"Unstable: Rob Lowe and son are grieving, the Pilgrim Twins have small dongs, and there's a gay sycophant

 

 I haven't watched many of Rob Lowe's recent tv shows or movies; I had the impression that he wasn't entirely gay-friendly.  But he stars with his son, John Owen Lowe (below),in the 8-episode Netflix sitcom, Unstable.  I reviewed Episode 4, "Pilgrims and Sex Parties," since sex parties are a gay community thing.  

Premise: "Unstable genius" Ellis (Rob), who owns a biotech company, spirals out of control after the death of his wife (red flag!), so he brings his son Jackson (Johnny) aboard to smooth things out.  Except Jackson is a flautist.  How would that even work?

Scene 1: The biotech company.  A lady in a business suit complains that a photo of Ellis with a hawk on his head has gone viral, creating a meme where he's called the Wizard of Odd.  Ellis doesn't care: he's busy channeling his inner child and monkeys. 

Left: Lowe butt

Meanwhile, the obsessive Smithers to Ellis' Mr. Burns, Malcolm (Aaron Branch), has a meet-cute with the new HR Guy, but is too flustered about HR regulations to flirt.  A gay character in the first scene!  I stand corrected.

Scene 2: Ana, Ellis's main ally on the board of directors, asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Wife.  Not well , he says: after losing the most wonderful person in the world, life is meaningless. After four episodes?  Usually Dead Wives are mentioned once to establish that the guy is heterosexual, then dropped.  Is this a show about grief?  

"So," Ana says, changing the subject, "About the hawk-on-your-head story, that reporter screwed you in the ass with a King Kong dick?"   Sounds like a fun date, but I think it's just a homophobic reference to the hawk-on-the-head story.

Scene 3:  Ana the Board Member runs into Ellis's son Jackson, the flautist-biotech scientist, and asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Mother.  Not well;, he says; the grief comes in waves.   She notes that she's still playing the harp, so why doesn't he stop by with his flute for some "pluck and toots."   That sounds dirty.

Scene 4:  In the lab, scientists Luna and Ruby are looking through microscopes, trying to shame some cells into dividing.  They discuss Luna's never-seen "loser" boyfriend Brian and Ruby's ex-boyfriend - Jackson!  A heterosexual flautist?  How odd!

Sycophant Malcolm comes in all flustered over his meet-cute, so the scientists offer to create a litmus test to determine if HR Guy is actually interested. 

Ellis enters the lab, announcing that he's ready to go back to work: "If we can get some reductive oxidant on the anode..."   Uh-oh, he peers into a microscope and starts crying.  Too soon.  Strange -- usually working helps you deal with the grief.  Maybe the Dead Wife was a scientist.  

Scene 5:  Business-Suit Lady approaches the mansion of JT and Chas (JT Parr, Tom Allen, left), who are trying to destroy Ellis.  Boyfriends? No, brothers: they mention their father.  She orders them to back off, or she will post an embarrassing video. 

 "The sex parties?  We don't care -- everybody in tech goes to sex parties."  

No, actually she has a film of the two pretending to be Pilgrims.  If it gets out, no girls will come to their sex parties, so they'll have to have sex with guys.  "Ugh!  Gross!  Ok, we'll back off."  So these are heterosexual sex parties?  I've never heard of such a thing.

More grief after the break

Rob Lowe: Nude photos of James Dumont's classmate, the Brat Pack prettyboy and bad guy with a dick.

Rob Lowe got his start as an androgynous prettyboy in Brat Pack classics like The Outsiders (1983), The Hotel New  Hampshire  (1984), and St. Elmo's Fire (1985).   

He played a teenage operator who buddy-bonds with the naive Andrew McCarthy in Class (1983).

He did the "Yank skewers the pretentions of stuffy Brits" thing in Oxford Blues (1984).

In Youngblood (1986), he gave us not only a butt shot, but a revealing near-frontal.  

Millions of heterosexual girls and gay boys had his posters on their bedroom walls. Corey Haim's Sam had one in The Lost Boys (1987), leading to widespread speculation that Sam was gay.

.We all figured that Rob was gay.  Why else would he infuse his movies with  so much buddy-bonding amid the 1980s homophobic slurs?  Why else would half the guys in West Hollywood, including my friend Mario, claim to have dated him?  

Why else would he show his butt so often?  

Then something happened that changed Rob Lowe's life and career forever.  During the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Rob and his friend Justin Morrow filmed themselves having sex with two women. It was blurry and grainy, but you could see Rob fully aroused.  (Photos after the break) 

The scandal marked him as  dangerous, deviant, and overtly sexual.  You knew things about him that you didn't about any other celebrity.

Hollywood insiders figured that his career was over, but Rob managed to capitalize on his new aura of danger in Bad Influence (1990),  luring a yuppie (James Spader) onto the Dark Side while showing us his butt again.  And in 

The Dark Backward (1991), a dark comedy about a pair of garbage collectors who want to become standup comics.  

He starred in a BBC adaption of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, about a decadent gay guy whose "perversion" leads to a gruesome and ridiculous death.

By 1994, Rob had bounced back enough to play Nick Andros, one of the "good guy" survivors of a plague that destroys the world, in an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand  (1994).  

He appeared in  comedies like Wayne's World and Austin Powers, murder mysteries (often as the murderer), and tragedies. But he kept his infamous penis under wraps, except for a nude scene in I Melt with You (2011).

Today Rob is a fixture on television, for audiences who never heard of his sex tape, or don't care.  He has starred in The Grinder, Code Black, Wild Bill, 911 Lone Star, and Unstable.  No gay characters, but we still can see an occasional butt.

Ready for the sex tape dicks?  Warning: they are explicit

James Dumont's teen idol career, with Tim Matheson, Rob Lowe, and Andrew McCarthy

If you know James Dumont as a middle aged bear, you may be surprised to find that he began his acting career in 1980, at the age of fifteen.  

He got his first headshot courtesy of his uncle that year, and used it to get an uncredited role as "Kid Dancing in the Street" in The Blues Brothers.

Here's another 1980 shot. Definite Tiger Beat fave rave vibe.  He might have been another Shaun Cassidy (top photo: Shaun for comparison).

In 1982, James got some more head and body shots for his acting/modeling career.  I'm thinking the rural craze, someone who belongs on The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie.  

Instead he got two more uncredited roles: In Listen to Your Heart (1983), a romcom starring Tim Matheson, left, and Kate Jackson.

Tim's butt after the break

Ewan McGregor: Are there penises in all of his movies, or in just most of them?

 

There are lots of famous penises among Hollywood stars.  Among the old guard, Milton Berle's comes to mind, although there aren't any actual photos of it.  Rob Lowe accidentally gave us a glimpse of his, fully aroused.  Christopher Atkins displayed his several times, on screen and off.  But Ewan McGregor wins the prize for displaying his on screen all the time.

I've seen a lot of his movies.  Some I liked, some I hated: 1. Trainspotting (1996)

2. The Pillow Book (1997)
3. Velvet Goldmine (1998) was good.
4. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) and its sequels, where he plays a young, gay Obi-Wan Kenobi.
5. I walked out of Moulin Rouge (2000) when they started singing 20th century songs in 19th century Paris.

6. Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2003): He appears for five seconds.

7. Doctor Sleep

8. Halston (2021)

But one thing you can always count on.  There will be a penis. 

Usually his.

More dicks after the break