wiped out all of the Pleistocene mammals resurfaces in an office building.  One of the quarantined office drones desperately calling his wife is played by Al Miro (left)

8. "Jacksonville": A building from the parallel world appears here, merging the bodies of two guys.  The one desperately calling for his wife is played by the extremely cute Ryan McDonald.

9. "Olivia in the Lab with the Revolver."  An illness from the parallel world shows up here, with muscular actor Jamie Switch as one of the victims.

10. "The Bishop Revival." The villain is killing people with certain genetic characteristics, like the descendants of a Holocaust survivor at a Jewish wedding chock-full of 20-ish hunks, notably Aaron Brooks as Josh Staller.

11. "White Tulip": A scientist tries to go back in time to reunite with his dead fiance. Jackson Berlin of Man of Steel plays Agent #2 (left).

12. "The Man from the Other Side."  The shapeshifters from the Other Side are trying to get to our world, with bodybuilder Fraser Aitcheson as Cop #1.

And that's just Season 2.

I can imagine the conversation in Casting: "Ok, your character is a businessman who explodes on the subway after yelling for his wife.  So take off your clothes...."

See: Prime-time Dramas Think You Don't Exist;  15 More Beefcake Stars of Fringe. and The Top 10 Hunks of "Orange is the New Black"