"A Merry Little Ex-Mas": Pierson Fode in his underwear, two gay dads, Kurt Russell's grandson, and Harry Potter's butt

It's time for the annual flood of Christmas romcoms.  They all have about the same plot: A woman with an absurdly high-profile career in the Big City is dragged kicking and screaming to a small town, where she helps save or win something and falls in love with an absurdly hot local.  Is there a run of women moving to small towns every January?

They are usually highly heteronormative, with no gay characters or maybe an assistant back in the Big City, who keeps calling to say "Get back here!  Your big presentation is coming up, and I  can't keep watering your plants!"  But I was recommended A Merry Little Ex-Mas (2025) on Netflix because  hunk du jour Pierson Fode puts out a fire in his underwear.  

So his underwear was on fire?  When Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, was asked "Do you smoke after sex?" she responded "I don't know.  I've never checked."

I reviewed Pierson's previous movie, The Wrong Paris, but deleted the post due to low pageviews.

Lengthy Prologue: An animated Kate (former Clueless girl Alicia Silverstone) tells us that 20 years ago, she graduated from college and got a job at an amazing architectural firm in the Big City (hey, that was my dream, too, before I was sidelined by the Evangelical subculture, which said that college was only for future ministers).  

She was going to change the world!  

But then Kate met med student Everett (Oliver Hudson, top photo and below, best known for Scream Queens and for being Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's kid).   She gave up her career and followed him to the small town of Winterlight, Vermont, to become a homemaker. 

Wait --the woman usually gives up the Big City for a small town at the end of the Christmas romcom, not at the beginning. 

20 years later, the kids have grown up, and Kate and Everett have nothing to say to each other, so they have decided on an amicable divorce, one where they lead separate lives but stay friends.  

Scene 1: Kate and Everett in a coffee shop called Bread Zeppelin, har har, talking to the standard Black Friend -- the one who tells the romcom heroine, "Girl, forget your absurdly high profile job and find yourself a man!" 

 In this case she happens to be the mayor of Wintergreen (or whatever the name is), and she's advising Kate to keep her man: "Don't divorce!  You're making a big mistake!" 

The aging hippie couple who own the coffee shop agree: "True love is forever!  No one in a small town has ever gotten a divorce!"

"No problem, I'm moving away anyhow. I'm taking an absurdly high-profile job in the Big City."

"But small towns bring infinite happiness.  You'll be lost and miserable in the Big City."

Scene 2: Next Kate goes to her job -- selling something in a gigantic mansion-turned-store called the Mothership. Geez, that thing is bigger than Harrad's 

Her assistant April (former Sabrina the Teenage Witch Melissa Joan Hart) begs her to reconsider -- infinite happiness as a small town housewife, dreary depression in the Big City, and so on, and then asks about the mechanics of spending Christmas with an ex-husband.

"We're going to do all of the standard traditions as a family, as usual.  We won't tell anyone that we're separated until after Christmas, not even the kids."   

Suddenly Everett's Dads, an elderly mixed-race gay couple, appear with a sweet potato pie.

"Sorry, I already made one," Kate snarks.

They are played by Derek McGrath( Jerry O'Connell's mentor on My Secret Identity), and Geoffrey Owens (Super-hunk Elvin on The Cosby Show).  Both are apparently straight in real life.  It's nice to have some elderly gay guys on screen for a change, but this means there will be no other gay characters -- the rule is, only one, or one couple.  

Next to arrive is Kate's son Gabe, a high school senior currently writing college application essays.  He is played by Wilder Brooks Hudson, Oliver Hudson's kid in his screen debut (nepotism is real).

Wilder is 18 years old, often shirtless on his Instagram, presumably gay because he's shirtless a lot with other guys, in spite of the fawning articles about Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's grandson "having a girlfriend!!!!" And contrary to what you may expect, he is not named after famous directors Billy Wilder and James Brooks.  

Are we meeting an awful lot of people really fast?

Wait -- all of Kate's Christmas guests are arriving, and bringing food. I think the Mothership is her house, not a palace turned into a store. Why did they talk about selling things out of it?

Pierson Fode putting out a fire in his underwear after the break.

Harry Potter's privates: Daniel Radcliffe's top 12 nude, beefcake, and gay-subtext performances.

 

You know that the last of the Harry Potter movies was released nearly 15 years ago.

You haven't returned to them because the world is so complex and self-referential, and because there are a lot of problems that you didn't notice as a kid.  Antisemitic stereotype Goblins?  Slaves who enjoy their slavery?  A headmaster who is gay, but we can never mention it on screen?  

But you still think of Daniel Radcliffe as David Copperfield...um, I mean that wide-eyed boy who emerged from Under the Staircase in 2001 and enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

 

As of this writing, Daniel Radcliffe is 36 years old, with 49 acting credits.  Most move him far away from Hogwarts, to worlds where gay people -- and male nudity -- exist.  Here are his top 10 nude, beefcake, and gay-subtext performances:

1. Merrily We Roll Along (2025), which is not about the theme song to the Looney Tunes.  It's about two heterosexual chums in love with the same girl. I haven't seen it.

2. Now You See Me, Now You Don't (2025) brings the Horsemen out of retirement for a diamond heist (are we expected to know who the Horsemen are?). Daniel plays the villain.  I haven't seen it, but think the guy with him is hired muscle, not his boyfriend.

3. The Lost City (2022) sounds like a remake of Romancing the Stone, with romance novelist Loretta kidnapped in the jungle.  It's up to her cover model/Love Interest (Channing Tatum) to rescue her.  We see his butt, but only so Loretta can pick leeches off it.  Daniel plays the (presumably straight) villain.

4. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) is a  biopic of the parody song performer.  Entirely heteronormative -- dude even dates Madonna, which didn't happen in real life.  I liked the seduction scene:

Al: "Welcome to my house.  Would you like a tour?"

Madonna: "There's only one room in this house that I'm interested in."

Al: "Oh, there's a bathroom down the hall."

5. The Jungle (2017): in 1981, the Israeli backpacker Yossi Ghinsberg and his buddies set out to search for a lost city in the Bolivian jungle.  But the jungle has other ideas.

I haven't seen it, but keyword searches don't reveal any gay subtexts.

6. Guns Akimbo (2019) was too heteronormative: a mild-mannered video game geek unwittingly signs up for a game where you fight to the death in real time. His opponent/Love Interest is a lady.  Come on, dude, you've only played one "openly gay" character.  Get with the allyship.

But we see Daniel's prosthetic cock missing the toilet.

More after the break

Fin Burke: A little shop of horrors, a certain school of magic, and a grave in the clouds. With his boyfriend, some artistic dick pics, and Cole Sprouse

 

I spend over an hour looking for beefcake photos of cast members of Welcome to Derry, and all I found was a potential Chad Root and two of Fin Burke, in his underwear and hugging his boyfriend. He's definitely getting a profile.

Fin, aka Finley, was born in Toronto around 2006.  His mum Dawn worked in the script and continuity department for 125 episodes of Murdoch Mysteries (2008-25), about a 19th century detective (Yannick Bisson).  She has also worked on Goosebumps, American Psycho, Wind at My Back, The Listener, and Children Ruin Everything.

Fin attended Greenwood College High School in Toronto, where he took classes in acting and musical theater and starred in a lot of plays:

Troy Bolton in High School Musical

Wayne Hopkins in Puffs: an orphan boy who is invited to attend a certain school of magic (not that one).

Seymor in Little Shop of Horrors. Who is he dancing with?

Tyler in Public Enemy, about a family dinner "with a surreal twist."  If I'm reading the French correctly, playwright Olivier Choinière is queer, so I imagine there is some gay content.  

He also starred (as a voice on the telephone) in the 2023 short Clara is Awake: A teenage girl gets texts from someone who claims to have met her last summer; "I really miss you.  I know you better than you think."  Ulp.

She texts back: "Leave me alone. I don't know you, and you're being weird."  He doesn't leave her alone.  

He graduated in 2024, and enrolled in the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal as an acting major.

Two on-screen acting credits since:

The first episode of Welcome to Derry (2025): the snarly, critical older brother of "bury your gays" Teddy.

The short Grave in the Clouds (2025): a Jewish man (Steven Hobé) discovers that his teenage son (Fin) has written an essay denying the Holocaust, and introduces him to a survivor. 

Here Fin and his buddy meet former Disney Channel teen Cole Sprouse.  I cropped out the girls; most of Fin's Instagram photos have him hugging a girl.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Jake Thomas: Lizzie McGuire's bratty brother plays Harry Potter, competes with Cory, kisses Finn.. With Jake's junk and Cory's cock.

Another day, another former teencom star all grown up. Today we're profiling Jake Thomas, who played Matt McGuire, the scamming, pranking little brother of the titular character on the Disney teencom  Lizzie McGuire (2001-2004, plus a 2003 movie).  

Matt is shown here with his best friend Lanny (Christian Copelin, who has retired from acting and now works as a realtor).  

I never actually watched, but the episode guide has him buddy-bonding with several other guys, including Oscar (Sebastian Jude) and Ethan (Clayton Trey Schneider), plus a "girly" interest in cheerleading that causes his father concern.  He could be queer coded. 

Afterwards  Lizzy, Jake moved into drama with a painful episode of Without a Trace (2004): High schooler Eric Miller (Jake) vanishes during a bathroom break.  The agents first assume that it's a kidnapping, but soon discover that he was lured into a humiliation trap.  He's heterosexual, but queer viewers who were bullied in high school still found it a powerfully moving experience.

Then Jake returned to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee to finish high school.   But he still had time for acting projects, like the movie Monster Night (2006), where he fights monsters and gets a girlfriend on Halloween; and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2003-07), where he plays the Harry Potter parody Nigel Planter.

Gay representation: Dean Toadblatt, headmaster of Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, marries his boyfriend in a 2007 episode.  Main characters Nergal and Irwin start dating in the series finale.  No parent complained.

After graeduating from Farragut High School in 2007, Jake returned to Los Angeles to play the snobbish Stickler in Cory in the House (2007-2008). He and Cory (Kyle Massey), son of the White House chef, compete over It-Girl Meena, daughter of the Bahavian Ambassador.  Stickler's dad is the head of the CIA, so he has access to a lot of super-spy equipment to make his wooing easier; but Meena still prefers Corey. 

Although Stickler only appears in 11 of 33 episodes, he was a fan favorite. On April 1,  2022, Jake announced a Cory spin-off, Stickler and Newt in the House, pairing Stickler with newly-elected President Newt (Jason Dolley, left).  It was an April Fool's Day prank, but many fans got excited, thinking that it was real.

Since it's imaginary, we can also imagine that Stickler and Newt are boyfriends.  Maybe the grown-up Cory drops by to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

More Jake after the break