Bronson Pinchot: A gay icon of my childhood turns out to be straight. Then it gets worse. But at least we see his dick.

Bronson Pinchot broke into film as Tom Cruise's buddy in Risky Business (1983)..  After several years of playing swishy gay-vague characters, such as the gay-depressed secretary Dennis on Sara and the sardonic hotelier  Lloyd in After Hours, he was cast in the gay-vague buddy sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986-1993).  

He played Balki Bartokomous, an exuberant free-spirit from the faux-Greek country of Mypos, who descends upon his stick-in-the mud distant cousin Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) in Chicago.  You can anticipate the the standard "let's do something wacky"/"but I have a dentist appointment" plotlines.

It's supposed to be a brief visit, but the two end up falling in love, their affection explained as fraternal love, and Balki stays on.

I watched during the first season when Perfect Strangers led into Head of the Class and Night Court on Wednesday nights.  A surprising number of plotlines could be read as negotiating a same sex romance.

Larry: "Balki is cute and all, but how can I build a future with someone who doesn't even know how to fill out an IRS Form 1088-B?" 

Balki: "Larry is good in bed, but he's so shy and reserved. How can I draw him out of his shell?" 

Apparently the network had a problem: the guys were too obviously a gay couple.  So during the second season plotlines increasingly involved dating girls, culminating in steady girlfriends Jennifer and Mary Anne (Melanie Wilson, Rebeca Arthur).

Obviously a screen.  Could they be sitting farther apart on that couch?

More after the break.  A lot more.

Workaholics Episode 7.3: Blake sucks a...Adam sucks...well, there's lots of gay sex jokes, and everybody loses their pants

 

I haven't reviewed an episode of Workaholics for awhile, and Episode 7.3, "Monstalibooyah," is notable for its nonstop beefcake and huge number of queer codes.

Scene 1: The guys are spending the day at their company's time share condo, only 11 blocks from the beach!  They plan a crazy party, but Adam cautions, no naked Twister: "Sex Twister makes my dick blister."  He offers to show them, but then Ders wants to show them a scar on his dick, too.  They start working to get semis, then realize what they are doing and change their minds. Is it just me, or is it getting homoerotic in here?

Scene 2: They explore the condo. Ders: "A Fiat!" Adam: "A jacuzzi!" Blake: "Ketchup!"

They reveal their goals for the day. Adam: Get filmed doing something stupid, so he can get on the reality show Kookslams.  Ders' goal: get a hickey so everybody at work will think he got laid. Blake: smoke weed out of a "cock shell."  He means conch shell, of course.  And they all want to watch the sunset together.  Awww...

Scene 3:  They drive the Fiat to the beach, wearing only jeans, Adam's muscles pouring out, and play a homoerotic game of volleyball, paralleling the iconic scene in Top Gun that had a generation of gay kids figuring it out.  Wait -- their opponents are little girls.

Suddenly they are distracted by three bikini babes walking toward them in slow motion. Ders calls dibs on one who looks like she gives good "hick jobs."  Or you could have sex with her.

They ask the girls' plans for the evening: try to score some Molly and then hang out at the beach club. Why not come back to their place for a crazy party instead?  Just as the girls are considering it, Carson and his sidekick (Steve Talley,  Temple Baker, left) show up to warn them about hooking up with strangers.  They call the guys "chicken donkers," which seems to be a made-up slur.

Ders suggests a game of volleyball: the winner gets the girls.  But Carson and his sidekick are acting more like overprotective brothers than boyfriends. 

Besides, that's sexist: "They're not property!"  Carson throws the guys' volleyball into the ocean. It belongs to the condo; they'll be charged hundreds of dollars!  They rush in to retrieve it, and soon discover why you don't go swimming in jeans.  They have to ditch the jeans, or drown. 

They return to dry land naked, covering their dicks with their hands. Blake finds a "cock shell" to shove his junk into.  Passersby laugh  at their size, but they explain that small dicks are regular-sized now, shrinking due to energy drinks.  

Scene 3: They steal clothes that someone left on the beach: Ders gets a "Paddy's Irish Pub" t-shirt from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,  Blake a lady's dress, and Adam a dad outfit.  

Sunset is in two hours, and they haven't met any of their goals yet!   Maybe they can get Ders his hickey by bringing the girls some Molly.  Blake and Adam cause a distraction while Ders steals the stash of a drum circle.  

But the drum circle catches on, and chases them!  They hide with a bridal party, putting on their little femme hats as a disguise: "You guys are so pretty!" Adam exclaims. Yeah, they're hot.

Scene 4: The girls said that they were going to hang at the Beach Club, so the guys sneak in, disguise themselves as staff, and shove shrimp down their pants, presuming that in fancy clubs, "shrimpermen" distribute shrimp one at a time. They approach the girls, announce that they have scored some Molly, and invite them back to the condo to suck on Ders' neck.  But Carson and his sidekick appear and order them to leave the girls alone.  Then the Drum Circle dudes, wanting to clobber the guys for stealing their Molly!   

Steve Talley bonus after the break

"Top Gun: Maverick": Is beefcake enough?

 

Remember the shirtless volleyball scene in Top Gun (1986)?  Who doesn't?  In an era when you rarely saw men's bodies on screen, except maybe a glimpse of chest while they were schtumping ladies, we got closeups of perfectly chiseled men, with no women anywhere around.  The Daily Beast says: "If you were a certain kind of teenage boy in 1986, the beach volleyball scene spoke directly to you.  And what it said was 'You're gay now.  Good luck.'" 

Of course, the guys themselves are written as straight; the main plot is a hetero-romance; Tom Cruise is aggressively homophobic.  The queer code was all in the beefcake.  Decider says that it "encompasses the sexual repression of the decade."

In 2022, a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, featured some of the original cast and actors playing their children.  The guys are still written as straight, with a hetero-romance as the main plot, and Tom Cruise is still aggressively homophobic.  Nevertheless, The Daily Beast calls it the "gayest movie of the year," due to a shirtless football scene.  40 years have passed, and we still get nothing but beefcake?

Ok, then, let's look at the beefcake.

1. Tom Cruise as "Maverick," the focus character in the original, now a flight instructor teaching other Top Guns.

2. Miles Teller, left , as "Rooster," son of his best friend in the original.

Miles sock dick

3, Jon Hamm as "Cyclone," the commander.

4. Glen Powell, left, as "Hangman," a pilot

5. Ed Harris as "Hammer," Maverick's superior officer. 

6. Val Kilmer, left, as "Iceman," Maverick's former rival

More butts and bulges after the break

Tom Cruise: From "Risky Business" to "The Mummy," with nudity and homophobia

As early as Risky Business (1983), we see Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear and masturbating under the covers.

What you are seeing is Tom's body, arms, and the front of his penis, in All the Right Moves.

Top Gun  gave us Tom's buns in very tight underwear.

Magnolia gave us an underwear bulge

And Jerry Maguire his butt

More after the break