Hacks: Disgraced comedian decides to turn lesbian, gay leather dude spirals, and there are some jokes. With bonus Devon Sawa

 

I've been avoiding the recommendation of Hacks, on MAX, because the icon shows two ladies in bikinis, and who wants to watch a tv show about computer hackers in bikinis?  But yesterday I casually looked through the episode list, and saw what looked like a black guy at a gay leather bar.  

Not many black guys into leather -- in years of going to the Faultline in West Hollywood, I only met one.  So maybe this show is worth checking out after all.

Turns out that the title is a misdirection. Hacks is an obsolete term for writers who churn out incompetent but popular trash,  In this case, the hack is Deb Vance (Jean Smart), a Vegas lounge lizard trying to revise her snarky 80s-style standup for a more sensitive generation.  Her head writer and confidant, Ava, had her own standup career cancelled after an insensitive tweet.  I'm reviewing the gay leather bar episode, 2.4, "The Captain's Wife."

Scene 1: At a dusty farm, Deb is filming an infomercial, selling strange-looking socks. Her bus driver, Weed, keeps turning on the air conditioning. Her photographer, Damien, notes that she forgot the American flag print. "Stupid f*king American flag."  Lots of presumably gay characters here: Weed is played by a very butch Laurie Mecalf, and Damien by Mark Indelicato.

Head writer Ava wants to stay behind during Deb's upcoming gig on a gay cruise, because she's afraid of water, and can't swim.   "You're going. Wear a life jacket."

And forget all the sensitive nonsense: Deb's going to do her old stuff, the classics.  "The gays get me." 

Scene 2: Swishy guys in a club bathroom gossipping and snorting cocaine. Marcus  (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, below) puts on a business suit: it's 7:00 am, and he has a breakfast meeting across town.  I remember staying at a sex club all night.  They put out a breakfast buffet at 6:00 am.  They ask him to stick around for his mental health.  He refuses, but he lets them score some of his addies (Adderall, a stimulant used to treat ADHD).

Scene 3: Boarding the cruise ship, Deb wonders why there are so many ladies in line. Famous comedian Margaret Cho, the last cruise's headliner, is just leaving. She tells Deb that the audience was mediocre, but the gay sex was great.

"Wait -- I thought this was a gay cruise."

"It is.  A lesbian cruise."

Uh-oh.  Gay men love Deb, but lesbians hate her.  She doesn't understand why. Ava suggests "the hundreds of thousands of jokes at their expense that you've told over the years."

Scene 4: At the cruise ship bar, Ava is approached by a grabby, hand-kissing, way over-eager lady horndog. She's not actually freaked out.  I wonder if she is a lesbian, too? Wikipedia lists a girlfriend and a boyfriend. 

Meanwhile, Deb calls her agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), to complain about booking her on a lesbian cruise.   He's busy working on a residency -- a permanent casino gig.  "How about Terrible's Casino?"  "No way -- too far from the Strip."  

There actually was a Terrible's Casino, though I can't imagine why someone would choose that name.  It closed in 2020.

Next Deb chides Ava for having fun instead of writing some lesbian jokes.  "You speak lesbian, right?  Cause you're half?"  I don't know what that means. Maybe a lesbian mother and a straight father? 

Scene 5: Back in Vegas, Marcus, the gay leather bar guy, gets home to find two middle aged ladies on his couch. One is his mother.  "What are you doing here?" he asks angrily. "I told you I needed to get work done today." They came to pet his dog and upbraid him for spending all night at the club. He yells at them for trying to control his life.  

Scene 6: Ava is trying to dump someone's ashes into the ocean, when a lady approaches to flirt and ask her to the "She-ano Bar."   Cut to Ava getting ready, telling Deb about the Olympic athlete on board. Girlfriend going to get her some lady jocks.  She invites Deb to come along as her wing-person.  Nope, but Deb is willing to fix her outfit.

As they are bonding, Ava wants to know: with all her jokes about how terrible sex with men is, has Deb ever considered being with a woman?  "Nope.  I like men.  I wish I was gay, because it would be a hell of a lot easier."  Are you crazy, lady?  Let's start with your Sunday school teacher telling you that God hates you, and work our way forward.

Ava calls her out on her straight entitlement, and Deb agrees that it might not have been easier to like girls -- back when she was a kid in the 1960s. But she got a crush on John Lennon of The Beatles and never looked back.

"But why do you like men?"  I was asked that a lot, back when coming out meant a barrage of stupid questions. You like who you like, idjit. You don't have any control over it.

Ava concedes that "your sexuality is not a choice," but Deb still should try to figure out why she is straight.  "Maybe you aren't really attracted to men, you're attracted to their power." 

Scene 7: Convinced to try it out, Deb goes to the She-ano bar and cruises some lesbians.  The next morning, everyone at the breakfast buffet is friendly, and she has embraced lesbians as a potential audience: "They love women, and I'm a fabulous woman." 

Left: Former teen heartthrob Devon Sawa, whom Deb has sex with in another episode. 

Scene 8: Marcus at the club, dancing his butt off with his swishy friends He's dressed as a BDSM bottom, but it's not a leather bar, it's an old-style gay disco. 

He runs into Wilson -- according to wikipedia, his ex-boyfriend.  The breakup has resulted in his downward spiral.  He wanted to call and say "I love you," but he's blocked all of Wilson's social media profiles and deleted his number.  Wilson is concerned about his drug use, but doesn't want to get back together.

More Deb and a lot of Devon after the break

Obliterated: Do you want a review of "the worst movie of the year," or should I skip directly to the penises?

Netflix has been pushing Obliterated as must-watch tv.  The premise: an elite team of CIA operatives, spies, and ladies in bikinis, must deactivate a nuclear bomb set to destroy Las Vegas.  When they succeed, they have a wild party with naked girls, blow jobs, and drugs (but no one bothered to research the effects of various drugs, so ketamine and Ecstasy are hallucinogens).  Then they discover that it was a fake bomb; the real one is set to go off in a few hours, so they have to find and deactivate it while hallucinating and naked (well, the ladies, anyway).

 I have rarely seen such split reviews:

"A triumphant blend of exhilerating action, sharp writing, and humor"

"The worst movie of the year"

"A nearly unwatchable hodgepodge of nonsense littered with penises and explosives."  Well, the penises sound ok

"A lot of fun to watch.  The girls are gorgeous."  So maybe it's only fun to watch if you're a horny hetero guy?

"Female characters are leered at in incongruous shower scenes; they undertake missions in string bikinis."  Double yuck.

There are two gay characters: Marine Sniper Angela Gomez is a butch lesbian stereotype; and Trunk, a "big black guy" stereotype who beats people up with lines like "Smell my dick, motherfucker!"  Apparently he is outed in one scene, as a joke: "The big black guy is a pansy, har har." 

I know you don't want me to do a scene by scene review.  Let's just skip to the penises.

1. Army explosives technician Haggerty, played by C. Thomas Howell, looks like a sleazy, effete gay stereotype, but he's actually straight.

2. Jeremy, played by Johann Fitch,   His job is not specified.  

More dicks after the break

"With Love" Episode 2.4: A gay bachelor party in Las Vegas. With lots of bonus butts.

 

With Love is a tv-series with an impossible to remember name, about an extended Hispanic family, including a gay son and a trans aunt.  In Season 1, each episode was set during a major holiday.  Season 2 seems to be about the wedding of Jorge and Henry (Mark Indelicato from Ugly Betty, left, Vincent Rodriguez III from My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, right), so I reviewed Episode 2.4: "The Bachelor Party."  Which of the guys is getting one? And, more importantly, will there be male strippers?

Scene 1: Santiago (Rome Flynn, left)) opens the door at 4 am.  Dre (W. Tre Davis) and his girlfriend Annie criticize him for bulging in boxer shorts. Well, he can hardly help having morning wood.  They're going to get married today because Dre has a lump on his testicle, and he needs Annie's insurance to check it out.  But they want to get married in Las Vegas, and they have to drive because Dre is afraid of planes.

Scene 2: Establishing shots of Las Vegas. Jorge and Henry, plus two women and a man (maybe Nick, played by Desmond Chiam), walk in slow motion into their hotel suite.  It has a crystal sculpture of a male torso. 

They rush to claim their bedrooms.  Jorge complains that he likes the credenza in Room A but the view in Room B, so...they move the credenza.  What a diva!

Woman #1 asks Nick to share her room.  He refuses because it would be too awkward, but she shows her boobs and says "No sex," so he agrees.

Scene 3:  Dre, Santiago, and Annie from Scene 1, who are all black, driving through redneck country. They discuss the weird stuff about the girl Santiago was dating. then Annie criticizes for not wanting to get married: "it's not normal."  Geez, lady, why so judgmental?  Granted, there are two weddings in this episode, but still, some people don't experience romantic attraction, and some just like living alone. 

Santiago wants to normalize people being single, but Annie disagrees: "You want a partner, you want kids."

Dre has to pee, so they pull into a scary redneck gas station.  The attendant glares at them; they change their minds and drive away.  Hey, where's the next scene where he posts his Black Lives Matter sign?

Scene 4:  The guys in their suite. Suddenly "the gays arrive!": James and Jauvier (Scott Evans, below Adrian Gonzalez, on his knees).   Why are the friends of a gay couple on tv always flamboyant stereotypes?  They flirt with the one straight guy in the room, give Henry a penis-hat (he doesn't like it because it's too bushy; he likes his pubic hair trimmed), and zoom to the booze. Why are they always drunks?  

Back in his partying pre-couple days, whenever Henry drank tequila, he turned into a loose cannon named Hank.  "He's the reason I'm permanently banned from the Gap." "He's the reason my wrist cracks when I make a limp-wrist gesture." 

Everyone wants to go to the pool, except Hank: with his muscles and bulge, women are always hitting on him. They talk him into it anyway.  Nick the Straight Guy acts as his anti-wing man, blocking all of the drink and sex offers.  Hank suggests that he get with some of the girls himself, but he's mooning over one of the girls they came with (he gestures at them standing together, so I can't tell which).

Scene 5:  The three driving to Vegas stop at a non-redneck place to pee.  Santiago imagines that he sees his ex-girlfriend Lily (who is now in Vegas, being "just friends" with Nick the Straight Guy), walking in slow motion, her hair blowing in the wind. She gives him a flirty glance, then drives away forever.  Maybe she'll show up in Vegas.

Scene 6: Everyone hanging out, the gays wearing pink bunny ears and having no trouble with the limp wrist gestures. They criticize Henry for not drinking. Hey, some people don't drink for religious reasons, some have an alcohol problem, and some just don't like it.  It's his choice, jerks! 

More jerkiness after the break