Complete Savages: In 2004, a sitcom about a dad and his five macho sons fails dramatically. With Ryan Pinkston, Jake's junk, and two nude Carradines

In September 2004, ABC added Complete Savages, about a single dad raising five "savage" sons, to its Friday night TGIF schedule, expecting a hit.  Star Keith Carradine belonged to a famous showbiz dynasty (see bottom photo), Erik von Detten was a well-known teen idol, and there were many famous guest stars, including Betty White, Shelley Long, and even President George W. Bush.  Yet the ratings were awful, and it was yanked after 15 episodes, with the remaining four burned off during the summer.

Maybe Savages  didn't do well because its lead-in was the third season of Eight Simple Rules, a nuclear family sitcom left in a precarious position after the death of John Ritter, who played the Dad.  Episode 3.1 got some buzz when son Rory (Martin Spanjers) showered with guest star Sam Horrigan, but after that viewers abandoned Rules for Joan of Arcadia on CBS, and it  ended up with a dismal rank of #90

Or maybe it was because of its similarity to Quintuplets, over on Fox: Andy Richter starred as the father of five kids, including dreamy short guy Ryan Pinkston (left) and Jake McDorman (right, nude photo after the break).

Maybe it was because Savages was produced and directed by Mel Gibson, whose homophobic, racist, and anti-semitic mania was just starting to limit his box office appeal.  

Left: Mel Gibson in 1985, when he was presenting as a leatherman and the source of gay rumors.

In 2004, I was at the age where you sometimes wanted to stay home on Friday nights, but felt guilty about it, so I may have dropped in an episode or two while "not feeling well" or "having a lot of work to do."  I think that Savages failed due to its astonishingly retro premise, an assertion that hegemonic masculinity is a biological imperative, so "all" boys are naturally violent, aggressive and posturing, into sports, cars, mechanical stuff, and especially girls.  

The savages cannily personified each of the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity.

Dad Nick (Keith Carradine, left): Big Wheel, be powerful, in charge, a leader.  He worked a firefighter, along with his younger brother Jimmy (Vincent Ventrescu, top photo).

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Blake McIver: The "musical" kid from "Full House" grows up, sings, snoots, and shows us what Superman is packing

Full House (1987-95) was a TGIF sitcom set in an annoyingly gay-free San Francisco.  The premise: sportscaster Danny (Bob Saget) loses his wife (don't worry, it's a 1980s death, with no grief).  He can't take care of his three daughters on his own, so his friends Joey and Jesse (Dave Coulier, John Stamos) move in to help. 

I didn't watch -- in West Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s, who was home on a Friday night?  But I recognize the iconic Full House house, 1709 Broderick Street, about two miles from the Castro, and I know that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson, who played Danny's infant daughter Michelle, became pop culture icons, starring in a string of movies before starting their own fashion company.  

If you watched, you may have noticed Blake McIver Ewing, who played Derek, Michelle's "musical" friend and fellow thespian, during Seasons 6-8.  From the clips I watched while researching this profile, I gather that he is quite femme.  A contemporary blogger references "the blinding supernova of Derek's undeniable gayness," but on the show itself no one ever suspects.  Michelle's friend Lisa even asks him to the Big Valentine's Day Dance. 

The grown-up Blake's primary interest is music -- his IMDB biography effuses over its "wonderful power to be cohesive, moving, influential, emotive, subdued, deferential, caustic, achingly beautiful, full of character, simplistic, complex and/or virtually any other adjective one can think of."  Like overwritten?   He has 44 music credits and 15 composing credits on the IMDB, and nine songs available on Apple Music, including the gay anthems "It Gets Better" and "This is Who We Are."

He was recently cast in The Boy from Oz, a musical about the life of bisexual singer/songwriter Peter Allen.

But Blake also has 31 acting credits, beginning with the six-year old Ned, played as a grownup by Gabriel Olds, in Calendar Girl (1993) -- which everybody in West Hollywood went to because of the opportunity to gawk at the backsides of Gabriel and Jason Priestley, but not Jerry O'Connell, darn it.

Other than Derek, Blake is best known for playing Waldo Aloysius Johnston II in the Little Rascals movie (1994).  He sabotages the Big Go-Kart Race and steals the girlfriend of preteen Lothario Alfalfa (future homophobe Bug Hall).  Don't worry, she dumps him and returns to Alfalfa after discovering that he is a jerk.

What Superman is packing after the break