"Goosebumps: The Vanishing": Ross from "Friends" as a crazy botanist, some gay teens, a monster, and Sam McCarthy's....

 

Goosebumps: The Vanishing has dropped on Hulu, the second season of the Goosebumps series, based on the popular children's books.  I can't tell if it is episodic or not at this point, so I just clicked on Episode 1, which stars David Schwimmer, Ross from Friends; and teen idol Sam McCarthy.

Scene 1: Brooklyn, 1994. Bill Clinton is in the White House, I'm in West Hollywood, Mariah Carey is topping the charts, and Friends premieres on CBS: 

So no one told you life was gonna be this way

Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A

 Four teens (Sameer, Matty, and two girls) descend into eerie catacombs, until they come to the room where "they conducted medical experiments."  They're doing a "truth or dare" thing where they have to spend the night.

Sameer: "I'm not scared.  I just like to sleep naked, and it could get a little awkward."  

Uh-oh, Matty's younger brother Anthony followed them!  Mom's going to be furious.  Matty forces him to leave.

Suddenly a machine switches on, gas squirts out, and Matty's face dissolves.   A gruesome image.

Scene 2: Brooklyn, 2024.  Teen twins Devin and Cece (Sam McCarthy, Jaden Bartels) exit the subway and complain about having to leave their friends in Manhattan to live with Dad, the grown-up Anthony (a craggy, dissolute-looking David Schwimmer). He picks them up in a car.  Are you sure this is Brooklyn?

At home, Dad Anthony yells at neighbor Trey, also called James Junior, for blocking his driveway. "But your mom always let me park there."

"She didn't have a car."

Inside, the living room is crowded with boxes.  Back story: Dad has moved into this house after his mother went into assisted living with dementia, and he's going through her stuff.

In other news, "I've really been looking forward to your aunt's brain surgery."  WTF?  Who looks forward to that?  He means because then they can come live with him.  

Wait -- the twins are living with their aunt, not their father?  What's wrong with him?

The micromanager passes out his extensive list of rules, but emphasizes that the main rule is: "Stay out of the basement." He gives them a tour: he's a botanist, working on a lot of plant types that will revolutionalize the botany world.  Shouldn't you be working in a lab somewhere?   But stay out!

Scene 3: Dinner at Gwendolyn's restaurant.  Gay couples at the tables behind and in front of them. Back story: Cece is starting debate camp tomorrow. She hates it, but you need "a thing" to get into college. 

Next up, Devin: He claims to be ok, given "everything that happened," but he was suspended for getting into a fight.  Nope, not gay.  

CJ drives up on his motorcycle.  Dad introduces him to the twins. Back story: he's working here, at his parents' restaurant, for the summer.  Dad suggests that maybe Devin would like to work there, too.  Playing matchmaker, buddy?  I don't have any hope that he'll be gay, but there may be a gay-subtext buddy-bond between him and Devin.

He has to make a delivery, but the guys are all meeting at the park later. "Y'all should come."  Maybe specify which park, and what time?

Scene 4:  On the way home, Dad sends the twins inside so he can chat with a crying woman in a car. She notes that the father of Trey/JJ, the neighbor who Dad argued with, stopped by the police station to file a harassment complaint. According to the Google AI, harassment consists of repeaed acts that cause the victim to "fear for their safety,"  Telling someone to not block your driveway certainly doesn't count.

The woman promised to talk to Trey/JJ's Dad, but "be careful.  He's big on conspiracy theories." 

In other news, she managed to pull some strings and retrieve his brother's things from the night he and his friends dissolved.  . Moldy clothes with dissolved Matty all over them, from 30 years ago? 

The woman has been thinking a lot about that night, but Dad doesn't want to hear it.  He cuts her off and heads inside.

Scene 5: The twins come downstairs while Dad is arguing with his ex wife on the telephone. Wait -- they were living with their aunt, but she's having brain surgery, so they moved in with Dad.  Why weren't they living with their mother?

Dad assures them that although they hate each other, they both love the twins.  He made burnt waffles, which they reject.  It's the next morning. What happened to meeting the guys in the park later?

Left: This show is a little beefcake-light, so here's a photo of Sameer, one of the melted teens (played by the 28 year old Arjun Athalye).

More Sameer after the break

"No Good Deed": Four lesbians, a gay realtor, a gay son, Oedipus, some murderers, and Phoebe from "Friends"

Braxton Alexander recommended No Good Deed, a tv series on Netflix, so presumably he's in it. The trailer shows Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Lisa Kudrow (Friends) spying on the couples interested in buying their house, no doubt planning something nefarious.  Plus I thought I saw a lesbian couple, so here goes:

Scene 1: Establishing shots of Los Feliz, the gentrified L.A. neighborhood. near Dodger Stadium. A Spanish Colonial house for sale.  The swishy real estate agent (Matt Rogers)  tells various couples that the homeowner is very invested in selling, while Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow watch on their cell phone.  Uh-oh, they're up to no good.  Are they trying to find the perfect buyer to kill?

There are four stories, not interconnected, so I'll go through each separately:

The Soap Star:A scary unshaven guy with dark glasses signs his name in the register as John Smithe, but he's not a villain, he just plays one on the soap opera Rising Tides.  A shady handyman who cheated on his stepdaughter and was killed off. The first incest reference.  There will be more.

He's played by Luke Wilson, top photo and left.

Later, high-heel shoes enter the house.  I hate that cinematographic cliche.  Then a woman's back, like it will be a big shock when we finally see her face.   Gasp!  It's someone I never saw before!  What a shock!

Swishy Real Estate Agent Greg criticizes her for being a Lookie Louise, looking at houses but never buying one, but her real name is Margo.  

Ray and Lisa, watching from their secret lair, criticize her purse: "She looks like an AI-generated bitch."  Then they discuss the hardness of her nipples.  They definitely don't want to sell to her, unless she pays cash: "Then I will bend over and take the cash up my *ss," Ray says.  Anal sex joke.  There will be others.

Cut to the Soap Star talking to his manager on the phone. Back story: he's so deeply in love with his wife that he bought her an expensive house, some cars, and a boat, and now he's going bankrupt. But he can't help it: she wanted them, so what else can he do?  "Maybe buy a house you can afford?"  So that's why he was looking at the Spanish Colonial.

In bed, John's overbearing, painfully elitist, super-snob wife turns out to be high-heel Margo!  They discuss why Ray and Lisa are selling their house. 

Oedipus: A m-f couple, the man O.T. Fagbenle, the woman an architect and highly pregnant, tour the kitchen.  They discuss how much they love each other and smooch a few dozen times until Mom tells them to knock it off.  Way to go, Mom!  

She also complains that they didn't have a wedding, when her son has been dreaming of it since he was young.  Really?  I thought just girls planned their weddings.  When I was young, I was imagining my future career as an astronaut or Indiana Jones-style archaeologist.

Cut to Oedipus and Mom staking out the house.  Mom complains that they used to spend every moment of the day together, but now she sees him barely twice a year.  He explains: she used to be his whole world, his reason for living, but then he fell in love with someone else.  Be thankful for twice a year, Mom.  Some guys don't want to see their ex-lovers at all.

What's going to happen when the baby comes, and they both need to work?  They'll need someone to stay home with the baby, hint hint.  Dude, don't hire your mother/ex lover as your nanny!  She'll try to murder your wife to get you back.

In their next scene, Oedipus tells his wife that they can't afford the house on his novel royalties and her architecture, so why not have Mom chip in?  She is loaded.  Of course, she'll want to live with them.   Wife hates the idea.  Her husband's ex-lover, right there in the house with them? 

The First Lesbian Couple: Leslie, forceful and practical, and Sarah, quiet and mystical, examine the upstairs.  Sarah thinks it's "more of a family house," and it has a "dark vibe." 

They find a locked door.  It leads to the room where Ray and Lisa are hiding out and spying on everyone.  So, they're going to murder whoever buys the house?

On the way out, Practical Leslie is ready to make an offer, but Mystical Sarah doesn't want to spend all their money.  Besides, the neighborhood has a dark vibe.

Back story: They've been trying to get pregnant with IVF, but it doesn't work.  

That night, Practical Leslie drives through the neighborhood to prove that it is safe.  She sneaks into the garden of the house, planning to climb to the secret room's window and look inside, but instead she sets off the security alarm and the sprinklers.  Hiding in the bushes, she sees Homeowner Ray hide a gun in the piano. 

Meanwhile, at home, Mystical Sarah injects herself with something in secret.  She's either dying or a drug addict.

 The Second Lesbian Couple:  In bed, they discuss the house:  They could fix it up, put in a pool, and make a fortune off it.  They hatch an evil scheme to get it for under market value, and smoochify. 

Ray and Lisa:   While spying on the prospective buyers, they discuss how sad they are to be selling the house where Lisa grew up.  Wait -- I thought they were going to do something sinister to the buyer.  They just want a buyer who will "love the house as much as we do"?  How is that the premise for a tv series?  Somebody better get stabbed to death.

More back story: they're struggling financially; they took out a second mortgage, and now they're in arrears.  Lisa can't work, because she's a concert pianist with some sort of disease that makes her hands tremble.  

Lisa decides to go down and meet some of the prospective buyers, but Ray zooms in on an Old Guy, is horrified, and tells her "Don't go out there!"  Why, is Ted Bundy downstairs?

Later, the open house over, Lisa returns some photos to the mantle, showing her and Ray getting married and having a son and a daughter.  She sees them running through the house, playing "tag."  This memory makes her cry.  I'll bet the son and daughter died.

More secrets after the break