Billy Howle: A serious actor, crazy cute, who shows his stuff a lot. Do you need anything else? With bonus Tommy Knight

Link to the n*de dudes

I've reviewed two tv series starring British actor Billy Howle (not Howlie), and two things about him stand out:

1. He is crazy cute.  What we used to call dreamy, the sort of guy who elicits fantasies of holding hands in the moonlight rather than going downtown.

 

2. Speaking of going downtown, he is not shy about showing his stuff on screen.

I always ask two questions in these profiles.

1. Is he gay in real life?

Billy has no social media presence, but various interviews note that he is in a long-term relationship with a lady.  He could be bi or gay-and-closeted, but for now we'll call him straight. 

2. Has he played any gay characters?

This one will take some research.  We'll start with his bio.  

Billy was born in Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands, about an hour from Birmingham, son of a college professor and a "schoolteacher."  He graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in 2013.  His theatrical credits include:

The Ibsen play Ghosts (2015), which is about religion, free love, and incest, not about ghosts.  We had to read Ibsen in college.  Ugh.

Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night (2016).  We had to read O'Neill, too.  Double ugh.

Hamlet (2022).  Maybe a gay subtext between the Prince and Mercutio.

Dear Octopus (2024), which is about a large, suffocating family, not an octopus.  At least it's not Ionesco.

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (2024) about marital problems.

No significant gay content, I'm afraid, and pretentiousness as the summum bonum.  

Next, Billy's on-screen roles.  He has 21 acting credits on the IMDB.  A  mostly pretentious lot, with only one science fiction movie and not a whiff of comedy.  I'll check the projects that I've reviewed already, those listed as "known for," and those with n*de scenes.

Already Reviewed:

The Perfect Couple (2024).  When the Maid of Honor is murdered on the night before the wedding, everyone is a suspect, including the Bride and Groom.  Billy plays the Groom's brother, who has a girlfriend. 

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022). Lapsed Mormon Allen (Billy) is accused of murdering his wife, but he says that his fundamentalist family did it to punish her for wanting a career and being uppity. 

More after the break

"Dinner with the Parents": Brother-boyfriends get pranked, and Dad is in love with his brother/son-in-law

 

Amazon Prime recommended Dinner with Parents, a 2024 American remake of a Britcom about weekly family dinners, with this photo of the adult son and his boyfriend.  

Gay characters and male n*dity: I'm in!  So I reviewed Episode 1.2, "Go There," where they are apparently caught in the act.

Scene 1: David (Henry Hall) interrupts Boyfriend Gregg (Daniel Thrasher, left) while he's going through the prank box.  There's a problem: Chet will be at tonight's family dinner.   "I thought he had midterms?" "He got finished early." 

Chet has been pranking them for years.  Boyfriend Gregg wants to prank him hard tonight, but David says no.  Too risky.  They've been burned too many times.  How long have these guys been together?  Their friend is still in college, so only a few years.  

Scene 2: Dad (David Bakkedahl), Mom, and Jane are in the family kitchen, cooking.  David comes in.  Jane says "Hi, Honey"! Wait -- I thought David was gay, with a boyfriend.  If he's married to Jane, why didn't they come to the dinner together? 

Jane is upset because her incredibly beautiful Sister is coming to the family dinner tonight.  Everyone will be flirting with her, so Jane won't get any attention.  Aren't these people her parents and brother?  She's upset because they will no longer think she's sexy when Sister arrives?  

They move to the living room, where Boyfriend Gregg has pulled up an old video to remind them of the prankster they'll be facing tonight: during David's Bar Mitzvah, Chet lit the Torah on fire!   Um...that sounds more like an antisemitic hate crime than a prank. 

Scene 3: A tour bus pulls up, and the incredibly rich, successful, and beautiful Sister Tilly emerges. The family is overcome with joy, except Jane, who hates her. 

Her husband Mitch (Karl Collins),  emerges, and Dad does some jive-greetings with him. "You know, the phrase 'Brother in law' doesn't even come close to touching this thing tht you and I have." He wants to be called "Brothers-in-love" instead.  Ok, that's a gay code, but I thought Mitch was Sister Tilly's husband, which would make him Dad's son-in-law.  

Prankster Chet, not listed in the IMDB, appears, insults David, and throws away his glasses.  David decides he's up for pranking after all.

Scene 4: At dinner, Tilly is bragging, and Mom is gazing at her like a lovesick teenager.  I guess that's the joke -- family affection portrayed as romantic love, so Jane calls her brother "honey," and Mom is in love with her daughter.

Everyone goes into ecstasies over the vegan apple crisp that Jane made -- until  Tilly gets a call from somebody famous who wants to be on her podcast.  Then they ignore Jane again.

Scene 5: While doing the dishes, Dad gets upset because his Brother/Son-in-Love Mitch has gone vegan, and won't eat the 30-pound bag of cheese he's been saving.  So I guess their bromance is the C plot.

"No, I'll eat it, but if Amy catches me with it, I'm dead!"  Ok, so he's married to someone named Amy, who was not at the dinner, and Jane's sister Tilly must be his daughter.    

"Just hide it in the RV.  She'll never know."  They came in a tour bus.  It must be Dad's RV.

More after the break

"Speechless," Season 2: I Am Disgustipated

I liked the first season of Speechless (2016-), the sitcom starring J. J. DiMeo (Micah Fowler), a teenager with cerebral palsy, who is wheelchair bound and "speechless," and his crazy relatives. It was nice to see a disabled character who was neither a saint nor a jerk, especially since the need to communicate without speech results in broad, theatrical, feminine gestures that could easily be read as gay.

Micah Fowler can speak but uses a wheelchair in real life.  Here he completes a mile-long walk with the aid of a special walking device.  Nice arms.

Plus J.J.'s early-teen brother Ray (18-year old Mason Cook, left) was not unbearably girl-crazy, and his personal attendant Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) was presented as so roly-poly asexual that he could be read as gay, too.

That left Mom and Dad, who were of course the leaders of a frazzled sitcom nuclear family, but came across more like team leaders than romantic partners.



Then came Season 2. Gulp.  Ok, we've got the audience used to this disabled kid, so let's pull out all the stops.  It will be nonstop Girls! Girls! Girls!

In the season premiere, the family hatches a wild scheme to get J.J. to kiss the girl he met at summer camp. Later he dates Norah, a new special needs girl at school.

J.J. and his brother get free tickets to a movie they're both dying to see, but at the last minute J.J. ditches him for a girl. Ray shouldn't be upset; he should know that on tv, male friendships are ephemeral.  A buddy will drop you in an instant if a girl smiles at him.

J.J. lies about his disability on an online dating app to get more girls interested.

In one episode, J.J. starts a brief buddy-bond with an actor starring in a movie he wants to be in (Nick Viall, left).

Later he has a "friend date" with Aaron (Christian Lees), a boy he really, really wants to like him.

And in a Halloween episode, Ray switches bodies with a girl and doesn't express any homophobic panic.

But that's cold comfort.

Ray pursues several girls before settling down with Taylor. So episodes involve meeting the parents, wanting to get more physical, having "the talk" with Dad, and so on.  Then they break up, and Taylor starts dating another boy, so Ray is jealous.

Ok, the kid is 18, but his character is about 15.  Do we really need a serious romance?

Kenneth suddenly has an ex-wife and girl-crushes.

Even the preteen Dylan, a girl, starts sparking over boys.

Of course, gay people do not exist.

I am disgustipated.

See also: Mason Cook: The "Speechless" kid grows up, turns hipster-bohemian, and shows his biceps and dick

The 44 Dumbest Things You See on TV

I've watched a lot of tv, mostly sci-fi and sitcoms.  The set was on all the time when I was a kid.  In adulthood, it's like comfort food, warm, predictable, mildly amusing.  But is it really necessary to have so many plot conventions that strain credulity?  Plus are sexist, heterosexist, or downright homophobic?  Almost makes you want to pick up a book instead.

1. No one ever says a complete sentence; everyone takes turns.  "This looks like the work of..." "Two killers."  "So we should..."  ",,,get backup."

2. Whenever someone says "It's possible that...", as in "It's possible that the signals are coming from Mars" or "It's possible that the killer worked for the FBI," they mean "It's an absolute certainty."

3. Whenever someone says, "The chances against this working are a million to one," they mean, "It will absolutely work."

4. You cannot discuss the plan on the way to the site, even if it takes two hours to get there.  You must always wait until you have arrived.

5. All discussions of plans must begin with the phrase: "And that's the plan.  First we...."

6. Whenever anyone prepares food, they must tell the person they are preparing it for that it is "Your favorite."

7. The only people who can eat dinner at home are heterosexual nuclear families: The Man in a lumberjack shirt, a son and a daughter under age 10, and The Woman, usually blond.  The Man must always say "Great meal, honey."

8. The only people who can eat in restaurants are four young adults, divided into male-female couples.  One is always shown shoving a forkful of food into someone else's mouth.  Sometimes this happens in groups, too.

9. Whenever anyone turns on the tv, they must  hear a news story pertaining to their situation.

10.  If they are shown watching tv alone, it should be an old black and white movie, usually a Western.

11. Except for kids and serial killers, who must watch public domain cartoons from the 1930s.

12. The only people who can watch tv in groups are heterosexual nuclear families, and they are always cuddling while holding a gigantic bowl of popcorn.  No one in the real world eats popcorn while watching tv.

13. If someone wants to talk to you, they can't call, they must drive across town to see you in person.

14. And the drive is extremely short.

15. And the door is unlocked, so they just walk in.

16. Whenever you enter a scary place, someone must say "This place gives me the creeps."  But no one in real life ever says this.

17.  People always complain that they don't have enough money to pay bills, but have thousands of dollars to spend on expensive props.

18. Poor people live in huge, well-appointed houses.  Middle-class people live in mansions. There is no such thing as an apartment, except in New York, where poor people live in huge apartments with a view of the Empire State Building.

20. Every hotel room in Paris looks directly out onto the Eiffel Tower. 

21. Men may not be shown engaging in any housecleaning activity.  Ever.  They can be asked to cook, to "help their wives out," but they must flub the job and take the kids to McDonald's.

22. The main characters must be white, but the captain, chief, or judge who appears in just one episode should be black, to demonstrate that racism no longer exists.

23. Everyone belongs to a huge number of clubs and organizations, but only for one episode apiece.  Then the club is never mentioned again.

More after the break

The twelve scruffy hunks of "Animal Kingdom." WIth a lot of bare butts

  

Someone recommended Animal Kingdom, not to be confused with the Animal Kingdom at Disney World, the Animal Planet network, or a tv show entitled Animal Control.  This one is a drama TNT featuring the struggle for succession in a crime family led by...Smurf?  "Ok, boys, I want you to go smurf out those rival smurfs and bury their smurfs in the smurf."

Link to The 12 bare butts of "Animal Kingdom"

There are a lot of sons, grandsons, and boy toys, even a gay one.  Most are sleazy, scruffy, and tattooed, not my cup of tea.  But most get bare butt scenes, so you don't have to look at their face.

1. Scott Speedman as Baz, adopted Smurf, who wants to try new crime techniques instead of Mama Smurf's old fashioned smurfing. 

2. In flashbacks to 1992 and 1996, Baz is smurfed by Darren Mann, left

3. Shawn Hatosy as Pope, eldest Smurf, who suffers from mental illness and does a lot of risky smurf. Plus he's smurfed in prison.

4.  Kevin Csolak smurfs as Pope in the flashbacks.

5. Ben Robson as Craig, middle Smurf, who parties and does drug instead of paying attention to the smurfing. 

6. Jake Weary as Deran, youngest Smurf, the moral smurf who is trying to distance himself from the family, running a surfing shop instead of smurfing crime. He is closeted for a long time, but when he finally comes out they are fine with it. 

More butts after the break

"Tell Me Your Secrets": Lesbian Victims of Predatory Men on the Bayou

 

Tell Me Your Secrets, a tv series hyped as "mesmerizing" and "riveting."   All I know is that it's a drama about "three characters with a mysterious bond."  What are their genders?  Are any of them hunks?  Are any of them gay?  I'll watch until I find out, or until it becomes too disgusting or too heterosexist to stand.

Scene 1: Texas, Past.  Karen and Mary talking over one of those prison phones.  Mary was at the trial, and now asks if Karen knows anything about what happened to her daughter.  Karen says she doesn't.  "But she was last seen at a gas station in Nevada with your man, Kit  the Serial Killer" (Xavier Samuel, somewhat older than in this photo, with bad hair and a redneck moustache).

Scene 2: Texas, Present.  Karen is being released from prison. Gratuitous underwear shot as she changes out of her prison uniform.  Do prisoners really get issued lacey black bras?  She stares at her breasts in the mirror for what seems like forever (actually only a minute and a half).    

She spends another thirty seonds fingering her tattoo and getting dressed.. I can hear the director: "Take your time.  The viewers have to finish masturbating."  

Whew.  Ok, the porn is over. Pete (Enrique Murciano) arrives to pick Karen up. 

I tried five times to get an Enrique Murciano nude or shirtless shot, but ran into: webt files, html files,  "file cannot be downloaded safely.", and one of his chest as he is straddled by a naked woman.  So here's a screen shot sans lady parts.

He asks Karen "Are you ready to be Emma?"

Scene 3: Louisiana: The Present.  Establishing shot of Pete and Karen/Emma driving down a narrow highway through a swamp, with gospel music playing.  Oh, Lord, what have I gotten myself into?  Should I bail now, or continue sludging through?

I thought Pete was Emma/Karen's case worker, but he reaches over and affectionally touchers her body.  They're lovers.  Whoops, no, he's just a grabby psychiatrist, taking her to her new life in the Wtiness Protection program.

They arrive at a hunting lodge-type house on stilts.  He tells her: "We'll continue our sessions.  I'll help you through this.  And stay away from young women."  Huh?  Karen/Emma is a pedophile?

Scene 4:  Mary from Scene 1, her ex-husband, daughter, and son (Elliot Fletcher, left) are sitting around the dining room table, talking to their therapist about the disappearance of Theresa seven years ago. They all think it's time to start grieving by declaring her legally dead and setting up a memorial or something, but Mary protests: "She is still alive. I know because of my maternal instinct." 

Scene 5: Karen/Emma's house, night.  Unpacking groceries. She flashes back to a memory of Kit the Serial Killer, cooking dinner and being all smoochy.  

Meanwhile, Mary is conducting research., surrounded by piles of papers and newspaper clippings, watching an interview with Kit.   He says that he killed the nine girls out of compassion, helping them escape from societal pressures: "those girls were begging for their freedom."

Kit has finally agreed to see her, so she's going to get him to confess to Theresa's murder.  Wait -- doesn't she think that Theresa is still alive?

She kisses her son Jake's hand.  A hint of an incestuous relationship -- gross!  

Scene 6: A fried chicken joint, night. Close-up of Karen/Emma's face as she scarfs down a burger. Teenage Jess stares at her.  Two more girls arrive, walk across the restaurant in slow motion, and play with Jess's hair. Uh-oh, temptation!

But they're not lovers; they're muggers or rapists.  They force Jess into the bathroom.  Karen/Emma rushes to the rescue, and then tries to leave, while Jess follows and flirts: "Nobody ever stood up for me before.  You live around here?"  

Scene 7: Kit in an empty maximum security cell, reading a "Dear John" letter from Karen/Emma.  

Scene 8: Karen/Emma applies for a job at a hair salon.  There's a male hairdresser, Thomas (Marque Richardson, who played a gay guy on Dear White People).  Maybe he's gay.

Scene 9: A meeting of the foundation that Mary started that helps the families of missing children.  An ex-con is offering his services in "awareness raising," to help women avoid being raped and kidnapped.  Mary isn't interested: "We help women here. We don't introduce them to predators." So none of those missing children are boys?  Women are perpetual victims?

Scene 10: Karen/Emma's stalker...um, I mean friend...Jess arrives and asks her out.  They take a boat into the bayou, then go back to the house and hug.  Karen/Emma says "I can't give you nothing better than friendship."  Well, she's jailbait.

Scene 11: Mary goes to visit Kit in prison, but just as she gets into the interview room, he's found dead in his cell (nice chest shot).  She collapses, hysterical, while a guard kisses her hair.  Is that appropriate?

Scene 13: Pete the Psychiatrist shows upa at Karen/Emma's house to tell her that Kit is dead.  She screams and runs out, but Pete grabs her and kisses her hair (the director's got a fetish, I see).

Wait -- why is she in witness protection?  She was a witness in Kit's trial, and now he's dead, so why isn't she safe?

Scene 14: Montage of Jess working, Karen/Emma attempting suicide, and Mary being distraught.  Jess comes to the door but Karen/Emma won't answer.  

Mary goes to see John the Ex-Con and tells him that people can't change.  You can try to be better, but if you have an evil nature, you're stuck with it (um, that goes against every criminological theory of the last 130 years).  Once a rapist, always a rapist.  So she gives him the job of finding Karen/ Emma.

I don't follow.  Why would being an innate rapist make John qualified to do private detective work?

She blackmails him: take the job, or I'll tell everyone that you are an innate rapist.

Scene 15: Karen/Emma goes to see Jess to apologize for ghosting her before.   But Jess has been stabbed to death.  Well, that was unexpected. The killer is still there, so she runs away in slow motion.  Wait -- is that Mary chasing her?  

Scene 16: The hair salon.  Someone -- I don't think it's Karen/Emma -- is cleaning up.  A middle-aged woman comes in for a trim, and announces that her name is Theresa.  Huh?

Beefcake: None.

Gay Characters:  Jess and probably Karen/Emma, but it's mostly subtext.

Reprehensible Characters:  I really hate Mary. Her attitude toward criminal offenders is extremely old-fashioned and punitive.   If she doesn't think anyone can change, why does she hire an ex-rapist to do detective work?  If she really thinks that Kit killed her daughter, why does she think her daughter is still alive?  Besides, she seems to be in love with her son.

Sexism: Women are constant victims, being constantly raped, kidnapped, and murdered by men.  Men are never victims, just predators doing the raping, kidnapping. murdering, and kissing of hair.

My Grade: D

What's Gay about "Married with Children"

One day in 1988, I was at the gym in West Hollywood, and I saw someone wearing a t-shirt reading "Married...with Children Fan Club."

I knew about Married...with Children.  On Sunday nights, my roommate Derek and I always watched the beefcake-heavy: 21 Jump Street and Werewolf  on the fledgling Fox network, but we turned the tv off when the "Love and Marriage" theme song began.

Who wanted to watch a tv show that praised the heterosexual nuclear family?

Big mistake.  Married skewered the institution.

Al (Ed O'Neill) and Peggy (Katey Sagal) are a middle-aged married couple who hate each other.  Sexually voracious Peggy keeps trying to trick, cajole, or berate Al into having sex with her, but he isn't interested (although he likes women in general).

In the first season plot arc, Al and Peggy have fun trying to destroy a naive newly married couple, Marcy (Amanda Bearse) and Steve (David Garrison).  They're like George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, except their tactic is criticizing wives and husbands, respectively, and it works!  The couple soon divorces, and Marcy hooks up with metrosexual boytoy Ted McGinley

 Other episodes involve problems with the kids, the promiscuous teenage Kelly (Christina Applegate) and the rowdy preteen Bud (David Faustino) -- soon a nerdy teenager.

No significant buddy-bonding, although Peggy and Marcy and Al and Boomererson come close.

Lots of beefcake -- Kelly had lots of shirtless, muscular boyfriends, such as Dan Gauthier, and in later seasons, Bud began to muscle-up big time.

Gay people appear only once.

Yet Married -- at least in its early years, before the downward spiral of Seasons 7-10 -- artfully revealed the flimsy foundation of the "fade out kiss," the myth of universal heterosexual destiny.  In the heart of the Reagan-Bush Era of conservative retrenchment, that was worth any number of "old friend visits and turns out to be gay" episodes.

Amanda Bearse came out in real life in 1993, and the rest of the cast are strong gay allies.




Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate have made public statements supporting gay marriage.

Ed O'Neill now stars in Modern Family, as the patriarch of a family that includes a gay son and son-in-law.

David Faustino played gay characters in Get Your Stuff (2000) and in Killer Bud (2001), and in Ten Attitudes (2001), he played "himself," not gay but on the gay dating circuit (for a sleazy reason). He also played "himself" in the webseries Star-Ving (along with buddy Corin Nemec). 

He's currently in talks with producers about a Married spin-off, with Bud as an adult, married...with children.

See also: David Faustino: Bud Bundy is star-ving, humiliated, butt-nekkid, and a gay ally

Mary Poppins Helps a Gay Dad

Remember Mary Poppins (1964), the classic Disney movie in which a strange magical governess sweeps down from the sky to introduce joie de vivre into the lives of two kids and their stuffy, negligent parents? 

To refresh your memory, the parents are stuffy George Banks, a banker (good name), and Winifred, who is ludicrously obsessed with women's suffrage (imagine, women having the right to vote!).  The two preteen children, Jane and Michael, needed saving from their nascent juvenile delinquency.

Well, now there's a sequel, Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

P. L. Travers actually wrote a sequel to her first book, with Mary Poppins returning a year or so later, dealing with the same family all over again.  But in the movie version, it's been 25 years.  The elder Banks are deceased.  Michael (Ben Whishaw, top photo) has abandoned his dream of becoming an artist and taken a job in banking, like his father, and Jane has grown into a shrill labor activist, like her mother.

Michael has three children (Georgie, John, and Annabel), but no wife, and a lot of financial trouble: he's in debt up to his eyeballs and may lose his house.  So Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) has a lot of fixing-up to do:

1. Find some way to make Jane less shrill.
2. Restore Michael's faith in art.
3. Rescue the children from a kidnapping animal gang that also happen to be the Bad Guys trying to destroy Michael's career.
4. Find the note that will allow them to save the house.
5. Reveal the corruption at the heart of the British banking industry.
6. Oh, yeah, teach them how to fly kites again.

Bert, the jack of all trades who knew Mary from many of her dysfunctional-family-saving expeditions, has long since retired (Dick Van Dyke appears as the president of the bank).  Mary's new chum is the lamplighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda), who teaches the kids the joy of being working class.

Beefcake:  Not much.  I couldn't even find shirtless photos of most of the male cast in other productions.  This is Tarik Frimpong, who plays one of Jack's coworkers.

Gay subtexts: Lots.

Mary doesn't try to get Michael a girlfriend (or, horrors, become his girlfriend), which is usual in a show about a single parent.  Could it be because Michael is gay?  Ben Whishaw is, after all, and Michael never expresses a glimmer of heterosexual interest (Jane does start dating Jack; have to put the hetero-romance in there somewhere).

Also, Admiral Boom (David Warner), the navy captain from down the street who thinks he's still living on a ship, has a "first mate"/boy toy (actually they're the same age, but they've been living together without the company of women for a number of years, so....).

And Edward Hibbert, who played the swishy-but-straight Gil on Frasier, and is swishy-but-gay in real life, does the voice of Mary's talking umbrella.

Cuckoo: Constantly Shifting Britcom

I don't understand the Britcom Cuckoo, which has been playing on British tv since 2012 and Netflix since 2016.  It keeps changing its premises and its cast.

Season 1 (2012) was simple: Stuffy button-down lawyer Ken (Greg Davies) discovers that his medical-student daughter Rachel (Tamla Kari) has up and married an American hippie named Cuckoo (Andy Samberg), who exemplifies everything the British don't like about the Americans: he's loud, exuberant, lazy, irresponsible, and certifiably nuts.

Ok, an odd couple comedy.  Cuckoo teaches Ken how to be less stuffy, and Ken teaches Cuckoo some responsibility.

There's also a certifiably nuts teenage son, Dylan, lying about and playing video games.

Season 2  (2014): Cuckoo is long gone, disappeared during a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas and presumed dead.

Rachel (recast with Esther Smith) has moved on, and has a new boyfriend, Ben (Matt Lacey).

But then Dale (Taylor Lautner, left) shows up, claiming to be Cuckoo's son, raised in a Himalayan religious cult.

Um...Cuckoo was in his 20s.  How....?

At first everyone suspects that Dale is conning them, but he's so utterly innocent -- jumping in bed with Ken and his wife when he has a bad dream, calling Rachel "Mom" even though she's his age, that they come around, and lets him move in.

I like the episode "Funeral," in which Dale meets Ken's old college professor for five minutes, and then is overwhelmed with grief when he dies --- obviously displaced grief for his dead father.  He insists on going to the funeral, where he is mistaken for the professor's "young American friend," i.e., lover.  But no homophobic panic results from the confusion.

Dale begins sparking with his stepmother Rachel, and confesses his love in a Christmas special.  She rejects him, and he leaves town.

Season 3 (2016):  Dale is long gone, vanished and presumed dead.  Ken and his wife have a new baby, Rachel is dating, and Dylan (Tyger Drew-Honey, left) is off to University.  Then...Dale returns!  He's been living in China, working for a man who, unbeknownst to him, is a gangster.  This will become important later.

In spite of his high-concept return, Dale takes a back seat this season, which is mostly about the new baby. Plus Steve (Kenneth Collard) is added to the cast, a friend of the family with no boundaries and unacknowledged homoerotic desires.

Season 4 (2018): At least nobody has vanished this time.  Baby Sid is now a toddler, and Dale works as his nanny (to explain why he's still around).  He's also dating Rachel, and he opens a bar with Steve.   But the season is mostly about Ken's job problems and midlife crisis.

I like the episode where Sid happens to be wearing girls' clothes when they bring him to interview at an exclusive daycare (if he has a full-time nanny, why...), and the teacher mistakes him for transgender.   They end up throwing a party for transgender toddlers.

And the episode where Ken gets a crush on his neighbor Lloyd (Nigel Harmon), an uninhibited free spirit -- um, like Cuckoo and Dale?
















Season 5 (2019): Dale is gone without explanation. I'm guessing that he was becoming too respectable, with a full-time job and a permanent relationship.

But not to worry, another "cuckoo," an uninhibited innocent, arrives to cause havoc: Ken's long-lost sister Ivy (Andie McDowell).  Mostly the season is about Ken's political career, as he runs for M.P.

We've come a long way from the American hippie who married Rachel back in 2012. But at least there have been a lot of gay references and bare chests.

The Top 10 Hunks of "Malcolm in the Middle"

We're in the midst of a Malcolm in the Middle marathon, and I must admit that the dysfunctional family sitcom (2000-2006) was not particularly gay-positive.  There were some gay references here and there; Francis, the bad boy sent to military school, pretends to be gay to get girls; Reese tells a girl "Sorry, I'm gay" to dissuade her.  But overall, this was an aggressively heterosexist world.

But what it lost in gay potential, it made up for in beefcake.

1. Over the course of the series, Reese (Justin Berfield, left) bulked up, becoming a veritable muscleman.

2. Gifted child Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) was a little scrawny, but a few years later, in Extreme Movie, he displayed biceps and a bulge while being tormented by a S&M dominatrix.

3. Francis (Christopher Masterson) had a respectable physique which he displayed a few times.

4. He was in military school, surrounded by muscular cadets, such as Eric (Eric Nenninger, top photo)

5. Drew (Drew Powell, left)

6. And Stanley (Karim Prince), who didn't own a shirt.

7. Dewey, the youngest boy, had a never-ending procession of weirdo boy friends, some of whom grew up to become teen hunks, like Chad (Cameron Monaghan), star of Shameless.

8. But the real revelation was in Frankie's gifted-student classmates, the Krelboynes.  According to Hollywood myth, high intelligence goes hand-in-hand with social phobia, lack of fashion sense, glasses, buck teeth, and multiple allergies, so they were drawn as unattractive as possible.  As if to make up for the stereotyping, they have blossomed.

Remember Lloyd, aka Evan Matthew Cohen?  Unfortunately, he's retired from acting, but not from modeling. (Be careful -- there's another Mathew Cohen wandering around the internet, and Google Image Search may have mixed them up.)

9. Eraserhead, aka Will Jennings, is now a tall, imposing ginger giant.

10. And Stevie, Malcolm's wheezing, wheelchair-bound bff?  Craig Lamar Traylor spent his childhood explaining to people that he wasn't really disabled.  His acting career hasn't been doing too well, but he certainly presents a striking figure.


See also: Christopher Masterson in the Middle; Frankie and Erik in the Middle: Justin Berfield's Very Special Episode.

Lucas Neff: Beefcake and Gay Characters after "Raising Hope"

Raising Hope (2010-2014)  was about a wacky working-class family whose son, Jimmy (Lucas Neff) became a single dad after a one-night stand with a serial killer.  There were no gay characters, except for an occasional walk-on, but there were ample buddy-bonding subtexts, including a father-son subtext so obvious it looks intentional.

Plus the beefcake was constant.

Jimmy has a surprisingly buffed, hirsute chest and nicely shaped biceps.

Lucas Neff grew up in Chicago and received a BFA in theater from the University of Illinois in 2008.




He moved to Hollywood almost immediately, with a role in the buddy-bonding war movie Angelo (2010), followed by Raising Hope. 

What has he been up to since 2014?  And more importantly, has he taken off his shirt for the camera since?

According to the imdb, he's been in some indie, horror, and comedy movies, including:

There are Ghosts (2015), about a "closeted homosexual with a death wish."

I Love You Both (2016), about a brother and a sister both dating the same guy.

Slash (2016), about a gay teen (slash means the pairing of heterosexual media characters).

Cock N Bull 2 (2017), about a gay couple who decide to have an open relationship.









That's a lot of gay content.

Plus he's dating Caitlin Stasey, who is an out lesbian (who says lesbians can't date men without having to classify themselves as bisexual?).

He's let his hair grow out just a bit.

See also: Axl in Underwear