Adam's Also-Rans: 8 sitcom guest spots, with Andrew Santino, Jason Bateman, and some costar cocks

After Workaholics, The Righteous Gemstones, Bumper in Berlin, House Party, Bad Ideas, and twelve movies, are you getting tired of Adam Devine? 

I didn't think so.

The guy is prolific. Between 2006, when he started filming Mail Order Comedy shorts with his buds Ders and Blake, and 2015, when he was too busy with starring roles, Adam guest-starred on eight tv series, not including animation and sketch comedy.  Let's see if there's any gay subtexts...or even texts.

1. The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, 2007, about two women film producers, appeared on the IFC. 

Left: Giuseppe Andrews as an aspiring writer who steals one of their scripts.

Adam played Toby in the episode "Dykes Like Us," the standard sitcom plot where two straight people pretend to be a gay couple in order to get some of the incredible privileges that gay people enjoy.  Like being called a "freak" at an academic conference?  Get real.

2. The Wife and Times of Teddy Berman, 2008, about a family man "struggling to make sense of a world where his father suddenly has a ponytail and an earring, his best friend is a stay at home dad, and his kids will only speak to him through Skype."  Sounds super old-fashioned.

Adam plays a Teenage Caveman who tells his parents about two problems: a rampaging bison that needs to be hunted, and a baby with a diaper that needs changing.  Thus a gendered division of labor is instituted for all time and eternity.  An anti-Women's Lib series in 2011?

  Peter Dante, left, plays the Caveman Dad.

3. Better Off Ted, 2009, starring Jay Harrington as a research developer at a soulless corporation. In Episode 1.5, "Win Some, Dose Some," a woman getting tested for a new experimental drug goes haywire, and Ted sabotages his daughter's wrapping-paper competition so she won't win and he won't have to go on a man-date with a general who has a man-crush on him.  Gay panic, anyone? 

Adam appears as Josh. The show is not available to stream, so I don't know anything about his character. 

4. Samantha Who?, 2009, stars Christina Applegate as a real estate hotshot who gets amnesia and tries to fix the horrid messes she made in her old life. 

Adam appears in two episodes as temp Tyler Banks.  I purchased Episode 2.19, "The Other Woman": Samantha tries to be nice to the girlfriend of her ex, Winston Funk -- Billy Zane, left -- but ends up sleeping with him.

At the office, Samantha asks Tyler the Temp to call Mr. Funk and tell him that she will have dinner with him tonight, but it's not a date: she's setting him up with his ex.

Tyler is happy with this news, and exclaims "I'm still in the game!"  He must have a crush on Samantha.

The morning after the clandestine sex, the girlfriend complains to Samantha that Winston is not returning her calls.  Just then Tyler brings in flowers that he sent...to Samantha. Uh-oh, her cover is blown.

5. Traffic Light, 2011, a short-lived Fox series, featured three best friends in different stages of the heterosexist trajectory: single, living with a girlfriend, and married. 

In Episode 1.7, "Stealth Bomber," Adam, Ders, and Blake appear as Tobey, Howard, and Tad.  The show is not available for streaming, but I assume they're doing a Mail Order Comedy riff.

More Adam after the break

Braxton Alexander: three heterosexual boyfriends, three serial killers, one saxophone, and five bare butts

Born in 2007, actor and model Braxton Alexander had a busy child star career. Strangely, although of course he had no control over the scripts at age eight or nine, his movies and tv shows seem overwhelmingly heteronormative, if not downright homophobic.

 

Four episodes of Mr. Mercedes (2017) as the young Brady Hartsfield, living through the horrific childhood that would turn him into a homophobic mass murderer with psychic powers.

 

(Left: Harry Treadaway, who plays the adult Brady)

The young Callahan in Tag (2018), about a group of friends who play an elaborate game of tag every year, while not making homophobic jokes and fielding gay panic.  

The young Callahan kisses a girl. So you can have boys and girls sparking at each other from the womb, but heaven forbid depicting a gay kid.

(Left: Jon Hamm, who playes the adult Callahan).

Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square (2020) is intensely heteronormative: the meaning of life is boys and girls gazing at each other forever. Brax plays a singer.

The Black Phone (2021) is about a gay predator who kidnaps young boys (I'm not kidding).  Brax plays a bully, not one of the victims.

In I Want You Back (2022), a dumped boyfriend and girlfriend try to sabotage their exes' new relationships and get them back.  Brax plays a "middle school boyfriend."

Left: Scott Eastwood, who plays one of the targets.

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-4) features two brothers in love with a girl named Belly. Brax plays the young Conrad, falling for Belly at the age of 13.

(Left: Brax)

In Black Bird (2022), not to be confused with Blackbird, Jimmy Keane (Taron Egerton, left) is given the task of befriending a suspected serial killer to get a confession out of him. No gay subtext: the guys both display an incessant interest in ladies. 

Brax plays the teenage Jimmy.

More Braxton after the break

"School Spirits": Ghost girl, her gay bff, and their buds solve the mystery. With bonus pics of el novio desnudo

  

I'm a sucker for teenage ghost stories, as long as they are comedies, so I reviewed the first episode of School Spirits on Netflix:

Maddie (Peyton List) wakes up in the boiler room of her high school.  Her blood is splattered around.  But that's not the worst part: she's dead!  She can't touch or move anything.  She can see and hear the living but they can't see or hear her.  And she can't leave the campus!  

Her self-appointed guide is Charlie (Nick Pugliese, center), a gay kid who died in the school during the 1990s (peanut allergy, not hate crime).  He advises her to not try to remember how she died, since she can't change anything: no communication with the living is possible. But don't ghosts communicate with people all the time?  Maybe in the next episode.  And becoming fixated on the past is dangerous: some band members who died in a bus crash many years ago are obsessively performing the school fight song, over and over.

Charlie introduces Maddie to some other ghosts from various decades, notably Wally (Milo Mannheim, top photo and right), who died on the football field, and wishes that he had managed to shower first;  and the Goth Kirsten, who was murdered by her guidance counselor.  

Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman), a teacher who died in the school, offers regular group therapy, with regular homework ("write your obituary").  This doesn't get boring after 20 years because ghosts don't experience time in the same way that the living do.  He also advises Maddie to resist checking up on her living friends, as they will gradually forget her and move on.

Of course, Maddie doesn't listen.  She tries to recall events leading up to her death: she made plans to with her BFFs, Simon (Kristian Ventura) and Nicole, to see Carrie that night.  

Her boyfriend Xavier (Spencer MacPherson) was skipping class, and texted her to join him for a smooch session in his car.  She talked him into going to the movie.  They met the others after class with the tickets.  And that's it.

Out in the living world, Maddie's body has not been found, so she gets "missing person" posters and "thoughts and prayers" in class.  The BFFs think that this is ridiculous: they should be out looking for her.  Suddenly Xavier's bag flies open: he has Maddie's cell phone!  Why didn't he tell anyone for the last three days?  This makes him the prime suspect in her murder. The sheriff (Ian Tracey, left), who also happens to be his Dad, arrests him.

Beefcake: Charlie's "office" is the shower room in the boy's gym, where he can watch an endless parade of butts and cocks (just butts are shown).  Otherwise none.

Gay Characters: Charlie, and maybe Maddie's living bff, Simon. A future episode shows us Charlie’s  high school boyfriend, Emilio, who is now all grown up, married to another guy, and teaching at the school (played as an adult by Andres Soto).  Yes, that's his dick, not completely covered by the Scream emoji

Heterosexism: Maddie and her boyfriend kiss about 1,000 times. Of course, they won't be able to in future episodes, but Xavier has been seeing another girl on the side, so doubtless Maddie will be seeing some smooching.

The Mystery:  "Who killed Maddie, and why?"  It's obviously not Xavier or one of her bffs, and those are the major living characters introduced to date.  I also hope that we have some subplots involving the other ghosts.

Gemstone Connection: Both Milo Mannheim and Tony Cavalero appeared on The Conners.

My Grade: A-

More Andres after the break.Caution: explicit.

Freshman year at Augustana College: newly out, I ask Jack Kerouac for a date, unaware that.....

Ok, this isn't really Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road.  It's Peter Orlovsky, the lover of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsburg.  

I didn't really have a date with Jack Kerouac, either.  But Jurgen came close.

During my freshman year at Augustana,  I often saw him sitting by himself in the Student Union lounge -- in his twenties, tall, husky, bearded, with wavy brown hair and brown chest hair sneaking up over his lumberjack shirt.  He would smoke a pipe, of all things, drink coffee, and read a book or scribble into a little spiral notebook.  Too old to be a student -- we didn't have any "nontraditional" students at Augie -- but certainly not a professor.  Was he a townie who for some reason liked the ambience of the Student Union at a small Lutheran college?

I had just come out, but I had only told two people: my brother, who was fine with it, and my best friend, who slammed the door in my face and never spoke to me again.  If the college administration found out, I would be expelled.  So I couldn't walk up to him and say "Hi, are you gay?"  I had to use deduction: he's not with a woman, he dresses oddly, must be gay.  

One Tuesday afternoon I got a cup of coffee myself -- even though I hated the stuff -- and sat down in the chair across from him.

"What are you writing?"

He looked up and smiled.  "Just a poem I'm working on.  'Tucumcari Two-Step: Heat in the Year of the Drought.'"

"Cool.  I want to be a writer, too."  Actually, my career goals were up in the air at the moment.  Through high school I planned on becoming a missionary-linguist, translating the Word of God for isolated tribes, but that was impossible now.

Left: Jack Huston, who played Keroauc in Kill Your Darlings

"Who are your favorite authors?" he asked.

"Oh...um...Isaac Asimov, of course. Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton,..."

"Sci fi -- that's for Adam's Bookstore Babies!"  He gestured at the bookstore where my friend Adam sold science fiction and comic books.  "You need a real man's literature.  Hemingway, Kerouac, Henry Miller.  Here -- try Wallace Stevens."

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds

I had no idea what the poem was about, but a muscular guy with a big...um...cigar was far superior to anything we had studied so far in my stupid English class.

Jurgen was a student after all, an English major, 28 years old -- after high school he had "bummed around" Europe for a couple of years, then moved to California, then hitchhiked to Rock Island (where his parents lived) for college.

All gay men moved to California, and in his life history, he didn't mention women. He must be gay!

The next day I had to work, but on Thursday I hung out with Jurgen again  Neither of us came out, or said anything about gay people; it was the Student Union, after all, crowded with students who might overhear us.

But we didn't mention liking girls, either.

More after the break

Kelvin/Keefe Memes: Cooking, testifying, honeymooning, sinking. With Jack from "Will and Grace" and some random nude dudes

I've had nothing but trouble with these memes -- jokes --  featuring Kelvin and Keefe of The Righteous Gemstones and friends.  First the G-rated version got slapped behind a "sensitive content" barrier, and then I accidentally saved the G-rated on the explicit site, and had to reconstruct everything. 

I hope these memes are worth it.

1. I like my coffee hot and black, like my...

Wait, everyone's heard that one. Go back in the bedroom; I'll think of a joke later.

2. BJ and Keefe go to church

BJ: Praise Jesus!  Testify!  I got the Spirit of God in me!

Keefe: When will this be over so Kelvin and I can go home and make out?

3. The Men's Room

Keefe: During my Satanist days, I spent a lot of time in the men's room of that truck stop off Highway17. Want to give it a try?

Kelvin: You always have the best ideas for Date Night.

4. The honeymoon

Kelvin: You want to go sightseeing?  But Keefe, this is only the fifth day of our honeymoon.  The Eiffel Tower can wait.

5. I got your Eiffel Tower right here.

More memes after the break

Agatha All Along: Gay teen and witch trapped in a bad-tv show world. With bonus nekkid guys.

 

Agatha All Along appeared without warning on my Disney Plus page, showing two elderly women and a teenager on a dark wilderness road.  The teenager is Joe Locke, who played a gay character in Heartstopper, and came out in real life twice, at age 12 and 15, so no doubt he plays a gay character here.  I'm not even going to bother with preliminary research.

Scene 1: An elderly woman, maybe Agatha, driving to a crime scene: she's a small town cop suspended for punching a suspect,  but called back for a case only she can work on -- a woman has been found dead in the woods.  Why is it always a woman, never a man?  

Crushed by a heavy object, no id except for one of those old library check-out cards. 

Scene 2: Wait -- her name is Agnes, not Agatha, so who is "all along"?  

She goes to the library, where there's a long line to check out books. Have you been to a library lately?   She cuts -- "Only suckers wait their turn" -- to ask the sarcastic librarian Miss Jones about the check-out card found on the victim.

Miss Jones: "Ooh, is she dead?"

Agnes: "Why do you assume it was a woman?"  Because it's always a woman, nitwit.

Miss Jones: "It's more tit-ilating." Boob joke, har har.

They don't use old-fashioned check-out cards anymore.  The book -- Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning & Debate, was marked stolen three years ago.  But there are lots of other copies in Natural Sciences.  Not in English?

Agnes hits the stacks, and there were indeed a dozen copies -- all burnt up. "There was a fire," a mysterious man whispers.  Odd that Miss Jones didn't know that.

Scene 3: At the station, the Chief is played by David Lengel, who looks like Ross from Friends with a porn stash.  

The body shows traces of "a particular microbial sediment found only in Eastern Europe."  That makes no sense.  The woman was killed across the ocean and transported to their quiet New England town. 

Scene 4: In other news, Agnes has to work with the snarky Federal Agent Vidal, whom she hates.  To be fair, Agnes hates everyone.  They may be ex-lovers: Agnes thinks that she requested the assignment just so they could get back together.

Ex-Lover notes that there are no drag marks on the soil, nothing disturbed: the body just got zapped there, as if by magic! 

Agnes scoffs. "In stories about small-town murders, it's always about the hidden secrets of the townsfolk, so let's investigate those."

Scene 5: Norm the pawn shop guy,  played by Asif Ali,  is examining a cameo locket that Agnes brought in: New England, late 17th century, with a lock of hair inside.  He offers $200. 

She just wanted an expert opinion so she could sell it on ebay, har har.  Agnes is rather a jerk, isn't she?

Scene 6: Late at night, Agnes is fiddling around at the station.  She discovers that the first letters of the book's title spell DARKH.   So?

Later, in her huge "TV middle class" house, Agnes goes into a child's bedroom with a teddy bear on the bed and drawings on the table, and music awards: "Nicholas Scratch, First Place." Dead kid?  But Nick and Scratch are both names for the Devil.

Scene 7: Knock on the door: It's the Ex-Girlfriend, with pizza!  Isn't it, like, the middle of the night?

Agnes has a lead: car crash in the town of Eastview an hour before the body was found. Ex-Girlfriend wants to know if she's ever been to Eastview.  "Sure, I'm a world traveler."  Wait...it dawns on Agnes that she's never actually left town.  How is that possible?  

Next Ex-Girlfriend asks "Do you remember why you hate me?"  "No."  It's like it was written into the script, with no back story.  Something is wrong here.

They're interrupted by a clattering -- an intruder in her bedroom, going through her stuff!  She chases him out onto the roof, down a gutter, and down the deserted streets, until Debra Jo Rupp, Grandma Kitty on That 90s Show, accidentally hits him.

Scene 8: The perp is a teenager, played by Joe Locke.  He's sarcastic and insulting, leading Agnes to kick him -- that's what got you suspended, Girl.  Finally he admits that he broke in to look for the Road. 

Agnes thinks he means the road to the murder site, so he's a suspect!  "What you were doing last night between 1 and 3 am?"  "Asleep in bed." "Loser!"  Wait -- being asleep in the middle of the night makes you a loser? 

She pulls out pictures of the murdered woman to confront him with, but suddenly they turn into pictures of flowers on someone's front lawn!   He starts chanting in Latin....and now her Ex-Girlfriend has vanished!  There never was a murder, so of course she would not have been called in.

Scene 9: Agnes visits the coroner's office  -- no body.  Until one appears, with a check-out card instead of a toe-tag, and the last person who checked the book out was Wanda Maximoff!  Agnes is shocked!

Who the heck is Wanda Maximoff?  Answers and nekkid men after the break