"The Kids Are Alright," eight years later. Have any of the family's eight sons muscled up? Are any gay? Any adults with n*de photos?

  

In 2018, I had already switched to streaming, but if you were watching network tv, you may have caught The Kids Are Alright , tucked between The Connors and Black-ish on Tuesday nights.  It was one of those "Looking back on my childhood" tv shows, like The Wonder Years and The Goldbergs.  In this case, Tim Doyle looks back on his Irish-American family in the 1970s with eight children, all sons.

Eight sons!  And Michael Cutlitz as the hot and extremely prolific dad!  If I knew it existed, I would have been there!  

No doubt they expected the show to last for several years, with cute kids changing into teenage hunkoids and adult musclemen before our eyes.

No gay characters, of course, but  Tim Doyle is the producer responsible for allowing Ellen to say "Yep, I'm gay" in 1997 (and threatening to quit when the skittish suits said "no"), and put a gay teenager into the Irish-Catholic Real O'Neals (2016-18), so he included some queer coding for two of the boys.  

Apparently viewers found this too skittish, when they could see actual, out gay characters on Modern Family, Riverdale, Will & Grace, and lots of other shows.  And they didn't want to wait around several years for the boys to grow into hunks.  Viewers dipped to 3 million per episode, compared to 9 million for The Conners and 5 for Black-Ish, so after 22 episodes The Kids tanked.

But let's see if any of the guys have turned on the hunkitude, or come out, during the last eight years.

First son Lawrence (Sam Straley) trained to be a priest, but left to help "save the world." And date girls.  

Sam is best known for The Dropout, Welcome to Flatch, and Waiting for the Light to Change.  I don't see any gay content in his work, but he's not married to a lady, so there's real life gay potential.

Second son Eddie (Caleb Foote) has a girlfriend, and disturbs his parents by being s*xually active. 

Caleb Foote is best known as straight Agent Randolph on NCIS: Origins.  He's got a wife.

Third son Francis (Sawyer Barth) is queer-coded.  He joins a church boxing tournament to impress his dad, but can't take it, so Timmy (below) takes over; and "secretly" designs a set for the musical Timmy is starring in. 

Today Sawyer identifies as queer, and uses they/them pronouns.  They and Dylan Pitanza run the Utopia for Losers, a "punk and grunge" company dedicated to performing overlooked plays: so far,  Mud, Pounding Nails into the Floor, and Reasons to be Pretty.

And Crush, written by Christopher Paul Richards (below), with Dylan and a girl on a disastrous first date. I don't know why the promo shows two guys getting intimate.

Fourth son Joey (Christopher Paul Richards) has a plotline about wanting to see "a woman's complete anatomy," but he is "unnerved" by the idea that a girl might be into him, and he's got a three-episode buddy-bond with Davey  (Thomas Barbusca, not shown).

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

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

When nude 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 heterosexual, 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 impregnate a lot of women. He refuses to do the act because of his girlfriend back home, so they force him to submit semen samples instead.

A hung muscleman.  I could see how...

Wait -- this is Daniel Doheny.   Cute, but he hasn't been to the gym lately, and his cock is 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 sex 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 Sex 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 cock 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 suck snake venom out of it. Like giving a blow job, Can you believe that strange guys do that, har har?

This isn't the cock in question. It belongs to Alexander Calvert, who played Chad. 

More after the break

Five things I like and five that I don't like about "My Brother, the Minotaur." #5 involves butts and Ely d*ck

 

My Brother the Minotaur (2026) is an Irish animated series about a minotaur boy named Lorcan (voiced by Ely Solan, left) being raised by humans.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur is a monster, the offspring of Pasiphaë and a bull, hidden away in the Labyrinth and fed human youth, but here minotaurs are humanoid beings with massive torsos and bull-horns.

Lorcan's questions about his heritage become urgent as he enters his teen years, and begins experiencing rage, sudden horn hardening (symbolic of something or other), and disturbing nightmares.  Meanwhile, strange things are happening in the village.

After watching several episodes, here is my evaluation:

Things I dislike:

1. Lorcan's main ally is his younger brother Charlie.  Making him a brother rather than a friend removes any possibility of gay subtext, even after they rescue each other, say "I'm not leaving without you," and so on.  

2. The boys have two female friends, Dana and Harper.  They don't express any romantic interest in the episodes I watched, but they may in the future.

3. The background players are entirely heteronormative. The boys have male-female parents and grandparents.  In crowd scenes, it's always male-female couples, never same-sex pairs.  Even in the school cafeteria, every table is occupied by boy-girl couples.

4. Leisure pursuits are entirely gender-polarized.  The boys' room is filled with stereotypic boys' toys.  In a later episode, we see a doll that Lorcan played with as a baby.

5. Antagonist Craignelder is an old-fashioned moustache-twirling melodrama villain, who wants Lorcan locked up because he's a bigot, and wants to buy the dad's coffee shop just to be mean, mwah-ha-ha. Wait -- isn't that doing the guy a favor?  He's also a femme stereotype, with ascot and ostantatious ring.

Left: Antagonist Craignelder is played by Michael Sheen.

Five things I liked after the break

"House of Guinness": Heirs to a beer empire in 1868 Ireland. With a gay brother, shirtless hunks, Irish hiphop, and a heck of a lot of dicks

 

I've been having trouble recently, beginning reviews of movies and tv shows and then not liking them, or when I like them, there's no gay representation or nude photos, so I can't review them here. So this time I cheated by checking in advance: there's a gay character in House of Guinness, and lots of the actors have appeared nude.  Here's a dick now.

Episode 1 Prologue: Closeup of the beer-making process, with the ingredients, water, hops, and so on.  A sweaty bare-chested bloke adds the fire.  I like this tv series already.  Then comes family, money, and rebellion.  

Scene 1: St. James Gate, Dublin, 1868:  As As Foreman Rafferty (James Norton, left) walks through the factory, a dude asks if there will be trouble today. Of course, there's always trouble with the Guinness Family.  

Outside, someone throws a beer bottle at the logo, and a gang of Prohibitionists burn an effigy of Benjamin Guinness: "A brewer of sin and debauchery!"  His funeral is today, and they are intent on preventing his procession from making it to the church.

The Temperance Movement was nearly as popular in 19th century Ireland as in the U.S., attributing almost all crime, poverty, disease, and insanity to alcohol consumption.  

Meanwhile, Fenian Leader Patrick (Seamus O'Hara) tells his followers than the Guinness heirs  are weak and divided, so this is a perfect time to free Ireland -- by attacking the funeral procession!  "Grab whatever weapons you can find, but spare the horses -- all horses are Catholic."

England occupied Ireland until 1922, forbidding the use of the Irish language, discriminating against Catholics, and promoting stereotypes that are still common today.  There were lots of revolts, rebellions, and terrorists acts, notably from the Fenian Brotherhood.

In the factory (very impressive set, lots of workers), Foreman Rafferty tells the men to arm themselves.  They have to fight to get the boss's corpse through to the church.

The battle is accompanied by the hiphop song "Get Your Brits Out," by Kneecap. Ordinarily I dislike contemporary music in a historical drama, but not when it's mostly in Irish:

Ach Stalford agus an DUP 

Gach lá, taobh amuigh de mo theach

"Go back to Dublin if you want to rap"

Anois éist, I’m gonna say this once

Yous can all stay just don’t be c*nts

 

Scene 2: Iveagh House, the Guinness family home (built 1736, now the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).  Femme, decadent Edward (Louis Partridge) complains that his button-down conservative brother Arthur (Anthony Boyle) has been in London so long, he's lost his Irish accent.

The third brother, Benjamin (Finn O'Shea, top photo) is asleep on the couch, still hung over from one of his benders.

They discuss the hypocrisy of everyone pretending to grieve, when the Irish hated him, and the English are happy that he is gone: now they can manipulate the children.  

Sister Anne tells them to shush their bickering; it's time for the funeral, and they have to act like a civilized Christian family: "Decadent Edward, change your shirt. Drunken Benjamin, change into some clothes you haven't slept in. Conservative Arthur, just change." 

Left: Louis Partridge's butt.

Scene 3: More of the battle, while inside the church the minister praises Old Man Guinness, who brought the Catholics and Protestants together, and represented Dublin in Parliament.  The children keep eyeing each other and other people in the congregation, with whom they no doubt have a history.

Scene 4:  In a pub, Fenian leader Patrick congratulates his men on their performance in the battle.  He tells his sister about their next step: they're going to break into the cooperage and burn all of the barrels, so the beer can't be shipped out and the brewery will go under!  

Sister has a better idea: she's been talking to the maids and other staff, and three of the four children have secrets that could destroy them. One of them will be taking the seat in Parliament vacated by their father; they can blackmail him into pushing for Irish independence!

What those secrets are (and an *roused penis) after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Erin go Feirc: Nine Kilkenney cocks and Dublin dicks, plus a castle, a dolmen, and the Londonderry wall

I visited Ireland several years ago to research language education.  First stop: Glenstal Abbey School, near Limerick, about 2 hours southwest of Dublin.

The abbey entrance

Not one of the students

Kilkenny fun run

Not one of the runners

Gay couple in Dublin

Northern Ireland after the break

Paul Mescal: Does he appear in anything good? Is ok to post cock pics?

 

Paul Mescal was born in Maynooth, Ireland, about 30 minutes west of Dublin.  He graduated from Trinity College in 2017, and went to work in the theater, getting roles in The Great Gatsby, The Plough and the Stars, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Streetcar Named Desire and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 

 In 2020 he broke into television with a starring role in Normal People, about two Trinity College undergrads in love.

Wait -- why are they "normal people"?  Do they have some marginalized trait, like being autistic? Reading the description, it doesn't sound like it. Marianne is rich and outspoken, Paul an A-list athlete. Sounds like "Love Story." The only conflict I can see is that they both have friends who would oppose the match, so they have to keep it a secret.  I guess "normal" just means being heterosexual, as opposed to gay.

Apparently the two have a lot of sex, with long scenes of them being languid in each other's arms afterwards, so if you can find some way to crop the girl out, you can get a lot of dick pics. 

But wait -- Buzzfeed News tells us that "Paul Mescal just called out a woman who made him "really angry" by telling him she'd seen him naked and saved a nude screenshot." 

The woman approached him in a bar and said: "I didn’t think the show was any good, but I saw your willy and I have a photo!”

His response: “Truly gross. What is a person supposed to reply to something like that?  That's fucking rude!"

I can understand his reaction: you haven't seen the actor naked, you've seen the character he is portraying.  Besides, even if you did see someone's dick without an invitation, like in the urinals or the locker room, why would you brag to them about it?  It would be like saying "I'm stalking you."

But he brings up a question: is seeing an actor's penis on screen substantially different from seeing his face, or his bare chest?  The aesthetic appeal of the actor's face and physique adds to our enjoyment of the movie, in some cases quite a lot.  But does the penis move the scene away from the aesthetic into the erotic?  And is that inappropriate?

I don't think so.  An actor's work can be enjoyed on many levels.  Faces and physiques can be quite erotic, and a penis has aesthetic appeal.  Viewers can enjoy an image in many ways, for what it reveals about the character, for its placement in the narrative, for its symbolic value, because it is beautiful, or because it is hot. Especially with the girl cropped out.

Next question: Does Paul star in anything good? That is, with gay characters, gay subtexts, or an intriguing premise, and minimal red flags like terminal illness.

Normal People is out.  I'm turned off by the implication that being heterosexual is "normal," so being gay is "abnormal."  Besides, it's just a collegiate romance.  We've seen hundreds of them.  

According to the IMDB, Paul next appeared in four episodes of The Deceived, 2020: A university student falls in love with her prof, who may have killed his wife.  Paul's character is in love with her. Looking for gay content, I found a reference to a subplot on a discussion board, but nothing about it appears in reviews. Nope.

The Lost Daughter, 2021: A university professor on holiday in Greece remembers being a "selfish and unnatural" mother who had an affair and abandoned her family.  Yuck.

God's Creatures, 2022. "In a windswept fishing village, a mother is torn between protecting her beloved son and her own sense of right and wrong"  I'm looking for something interesting, innit?

More Paul after the break