An amazingly open but undeveloped gay subtext in "Below": From attempted murder to romance in three hours. Plus some n*de Somali dudes

 (I decided to revise this review to concentrate on the gay subtext rather than a scene-by-scene.)

 Link to the n*de dudes

I went into the Netflix series Below (2026), about a sea monster plaguing a small fishing village, expecting no more than the Newfoundland accent and maybe some shirtless fishermen.  But before I knew it, there was a major gay subtext, a crazy, undeveloped, yet touching "enemies to lovers" story!

Below is set in the Newfoundland village of Snooks Arms, where ice fisherman Calvin (Azriel Dalman as a boy, former teen idol Josh Hartnett as an adult) has several problems:

First, a prehistoric sea monster that hunts random villager, starts a plague, and has a weird cult with psychic powers.

Josh Hartnett's backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Second, the province wants everyone to relocate.  If 90% of the villagers agree to the move, they'll get a stipend of $140,000 for a family, or $60,000 for single people.  He and his lesbian sister don't want to move.

Calvin has an on-off girlfriend and three kids.  They all have plotlines of their own, plus love interests.

Wade (Charlie Heaton, Jonathan Byers on Stranger Things, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), handles the cooking and cleaning for the family's bed-and-breakfast.  He keeps wanting to help on the ice fishing boat, but Dad refuses because he has ADHD, is taking psylociben for depression, and is a screw-up.

Love interest: He falls in love with a girl who happens to belong to the paranormal monster-worshipping cult, and wants to sacrifice him.

 Mary is visiting from Toronto with her musician boyfriend Noah (Caleb Horn).  Their plotline involves a stolen engagement ring.

Jay (Rohan Campbell) has been "working on an oil rig," he claims and hanging out with the b'yes.  Tell me more.

His plotline:

Episode 1: While out ice fishing with his Dad, he gets a text: "You're a dead man!" .

Episode 2: It turns out that he owes $80,000 to a loan shark out west.  Two enforcers, the loose cannon Connor (Josh Cruddas, right) and the hesitant Mo (Matthew Worku, center), arrive for the payment.  Jay says that he needs another 24 hours. 

Episode 3:   In 24 hours, Jay delivers proof of residence in the town: when they relocate, he'll get a payout of $60,000. That's not good enough, so they start beating him up.  Dad Calvin intervenes.

Jay asks if they have a place to stay, and suggests a b&b (not the one his brother runs).  You're being awfully nice to the guys who were just hitting and kicking you.

More after the break.

Dang!: Dysfunctional Asian-American family, with Andrew Law as a gay brother. Gen Z humor, gross-out jokes, cute gay guys, and Brian Jordan Alvarez..

 

Link to the not-fully-clothed dudes

I've been looking forward to the animated Dang!, about dysfunctional Asian-American siblings, wiith some trepidation.  In one of the scenes in the trailer, Andrew Dang struggles to say something to a burly Hispanic dude in a bodega, knocks over a display, says "I love you!" and leaves in embarrassment.  Sounds like he's gay, but in another scene, he's knocking over furniture in enthusiastic kissing and hugging with a woman, so I'm not sure.  I've been fooled by queerbaiting trailers before.

But it stars Andrew Law, the showrunner of The Family Law, about a Chinese-Australian boy coming out, so we'll give it a try.

Scene 1: Boardroom at the XY Deadstock Company.  Andrew calls a meeting with his disengaged, phone-scrolling "grindset alpha" employees.  His co-owner fires him because "every day you spend hours in the bathroom, eavesdropping on your own employees and tweeting their conversations."

"Can't fire me if you can't catch me!" He runs away in a panic, chased by security guards in a parody of those zany movie chases. One expects to hear "Yackety Sax" in the background.  He runs into Lucille,  Head of HR, who hands him the termination papers.

Scene 2: A purple-haired woman is livestreaming her bread podcast, accumulating coins. If she gets enough, she promises marble rye next. Andrew comes and gets yelled at for interrupting. She notes that she's only doing this until she lands the job at Klerp, Kate Hudson's lip gloss newsletter. 

Andrew being fired will be a major inconvenience for Sister, since he pays for all her stuff. "Go back and fight for your job."

Scene 3: Andrew begs the Co-Owner to give him his job back.  "We're a world-changing company!" "We let teens resell their fanny packs for $6,000.  And you don't do anything."  Who would spend that much on a used fanny pack?  

"My lawyer and I will see you in court!"

"Isn't that just a guy you date?"  

"We only dated once."

Gay identity established at Minute 5.00, but what about the enthusiastic girl-kissing?  Maybe it's bi identity.

Scene 4: Lawyer tells Andrew that they have two options: Prove that the Bathroom Twitter account wasn't his.   "Nope, it was mine."  Ok, prove that he was wrongfully terminated.   His older sister Ruthie texts, so he runs away.

Left: The IMDB and the closing credits don't reveal which actor plays which character, so all I know is that Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jared Goldstein (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) are in the cast.

Cut to Klerp, where Purple-Haired Sister is waiting for her internship interview.  The receptionist offers several wacky perks, like a cranial massage, bone marrow broth, and a bossy therapist: "A gay guy who agrees with everything you say, but goes too far."

She's interviewed by a young teen girl who puts rose quartz in her coffee.  They're ready to hire her, when Andrew appears, gesturing wildly.   "Our Sister Ruthie is in town, and she wants to...ugh...grab dinner!" 

"Don't panic.  We can avoid her until she leaves."

Scene 5: They run back to their apartment to grab some essentials and hide, but she's in the house!  She explains that she's moving to town for her very important, very successful job, so she'll be able to evaluate their tech business and muffin shop. 

Dang, the siblings don't have either of those careers!  "When Little Miss Perfect finds out, she'll be sooo annoying!"

Purple-Haired Sister has another interview at Klerp, so Andrew is in charge of entertaining their sister for the day. She interviews with Kate, who is trying "interminable fasting" and doesn't know what "Cornell" means.

More after the break

Daniel Doheny: Alex Strange Gay, a guy chasing a d*ck, a n*de breeder. With some karaoke and an Irish Short Guy

 

Link to the n*de dudes

When not-fully-clothed photos of Daniel Doheny in Breeders appeared online, I figured that he was starring in the tv series about parents who hate their kids.  No, that series aired from 2020 to 2023, and this Breeders is from 2026.  

Since breeder is gay slang for hetero, could it be a series about a gay guy trapped in the straight world?

No, it's a horror thriller about a straight guy who is kidnapped due to his superior genetic material and told to have babies with a lot of women. He refuses to do the act because of his girlfriend back home, so they force him to submit samples instead.

A big-beneath-the-belt muscleman.  I could see how...

Wait -- this is Daniel Doheny.   Cute, but he hasn't been to the gym lately, and his dangling bits are rather on the small side.  I guess that's the point: he's an unlikely candidate.  Maybe they grabbed the wrong guy?

Further research reveals that Daniel is best known for Alex Strangelove (2018): he plays a high schooler who doesn't realize that he's gay until his girlfriend figures it out and finds him a boyfriend. 

I stayed far away from that movie, offended by the low-scale homophobia of the title.  Not as bad as "an abomination," but I still don' t like gay stuff being slurred as "strange." Why didn't they just come out and title it Alex Gay People Are Deviant? 

So Danny Boy is going into this profile with two strikes against him, to use a hetero metaphor.

Question #1: Any other strange guy roles?

Daniel Doheny (the Anglicized form of the Irish Ó Dubhchonna) was born in Vancouver in 1997, and attended Langara College, class of 2012.  His  on-screen acting career begins in 2012, with some shorts, a guest spot on Supernatural, and Adventures in Public School (2017).  He plays Liam Heap (really?), a homeschooled boy who braves a public high school and meets The Girl of His Dreams.

Looks like we get a shirtless shot of Andrew Herr, who would go on to play a "he might be strange" straight dude on Letterkenny.

Next came Alex Gay Stuff is Weird (2018) and The Package (2018): Five friends (Danny, Luke Spencer Roberts, Eduardo Franco, and two girls) go on a camping trip, when Eduardo's character accidentally gets his manitou cut off.    It gets a lot of damage in the "race against time" to the hospital, including a scene where one of the guys has to s*ck snake venom out of it. Like gay bedroom stuff, Can you believe that strange guys do that, har har?

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: The impressive beneath-the-belt gifts of Alexander Calvert, who played Chad. 

More after the break

The Gay Plot Arc of Robbie Hobbie

 

Hollie Hobbie (2018-2021) is a Hulu series about a young girl with Big Dreams in a small town.  Who would make a tv series about the 1970s doll who wore 19th century outfits?  And more importantly, was older brother Robbie Hollie, gay-coded, like older brothers in many other teencoms?  So I went through the entire first season, fast-forwarding to Robbie's scenes.

Season 1 Episode 1: No connection to the doll, except someone dresses like her during the opening credits.  We meet Hollie's parents (Dad Evan Buliung, left), boyfriend (Hunter Dillon, below), best friends, little sister Heather (the bratty, manipulate younger sibling cliche), and Robbie (Charles Vandevaart).

Ep. 2: Robbie's first B plot, sneaking into a bull pen with some friends to take photographs.  He doesn't get one, so he returns later with a girl,  and accidentally lets the bull out.  It then eats the an important cucumber.

Ep 3: Robbie teaches little sister how to arm wrestle, so she can beat her frenemy and future boyfriend Levi, thus proving that girls are better than boys.  It's hard to distinguish him on fast-forward, since he looks a lot like Hollie's boyfriend.

Ep 4: Robbie tries to blame the destruction of the cucumber on Hollie's boyfriend.  It's a big mess.  Finally he comes clean.  No heterosexual interest yet, unless you count his bull pen companion.

Ep 5: As punishment for the cucumber deal, Robbie and Hollie have to build a chicken coop.  But Robbie blows it off to play football.  Hollie yells "I hope you break your leg," and he does!

Ep 6: Robbie on crutches.  He can't play football anymore, so he has lost his identity.  Dad assigns him the job of fixing a broken tractor, to teach him responsibility or something. No heterosexual interest yet, but some macho football stuff.  There are gay football players in real life, of course, but it's not a standard tv trope.

Ep 7: No centric.

Left: Charles in Outlander

Ep 8: Hollie and her boyfriend run away together.  I thought this was Canada, but it turns out to be small-town Wisconsin.  In the B plot, Robbie and Little Sister accidentally break the urn containing the ashes of their beloved pet, and somehow Dad mistakes it for brownies.

Ep 9:  Ulp -- Robbie is all lovey-dovey with Lyla, who appeared in the bull pen episode, but hasn't had any scenes with him since.   He's got a new life plan -- skip college and become  Lyla's househusband.  He proposes, and she says yes, to the consternation of the parents.  But it turns out that they were just playing a joke, to get even with the parents for pushing college so aggressively.  So, was he actually dating Lyla, or was the relationship part of the joke?

To find out, I watched the last episode she appears in, Season 3, Episode 9:  Robbie's artisanal jam has become a hit.  A company in Madison wants to hire him to start a jam line.  Little Sister Heather calls them and says he doesn't want the job,  so he won't leave town.  He is angry, of course, but she explains that she doesn't want to lose her best friend (Isn't Madison like an hour away?).  Robbie  opens up his business right there in town, so problem solved. 

Robbie and Lyla don't have any scenes together.  She has become one of Hollie's friends.  

Season 3, Episode 10.  The series finale.  Hollie is moving to Paris for a singing job.  Grandpa is getting married.  At the wedding reception, Robbie is dancing...with a guy!  It's a "blink and you miss it" shot in the final montage of the last episode. But it's there.

So...couldn't Robbie open his artisanal jam shop in West Hollywood?

See also: "Diary of a Future President": Bobby comes out Disney style, Part 1. With bonus Matthew Underwood

A huge gay subtext in "Below." Plus a Newfoundland fishing village, a prehistoric ice monster, Ethiopian nude dudes, and Jonathan Byers

"Slow Horses," Season 6: Gay Lenny Rush bonds with a hunky hacker and a slow horse spy. With Oldman and King Lear c*ck

Link to the n*de photos

 I could never get into Slow Horses, on Apple Plus, but when I heard that Short Guy Lenny Rush had a starring role in Season 6 (2026), I dove in.

The title may be misleading: "slow horses" are British spies assigned to Slough House (pronounced "slow" in Britain) because they screwed up a mission or because the higher-ups didn't like them. 

Boss Jackson  (Gary Oldman, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) assigns them dull, repetitive tasks in the hope that they'll get bored and resign. His assistant is former hacker Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung)

He butts heads with River (Jack Lowden, left), a promising young agent who made a big mistake in a training exercise, and was banished to Slough House.  River's Dad is the evil CIA agent turned mercenary Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), and his grandfather is the retired legendary spy David Cartwright.  But only Evil Harkness plays a role in Lenny's plot arc.

Ben Tavassoli plays one of Evil Harkness's assistant mercenaries.

Season 6, Episode 2: Someone is murdering retired spies, including former Dog (internal affairs investigator) Aaron Nasmith.  

His son Reece (Lenny), age 16 or 29, depending on who you believe, sees the murder, and is caught on a a security cam as he runs away, so now the murderer can identify him -- and rub him out.

Misdirection: two assasins (including Kyle Solle, top photo, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) are murdering the other former spies, but Reece's Dad is unrelated.  

Episode 3: Head Slow Horse Jackson and Hacker Roddy take the sarcastic, street-smart Reece into "protective custody."  He wants to play an arcade game, so Roddy lifts him up to the console and goes off to get coins.  But Jackson finds a burner phone in Reese's backpack with one number in it: Evil Frank Harkness's!  He rushes off.   

Roddy: "I thought we were going to play a game?"  So you were lookng forward to playing with the kid?

Reece orders Roddy to help him dowm, but it looks like he's demanding a hug. If I didn't know better, I'd identify their interaction as "he's arrogant!" argumentative flirting.

We discover that Dad was blackmailing the evil Frank Harkness over a stolen spy personnel file.  So Frank killed him, and he just had his hackers identify Reece from the security cam!

More after the break

Life is Still Unfair: "Malcolm in the Middle" returns, with a super-jerky Malcolm, a n*de Hal, and a nonbinary sibling. Plus Francis and Alex d*cks

 

Link to the n*de dudes

Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) starred Frankie Muniz as Malcolm, the genius son in a struggling, working-class family with four boys.  I watched mainly because it was inserted into the must-see Sunday night lineup on Fox: Futurama, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, Family Guy, American Dad. 

 I don't remember many of Malcolm's plotlines, but I liked the delinquent older brother Francis (Christopher Masterson) in military school amid hunky gay-subtext dormmates, then moving to Alaska with his...um...best buddy.

Christopher c*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

And middle brother Reese (Justin Berfield), who had so many queer codes that I expected a coming-out episode -- until the spineless writers lost their nerve and gave him a girlfriend. 

20 years have passed, and three of the four brothers (plus their parents, buddies, marital partners, and kids) are back in a four-part miniseries on Hulu.

Scene 1: Suited 40-year old Malcolm tells a reporter that his company does tech stuff to hook up grocery store chains with food banks, so their unsold merchandise goes to people who need it.  Then, addressing the audience, he brags that he is rich, successful, and infinitely happy. And he did it all by cutting off his family. 

I'm not happy about the "Looking at me, I'm so much better than you!"  And your family was not abusive. Cutting them off is cold.

Scene 2: At the house, Mom Lois is shaving Dad Hal's back hair, while he stands n*de  in front of a laptop, face timing with youngest son Dewey. We're supposed to find this disgusting, but Hal has a perfectly presentable physique for a 70 year old (butt after the break).

Dewey (now played by Caleb Ellsworth-Clark) is performing before King Carl Gustaf of Sweden.  And he brags about his numerous girlfriends. Was the original series this annoyingly heterosexist?

Did you remember that Hal and Lois had a fifth child in a late-series "Why not have a wacky birth?" plot arc?   I didn't, but, but here they are: the young adult Kelly (Vaughan Murrae), who is nonbinary.  

Hal makes a big show of not understanding their pronouns: "We're going shopping.  Does them want to come?"   But Kelly fights back: "Him can't come with we. Us have homework."

In other news, Lois and Hal's big anniversary party is coming up.

Scene 3: On the way home, Malcolm continues to brag about how cutting off his family changed his life: "I don't act like a sociopath.  I'm less angry, more mature. But whenever I'm around them, I revert."  Montage of Malcolm yelling at a family dinner, at a funeral, when his brother criticizes him for bragging about his car.  Now he lives far away, and avoids holiday visits, but a stream of phone calls and emails makes them think that he still cares.

Cut to Hal and Lois at a big box store, looking for a ruby garland.   Craig (David Anthony Higgins), who used to be Lois's boss with a crush on her, pops up to explain why he's no longer working at the drug store.

Suddenly Hal and his old musical group perform an a capella love song -- right in the aisle!    Well, not a love song, precisely: "Your bedroom activity takes me to paradise..."

 I remember that group vaguely -- he's the only white member, but he feels left out because the other guys are more successful.  Didn't they also prank Lois's racist mother?

Musical group member Alex Morris d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Lois is embarrassed by the "romantic gesture."  Could they do something likes, for a change?  

Scene 4:  Back to Malcolm.  He introduces his daughter Leah, "a trophy I won for attending my first kegger in college Her mother left three days after giving birth.  I'm a single father, but I'm good at it!"

Cut to Leah crying in her room.  She addresses the camera, explaining that she doesn't cry all the time. She usually does depressed apathy or rage.

Malcolm wants to know what's wrong: she's isolated at school, with no friends, and Mean Girls prank her. 

"Don't worry, it will get better once you go away to college and cut me off."

Mom Lois calls, insisting that they come to the anniversary party. This is her third text, so Malcolm has to strategize, explaining why he didn't answer the others in a way that makes it look like he cares.

More after the break

Oscar Chark: Lots of physique photos and guy-hugging, but has he played gay characters? Or posted d*ck pics? Or been tied up with Jason Priestley?

Link to the n*de photos

The tied-up actor site had some rather blurry photos of Jason Priestley and Oscar Chark in an episode of Private Eyes West Coast. I've already seen Jason Priestley's stuff (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends, so  I checked on Chark: an impressive physique, an unusual name, and an Instagram full of guy-hugging photos.  The dude is begging for a profile.

"Chark" sounds Charn, the dying city of the witch Jadis in The Chronicles of Narnia, but it's actually an English surname derived from the Old French charche (load) or the Old English cierre (bend in a river). 

The guys he hugs are mostly  co-stars, like Jason Fernandes, Robbie in It's a Wonderful Knife.  It looks like they have a gay or gay-subtext romance. 

Wait -- there's a gay couple in Knife, but these guys both play straight.  Robbie is the boyfriend of focus character Winnie.   Oscar is a guest at his Christmas party, who sneaks out to smooch with his girlfriend, and gets eviscerated by a candy cane ornament.  

This shot looks like Oscar and Rommel Mercado have a gay or gay-subtext romance in More Together (2024), but actually Oscar plays a guy who gets his girlfriend pregnant.  Can't get more heteronormative than that. 

You Are So Not Invited to my Bat Mitzvah (2023)?  Two girls are into the same boy, Andy (Dylan Hoffman), so they're not invited to each other's Bat Mitzvahs. Oscar's character is not mentioned in the plot synopsis, but it looks like he hooks up with one of the girls.

Tracker, Episode 1.1, "Klamath Falls" (2024)?  Tracker has to track down a kidnapped boy.  Oscar's character plays his brother: "He woke up, and said he was going to visit his Dad.  His biological Dad."

Let's take another look at Oscar's physique to remind me why I'm profiling this dude.

School Spirits (2025), Episode 3.2:  "Smug Senior"? Not mentioned in the plot synopsis.

The Love Heist (2026): A celebrity stylist and a hotel security guard (Peter Porte) team up to track down a stolen piece of couture, and fall in love.   Oscar plays Devin, his coworker, but I'll bet he's straight by default.

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Peter Porte getting with Neal Patrick Harris in Uncoupled.  What guy hasn't fantasized about doing stuff Neal Patrick Harris?

More after the break

Luke Kokotek: The young Will from "Stranger Things" has gay friends, throws shade. With Noah bulge and Croatian c*cks

  

Link to the n*de dudes

Instagram recommeded The Luke Ellison Kokotek, "you can call me Bear," an actor known for playing the young Will Byers in two 2025 episodes of Stranger Things.  

Episode 5.1: The young Will, hiding in the Upside Down parallel world, is captured by the monstrous Vecna.

Episode 5.4: Vecna makes the teenage Will relive the capture and says that it made him realize that he could kidnap more kids and use them to take over the outer world.

That's enough for Luke to be interviewed on podcasts and invited to a lot of fan conventions, and to become friends with Noah Schnapp (the teenage Will).  Luke's mom writes: "Thanks for always being a call away...our family loves you."

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Noah Schnapp's stuff, in case you haven't seen it recently.

Will drops some hints about being gay in earlier seasons, and finally comes out in Episode 5.7.  Noah himself came out in 2023.  Could they have cast a gay kid to play the Young Will?

It wouldn't hurt to check.

Luke was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the youngest of the five children of May Miles H., "a beekeeper, biologist, teacher, animal rescuer, chess junkie, and actress."  I haven't found her on the IMDB, so she must be in the theater.

All five of her children are actors.  The oldest, Finnan, is over 18 and rather cute.

Their last name is Croatian, a diminuitive of kotek, "c*ck," as in "rooster." 

So: "Small c*ck." 

It doesn't look that small (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Luke has nine acting credits on the IMDB, beginning in 2023 with 115 Grains, about a police officer dealing with the trauma of his past.  Pilot Bunch co-stars.

In 2024:

Game of Heirs.  No description available, but it's not a Game of Thrones parody.

Scared to Death.  Some ghost hunters stake out an abandoned children's home, where the ghosts of the kids terrorize them.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"Of an Age": In a 24-hour Garden of Forking Paths, a Serbian teen hooks up with his girlfriend's brother. With some Serbian d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

 It's Sunday morning, and I have no tv series or movies waiting to review, so I'm going to click on my Netflix recommendation Of an Age, with a shirtless guy on the icon.  There may not be any gay characters, but at least there will be some beefcake. 

Scene 1: 1999. A scantily clad woman awakens on a deserted beach.  Her bag is gone, so she borrows some coins from a lady exiting a pastie shop and runs to a payphone and calls someone, but gets a busy signal.  This must be Britain or Australia.

Cut to close-ups of the chest, biceps, and face of a sleazy-looking dude as he dances around to "Bandido," a 2003 song by Ana Barbara.  He appears to be working on choreography in his garage, moving too fast to get a good screen shot.  

Knock on the door.  He yells in Serbian, "Don't come in!", then goes out to yell at his little brother (Peter Rayias), but Bro is in his room.  It must have been his  creepy Mom: "I forgot to wash your clothes again, my handsome man, leer, leer."

Finally The Girl gets through: "What the f*ck, Kol!" 

"Sorry, my brother was using the computer."  

She starts stammering.  This guy was going to take her to his boat in Saint Basil (no such town), and she took some speed.  It's very important to know that he was a little older, but not some rando. The next thing she knew, she was waking up on a beach, with no money, her bag gone, no idea what happened, and no idea where she is. And they have the Big Community Center Thing in two hours.  She has obviously been roofied, s*xually assaulted, and robbed, but nothing more is said about it. 

 They use a street sign to deduce that she's in Altoona, an hour's drive away. She wants Kol to go to her friend Tori's house, pick up her dress for the Big Civic Center Thing, then come get her.  

"But I don't have a car."

"Borrow your mom's."

"I can't.  She's being creepy. Can you call someone else with a car to come get you?"

"But if they have a car, they probably have a life, so they won't be home."  Wouldn't people who have lives be out late the night before, so still asleep at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning?  "Wait -- I know a complete loser who everybody hates because he's so lame.  He has no life, so he'll be home at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning -- my brother Adam!"  Har-har.

Scene 2: Kol runs through the neighborhood to his Girlfriend's friend, now named Jaya: "You have to call this complete loser who everybody hates.  I can't do it because if his Mom answers, she'll recognize my voice and ask where The Girl is."

By the way, the Girl is named Ebony, although she's not black.  Another off-kilter directorial choice.

Tori/Jaya calls Brother Adam: "This sleazy gay guy burst in and insisted that I call you."  Wait -- your girlfriend's best friend doesn't know you?  And her brother doesn't, either?  How long have you been dating?

"I'm not gay, but..."  He grabs the phone.  "Adam, you have to drive me to pick up your sister Ebony, an hour away, and then drive us to the Civic Center, another hour, and we have to be there in an hour and a half."  

He grabs the dress, and while waiting, hears more about Brother Adam: "Loser.  Voted most likely to bomb the school.  Some girls tried to f*ck him, but were unsuccessful."

Scene 3: Adam arrives (Thom Green, left, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  He doesn't think they can make it to Altoona and back in time for "your emergency dance class."  The camera moves around too much to get a good screenshot.

"It's the Dance Finals dude!  Super-important!"  Not that important.  The movie is not about Kol's dancing career.

Kol asks him to stop the car so he can throw up.   This illness is not mentioned again.

"Maybe you could go to the finals next year?"

"My Girlfriend Ebony applied to NIDA in Sydney, so she won't be around."  The National Institute of Dramatic Arts.

He laughs.  "You think she's going to NIDA?  She's a terrible actor."  He ridicules her performance as Lady Macbeth.

Their conversation last for 21 minutes.  I can't cover everything they discuss, but the most interesting topics are:

1. Jorge Luis Borges -- one of my favorite writers. 

"The Library of Babel," containing every possible combination of letters in a book. 

 "The Circular Ruins," where a man dreams a world that is dreaming him.  

"The Garden of Forking Paths," a labyrinth where every decision results  in infinite parallel worlds. .   

2. Tomorrow Kol is flying back to Serbia for his birthday, January 1st, 2000,  the day of Y2K fears.  Y2K is never mentioned again.

3. Kol mentions how much he hates his "psycho uncle."    Adam suggests that he could murder the uncle for Kol, as in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train.  This is never mentioned again.

4. Adam mentions that he's gay. Kol says he doesn't have a problem with gay people, a standard straight guy response in the 1990s.

More after the break

Rick Gomez: What has Endless Mike of "Pete & Pete" been doing lately? Is Steve Zahn his boyfriend? Is he really endless? With Rick d*ck

Link to the n*de photos

Remember this?

Hey smiin' strange
You're lookin' happily deranged
Can you settle to shoot me?
Or have you picked your target yet

It's the theme to The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1991-95), the first of the Nickelodeon "adults are insane" teencoms.  Two brothers, both named Pete, negotiate the weirdness of the city of Wellsville, where no one is really well. 

A bowling ball has mystical powers.

A garage band vanishes overnight.

Little Pete accidentally erases baseball from existence.

I liked Rick Gomez as Endless Mike, who knows more about the town's weirdness than he lets on.  He sometimes bullies and humiliates Big Pete, and sometimes acts as his ally and protector. You might even find a gay subtext in their interaction.

No one ever explains why his name is Endless.  Maybe the teenage boy is a manifestation of a transdimensional being who exists beyond time and space as we perceive it.

Or maybe he's endless in the beneath the belt region (example on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

When Pete & Pete ended, I moved on to other things, and thought about Endless Mike rarely, if at all.  And the years passed.

Recently we started watching Silo (2023-), a dystopian science fiction series where 10,000 people, all of surviving humanity (that they know of) live in a huge underground helix.  They can't go outside, or ever open the single door, because the air is poisonous (or so they are told). 

And there in the cast list was Rick Gomez!

He plays Patrick Kennedy, a maintenance worker with a dead wife (of course) who sells strictly-forbidden relics from the Before Time.  He starts to suspect that they are being lied to (they are, sort of), and joins the Resistance. 

Right: Steve Zahn plays Solo, who survived a rebellion in his own silo, where everyone went outside and died.  They buddy bond in Season 3.

A few years have passed, but you can still see that insoucient, all-knowing smile.  

I wanted to check what Rick has been doing since 1995, whether he is actually gay in real life, and if he is really endless.

Searching for "Rick Gomez," "actor," and "n*de" yields a lot of photos of Rick kissing guys (top photo) and showing his backside (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), but it turns out to be a Google Images misdirection.  The gay/backside actor is Ricardo Gomez.

Our Rick starred in five tv series between Pete & Pete and Silo.

1. Hitz (1997), about workers at a record company (remember records?)

2. Band of Brothers (2001), about World War II soldiers. Rick plays George Luz, who does some buddy-bonding during the War, but then returns to Rhode Island for the married-with-children bit.

Not much of gay interest so far.

More after the break

Jett Klyne: The future bisexual superhero spends his teen years bodybuilding and dating guys. With two twink d*cks and an Ecuadorian dude

  

Link to the n*de photos

In Wandavision (2021), the Scarlet Witch, memory-wiped and trapped in a sitcom world, has two sons, Billy and Tommy (Justin Hilliard, Jeff Klyne).  In Agatha All Along (2024), after being adopted by a Jewish family and losing and regaining his memory, Billy Maximoff becomes the gay Jewish superhero Wiccan.  So of course I had to do a profile of Justin.

But what about Tommy Maximoff (Jett Klyne)?  He grows up to become the superhero Speed, who is bisexual in the comics: he dated Kate Bishop in Young Avengers: The Children's Crusade (2010-12), and the male superhero Prodigy in Emperor Hulkling (2020).  He explains "I crushed on who I crushed on."   

Maybe I'd better do a profile of Jett, too.

Jett arguably has a more gay/femme affect.

And he has spent his teen years working out.  

I'll answer the standard two questions: has Jett appeared in any movies or tv shows of gay interest?; and is he gay in real life?

Gay-Themed Movies/TV Shows:

 In 2014, when Jett was seven years old, he was in Writing Kim: Aspiring writer Annie (Jett's Mom) heads off on a road trip seeking inspiration, and meets Kim, who has a husband and son (Jett) but also likes ladies. Kim inspires her to embrace her sexual fluidity (you mean she's bi?)  In 2020, it was selected for qFlix, the Philadelphia LGBTQ film festival.  

According to his IMDB biography, Jett's break-out role was in Z (2019).  So a one-word title was too long?  Joshua (Jett) has an "imaginary" friend, Z, who gets more and more disruptive, sabotaging his relationship with his real life friend Daniel and trying to hurt his father.  Finally we learn that Z is using Joshua to get to his mother. 

I haven't seen it, but the gay subtexts sort of jump out at you, don't they?

Left: Since Jett is 16 as of this writing, I won't be looking for n*de photos, so I put a random twink on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

He has a lot of pre-Wandavision guest appearances, mostly in movies that I never heard of: Devil in the Dark, Manny Dearest, The Humanity Bureau, Skyscraper.  Plus three significant post-Wanda movies:

The Boy in the Woods (2023). During World War II, as the Jewish population of Buczarc is being rounded up for the concentration camps, Max (Jett) is sent to live with Janko (Richard Armitage), a synpathetic non-Jewish farmer.  But Janko fears for his family's safety, so he kicks the boy out.  While hiding in the woods, Max forms a buddy-bond with the sensitive, artistic, gay-coded Yanek (David Kohlsmith, right); they discuss their future living together as artists in Paris, and try to adopt the baby of a dying woman. 

Yanek dies, but the baby grows up, and Max re-unites with her in old age, so symbolically the two had a family.  A definite gay subtext or text.

More after the break