"Love, American Style": I Will Defend Your Right to Shine

Love, American Style (1969-74)  aired when I was in grade  school and junior high, late on Friday nights, when my parents were already in bed and I was watching tv with my sleepover friends or my brother, loggy and yawning, eating enormous dishes of ice cream, feeling very grown-up and somewhat mischievous. 

It was an anthology, with three humorous stories every week, all somehow related to "finding love" (all heterosexual love, of course, but who knew that anything else existed?). 

Some of the episodes were actually dramas rather than comedies ("Love and the Ledge").  Some were paranormal or science fiction  ("Love and the Vampire".  Some were only tangentially related to romance.

Sex was hinted at ("Love and the Coed Dorm"),but no one actually did the deed.  This was at heart a conservative show, aimed at an audience that was home on Friday nights -- old people and kids, both confused and disturbed by this new world of sexual freedom, longing for the old days of "true love's first kiss."

No beefcake -- at least, none that I remember.  An occasional cute guy, like teen idol Kurt Russell or Ronnie Howard of The Andy Griffith Show, but mostly oldsters. like Charles Nelson Reilly (from Lidsville) and Paul Lynde (from Bewitched).

Wait -- both of those actors were gay.

Stuart Margolin (top photo) starred in risque interstitial gag pieces,  chasing secretaries around desks or trying to glimpse a bit of cleavage.

But there was some buddy-bonding, guys working together to acquire something of value or evade an enemy, with the "finding love" tacked on at the end so the story would fit the premise. One stands out in my mind:

The guy is afraid of girls, so he asks his buddy to hide in the closet and offer advice during the date. To explain why he is going into the closet so often, he brings out items that he wants to show the girl: a bowling ball, a tennis racket, skiis -- until the apartment is full of junk.  The girl expected sex, not an episode of Hoarders, so she gets up to leave.  Then the guy kisses her,and they get engaged.

Get it: he keeps going into the closet to meet a man.  And he keeps coming out of the closet with masculine-coded sporting equipment, to show the girl that he's really interested in...well, that's about as far as they could go on prime time television in the cold winter of 1972.

I'm only thinking of the gay symbolism now, of course.  When I was in grade school and junior high, what mattered was feeling warm and safe but also dangerous, glimpsing a world built for someone else, an outsider who somehow belonged.

On a star spangled night, my love,
You can rest you head on my shoulder.
And by the dawn's early light, my love,
I will defend your right to shine.

Wrecked is a Wreck

Lost (2004-2010), about plane crash survivors facing paranormal peril on a desert island, was great.  Well, it started out great, and went downhill with the secrets-with-a-secret, most of which would be easily answered in the course of ordinary conversation.

"I thought there were five other survivors in your group."
"There were."
"....well, so tell me what happened to them?"

Instead of saying "Locke has risen from the dead," they make some cryptic reference to shadows.

My favorite is are the twin demigods or whatever, Jacob and ___. Everyone takes great pains to not say ___'s name, even though it's obviously Esau.

And the writers wrote themselves into so many inescapable corners that they had to fall back on a cop-out "They were all in Purgatory" ending.  I think...

Sorry, lost my train of thought.

Anyway, it's been 8 years, so a Lost parody hardly seems relevant.  I went in to Wrecked with low expectations, thinking maybe I would get a little beefcake and maybe some bonding.  I didn't.  Not much, anyway.

A disparate group of people are stranded on a desert island in a plane crash.  Danny (Brian Sacca, left), the slacker son of a rich businessman, and shy flight attendant Owen (Zach Kregger, top photo), see their chance to shine, and take charge.

They also develop a lovey-dovey gay-subtext bromance, in spite of their pursuit of ladies.

There are many other gay subtexts on the island.

Florence and Emma have a gal-pal romance.

Everyone, male and female, is in love with the British special agent who is squashed by the airplane fuselage during the first episode.

Todd (Will Greenberg, left) is mourning the loss of his golf clubs, but fey New Zealander Steve (Rhys Darby) thinks he's lost a child.  He tries to be supportive, offering hands-on-shoulders and gifts, which Todd interprets as sexual come-ons.

Sports agent Pack (Asif Ali) doesn't display any heterosexual interest or pursue any heterosexual relationships.

Unfortunately, no actual, honest-to-goodness, canonical gay characters, just subtexts.

There is some beefcake, but not as much as on Lost, where every male castaway was a fitness model.

Is there any other reason to watch Wrecked?

There is no paranormal peril on the island; minor mysteries turn out to be just that: minor.  Most plots involve struggling to survive: food shortages, tainted water, medical emergencies.  A very gross episode about not being able to poop in the jungle.  Some people die.  That just isn't funny.

Other than a few brief call-outs, like the episode title "All is Not Lost," Wrecked  doesn't try to parody Lost.  And it's not funny enough to make it alone.

I suggest holding out for a program with real gay characters.  Or fitness models.

Episodes: Matt LeBlanc Discusses His Penis

Matt LeBlanc was easy on the eye as Joey on Friends (1994-2004), and he's still quite photogenic, even when playing "himself" as an insufferable jerk.

Of course, in Hollywood, everybody, without exception, is a jerk.

That's one of the takeaway points of the regrettably named Episodes (2011-2017), the British/American sitcom about a British couple, Sean and Beverly (Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Grieg), who produce sitcoms of breathtaking brilliance in Britain, only to find them dumbed down into drivel in America.

The second takeaway point: all Americans are idiots.

The fabulously brilliant sitcom about an elderly headmaster of a boys' school suffering through an unrequited love for the lesbian librarian is transformed into Pucks!, with Matt as the hockey coach at a school for teenage hunks with nice hair.

They're playing teenagers, but they're actually in their 20s, with wives and houses -- a fact which Sean and Bev find incredibly disconcerting.  In Britain, actors play their age.

The teenage hunks can't act, but they're immediately rich and famous, and wallowing in movie offers.  But paradoxically Pucks! is airing opposite a show about a talking dog, so it tanks in the ratings, and is quickly cancelled.

Not that Sean and Beverly mind.  They hate, hate, hate, America, where everyone makes fun of their accents and vocabulary, everyone is incredibly stupid, and everyone is morally bankrupt.

Matt sleeps with every woman in sight, including Beverly --- a transgression that Sean can't get over, because he is fixated with the size of Matt's schlong.

To be fair, Matt discusses his penis a lot.  So do many of the other male characters. 

They are also irked by the fact that their incredibly stupid, talentless former personal assistant, Andrew Leslie (Oliver Kieran-Jones), is a huge success, selling script after script.


They almost escape back to Britain, where no one makes fun of their accent and people are smarter than rocks, but then they are drawn into a new tv series based on their incredibly brilliant script about actors playing two different roles.

But that's destroyed, too.

And Matt becomes a game show host.  His incredibly popular show is about people who spend the whole season trapped in boxes, getting points to acquire comforts like beds and food, or to torture each other with bugs and Gilbert Gottfried.

See how stupid Americans are?  They actually like this drivel.

Meanwhile the bedroom shenanigans go on and on.  Network executive Carol Rance (Kathleen Rose Perkins) has affairs with each of her bosses in turn: Merc (John Pankow), Castor (Chris Diamantopoulous), Helen (Andrea Savage), and then back to Merc.  They all turn out to be cheating, sniveling scum or crazy as a loon.

Doesn't that affair with Helen means that Carol is coming out as gay or bisexual?  Nope, she's not attracted to women, just to bosses.

At least there's a gay presence.  Casting director Andrew Button (Joseph May) is gay, although he never actually dates anyone or discusses cute guys.  He's basically gay because he says he is.

There are also a lot of cute guys walking around in towels and talking about their penises.

Gilad's Body in Motion

During the 1980s, this was one of the most famous physiques -- and bulges -- in the world.

It belongs to Gilad Janklowicz (try telling your Dad that you want a poster of Gilad Janklowicz for your birthday).

Gilad was born on a Kibbutz in Israel in 1954.  His parents, who escaped from Nazi Germany via China, were both sports enthusiasts.  He ran track and field in high school, and became a decathlete and fitness instructor in the Israeli army.  After an Achilles heel injury ruined his Olympic aspirations, he moved to Los Angeles, enrolled in the UCLA Film School, and became a personal trainer.

Here he holds hands with a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.








In 1981 he moved to Hawaii where in 1983 he launched Bodies in Motion, a half-hour aerobics program in which he demonstrated routines to a pounding back beat while male and female models worked out behind him.

His sister Ada was co-host for a year before breaking out with her own show, Basic Training.

Over the years, Bodies in Motion ran on ESPN, Fox Sports, the Health Channel, and Fit TV.  It is still running several times a day on TBS, and in 80 countries around the world.







Gilad also hosts Total Body Sculpt  (2005-), publishes fitness articles, and sells a wide range of merchandise.

He's never married or been connected any of the models he works with, so he's probably gay.

But I'm more impressed by his exceptional physique and commitment to fitness past age 60.  One of his clients lived to the age of 103, and still walked the 23 flights up to his apartment every day.