Revival: The dead return in small-town Wisconsin, with zombies, a gay deputy, a lot of hunks, and four d*cks

 

Netflix just dropped a tv series called Revival, with an icon of a woman "under conviction," heading to the altar?  Sounds cool.

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, hearing the same preacher screaming about the same topics (the Second Coming, The Book of Jor-shua, Homa-Sekshuls) three times a week for month after month got a little tedious.  So twice a year we invited an evangelist in for a week-long "revival" to get us revved up again.

Scene 1: Christmastime at the crematorium of Wausau, Wisconsin.  Randy the Creepy Mortician (Graeme Barrett) wheels a cremation box past a dead girl while a female reporter sets up.   He explains the procedure, but wonders if anyone really cares about a story on cremation.  

"It's a piece on unusual jobs, so..."

Suddenly warning lights flash, and inside the dead guy starts yelling "Let me out!"   As the mortician tries to override the system, the door bursts open, and the dead guy jumps out, covered in flames. He runs around screaming.  The corpses in the other chambers are screaming and yelling to be let out, and someone in a body bag sits up. 

Wait -- this isn't about church revivals, it's about the dead coming back to life!  

Scene 2:  Sheriff Wayne (David James Elliot) is arguing with his grown daughter, Dana: "This ain't my fault!  You've been running ever since you fumbled the Black Deer case!"  

"I'm doing what's best for me and Cooper!  After all we've been through..."  

The Sheriff gets a phone call, but can't deal with it, because he's trying to guilt his daughter into not moving away.

But the phone starts ringing "off the hook." "You'll have to come back to work --- it's an emergency.  Go see Randy the Creepy Mortician." 

Left: David's dick.  He's busy during the clip, so it was hard to get a clear shot.

Scene 3: Dana drives through the rainy December night, listening to 10-33 (emergency) calls.  Suddenly she screeches to a stop, staring in horror.  A bunch of people in suits are walking through the cemetery toward her, asking what's going on.  A n*ked man rushes by (he was buried without clothes).    A little girl wants to know where her mommy is.

Scene 4: TV report: It's been about a month since Revival Day, December 18th, and Mayor Ken (Conrad Coates) is finally lifting the lockdown order, but the town is still under quarantine while the CDC investigates the 47 people who revived.  All of them died during the two week period before Revival Day.  I looked it up.  In a town the size of Wausau, Wisconsin, about ten people will die during any two-week period.  This is way too many.

Cut to the Mayor interviewing one of the Revivers.  He felt pain in his arm, collapsed, and then he was in the funeral home, as if no time passed.  

Cut to Dana taking a gross milky bath.  Her friend comes in and complains that: she was supposed to visit her brother at Northwestern, not get quarantined with zombies; a girl she hates was revived; Dana never cleans up; and the lockdown is over, so get out!

Time to send her son Cooper to school.  The mean, aggressive, barbaric boys make fun of the girl who revived, but Cooper thinks she's nice. (Heterosexual identity established at age 11).

Hudson Wurster (Cooper) has a femme affect, but he is surrounded by girls in most of his Instagram photos, so I'm going to identify him as straight.

Scene 5: Nellie's Bar.  Dana stumbles out, smooching with a guy (I can't find him in the cast list). They jump into her cop car and fumble around, trying to do it through heavy coats.  Then the Sheriff calls: she has to go investigate a dead horse.

"So, can I call you?" The hookup asks.  "Sure."  But she doesn't give her number.

Cut to the dead horse, on the property of a rich jerk who writes books about how to live to 100 (cut out red meat, and walk a lot).  There's also a dead coyote on his property, and some small objects that Dana finds disturbing.  I can't tell what they are.

Scene 6: Dana arrives at the sheriff's office, which is swamped by people wanted to know if their loved ones were revived. We meet several quirky small-town deputies, including McCray (Nathan Dales), a condescending jerk with bad breath; and her ally, Gunderson (Mark Little), "quirky, kind-hearted, the lead bowler of the Pinsconsin Pride."  

Dana wants the list of the Revived, but the Sheriff won't let anyone else see it.  In other news, she's been assigned a partner, and Gunderson thinks that he's "a cutie patootie."  Gay identity established instantly.

Left: Mark Little seems to be straight in real life, but he is inclusive in his comedy routine.  Among the phrases he suggests for "the nonchalant man" to say during his orgasm: "Whoa, buddy, that was awesome."

In his office, the Sheriff is arguing with the Mayor about bringing in a guy from the CDC to help investigate the Revived. Shouldn't they have done that weeks ago?  

 More after the break

Manny and Gavin Scharf: Gay-coded Wisconsin brothers, a wrestler and a bodybuilder, aren't into girls, until.... With some d*ck pics

 

Several years ago, I became a friend of Gavin on Facebook and some other social media sites.  He was a college wrestler from Wisconsin, about 200 miles away from my college town.

I don't give the real last name of non-celebrities, so I'll call him Scharf, "Sharp," German slang for "Hunky."  For obvious reasons.

He never mentioned girls, but he mentioned other boys quite often.  And he posted n*de photos.  I figured that he was gay, but not quite ready to come out yet.

His younger brother Manny was quiet, artistic -- also gay-coded.  

Apparently Manny was feeling left out, with two wrestler brothers and a sister who was a gymnast. At age 14 he joined the wrestling team, then began bodybuilding combined with intermittent fasting.  Strength training is fine for teenagers, but they are generally discouraged from bodybuilding until their bone structure is fully developed, and their body fat should not drop below 6-10%.  

 Manny shredded down to 3%, then down to an unhealthy and unattractive 1%.  Soon he was competing in venues like the Brew City Classic in Waukesha, and was the the subject of adulating video and articles "Insane 16 year old bodybuilder!"; "The Wonderkid Bodybuilder"! 

More after the break

"That 90s Show" Episode 2.4: We meet Ozzie's boyfriend, sort of. Plus nude photos of 90s teen idol Brian Austin Green

16 years after we said goodbye to the kids smoking pot in the Forman basement on That 70s Show, their own kids have returned in That 90s Show.  The premise: Eric and Donna's daughter Leia spends the summer with her grandparents, and has humorous misadventures with Michael and Jackie's son (Mace Coronel) and some other teens.  Except now it's a more diverse crew: Ozzie, played by Reyn Doi, is Asian and gay.  

The grandparents are still around, the original gang pops in from time to time, and there are guest spots from a lot of iconic teen hunks from the  1990s , such as Seth Green, left, Kevin Smith, Kadeem Hardison, and Brian Austin Green -- bonus dick and butt pics below.

I reviewed Episode 2.4, where we meet Ozzie's Canadian boyfriend, Etienne. Sort of.

Scene 1: In the iconic basement, Ozzie is excited that Etienne is coming to visit.  The Hunk, Mace Coronel, sits with his arm around his girlfriend.  The Dumb One, Maxwell Acee Donovan, has broken up with his girlfriend.  A lot of heterosexual coupling going on.  

The guys offer to give Ozzie a ride to the airport in their van, but Ozzie asked Mrs. Foreman to do it: he doesn't want Etienne to get off the plane and hate America.  What about his parents?  Oh, regular cast only.

Gwen enters and introduces them to her new "not my boyfriend," Cole, played by Niles Fitch. 

Ozzie tells him that he ranks guys on looks, popularity, communiy service, and butt.  He's #1.  Cole: "I know.  I got your letter."  At least this isn't a neutered gay guy.

Everyone razzes Gwen: "Not your boyfriend, right!  No way you're not dating!" 

Scene 2: Red, the father from That 70s Show, is reading the newspaper and drinking coffee.  He asks, "Can you top me off, Honey?"  

"Sure, Babe," but it's not his wife Kitty, it's Ozzie, har har.  He wants to know where Kitty is: she agreed to drive him to the airport, and they have to leave soon. 

Next door neighbor Bob ( Don Stark),  also Leia's other grandfather, wants to show Red his rattlesnake eggs.  "No one will fall for that prank," Red complains.  But Kitty falls for it, and she's so surprised that she topples over the couch!

Scene 3: Kitty has sprained her ankle.  She told the neighborhood ladies about her injury, maybe exaggerating a little, or a lot -- "I may have said I had a collapsed lung" -- so they are bringing over casseroles.  

Neighbor Bob advises against lying about the severity of her injury: once you reach a certain age, the number of available men goes into sharp decline, so if they think that Kitty is dying, they'll latch onto her husband...

Scene 4: Gwen, the one who's not-dating the new guy Cole, yells at the other girl -- about that "boyfriend" stuff.  "Now he wants to have a talk about us! He wants to be my boyfriend!"  

The other girl doesn't understand what's wrong with that.  Isn't it the goal of life? 

"I....um...have never been in a relationship before.  I'm nervous."   

"Just hold his hand and leave your heart open." Ugh.

Scene 5: Since Grandma Kitty can't drive, Ozzie has to allow the guys to drive him to the airport in their van. They agree to "no hot-boxing, no Dutch Ovens, no mooning, and no Jay Leno impressions."

Scene 6:  One of the girls reports back to Kitty about the ladies flirting with Red: Pam is cooking him chicken.  Kitty imagines her as singer Carmen Electra hanging all over him and cooking seductively: "Do you want to shake or bake?"  She forces the girl to piggy-back her downstairs and yells "Get away from him, you slut!", but it turns out to be an elderly lady.

Scene 7: At the airport, Ozzie is nervous. The passengers from Quebec arrive. The Dumb One: "I never realized how much Canadians look like us."  But boyfriend Etienne isn't there!

Meanwhile, Gwen tells Leia that she broke up with "not my boyfriend" Cole. 

"But he could be the love of your life. My parents met in high school."  Eric and Donna?  Aren't they divorced?

Suddenly Cole appears. They have a heart-to-heart: "I'm scared," yada yada yada.  Why does the straight couple get a happy ending, while the gay guy gets left at the airport door?   

More after the break

That 90s Show, Episode 1.5: Ozzie comes out, teen boys try out a hot tub, and there's pot-smoking. Plus Ashton Kutcher's cock

  

I only watched a few episodes of That 70s Show (1998-2006), but I saw enough to know the basic plot: a group of high schoolers, nerdish Eric Forman and girlfriend Donna, prettyboy Kelso and girlfriend Jackie, rebel Hyde, and foreign exchange student Fez, gather in Eric's basement to smoke pot, hook up, and make fun of Fez for being nonwhite and gay-coded (although actually heterosexual).  

Left: Grown-up Fez, played by Wilmer Valderrama.

I only remember one gay reference: they give a guy two tickets to a rock concert, and he shows up with a same sex date!  The guys are disgusted, but Donna says "It doesn't bother me."   Apparently there's another episode, with Eric "mistaken for gay." but I never saw it. 

The sequel That 90's Show (2023), fast forwards to 1995, when a new group of teenagers led by 14-year old Leia hang out in the iconic Forman basement.  They don't smoke pot -- this is the pot-phobic 90s -- but they hookup.  And this time diversity has reached Milwaukee: there are three non-white and one gay character, Ozzie, played by Reyn Do.  I reviewed the episode where he comes out.

Scene 1:  Ozzie is setting up a computer for the Grandparents.  Grandpa Red complains.  Grandma Kitty is excited but clueless.

Scene 2: In the iconic basement, Prettyboy Nate (Maxwell Acee Donovan) is showing Girlfriend Nikki an ad for a free hot tub.  "But it's contaminated with other people's juices!" she complains.  "Until we contaminate it with our juices!"  Hey, that's dirty! 

Meanwhile, Focus Girl Leia tells  Hunk Jay (Mace Coronel) that she wants to be "just friends."  He is distraught. Plot complication: she's actually interested, but too shy to admit it!

Fan plot dump: Leia is the daughter of Eric and Donna, and Jay is the son of Kelso and Jackie, all of whom have guest spots on at least one episode.  Hyde is never mentioned, as actor Danny Masterson is currently incarcerated on a rape conviction, and Fez appears regularly as a swishy but heterosexual hairdresser.

Wait -- When That 70s Show ended, it was 1980, naturally, and this is 1995.  Those girls mst have gotten pregnant at the wrap-up party.

Scene 3: Up in the kitchen, Ozzie explains to Focus Girl Leia that he's planning to come out to Grandma Kitty, as Step 7 in his 16-step coming out plan: first strangers, then people he doesn't see often, then people he sees all the time, and finally his parents.  In the 90s you didn't come out to anyone, ever, so this is quite ambitious.  

Scene 4:  Prettyboy Nate and Hunk Jay go to investigate the free hot tub. 

Nate: "This is better than that time we found the nude beach...until we saw my coach doing lunges."  Jay: "This is what my life feels like right now: a sandy, saggy sack."  Hey, are they talking about his testicles?

They play "vagina hands": they put their hands together, open them up, and Jay shoves his face inside and ..um...hey, that's dirty!

The elderly lady who owns the tub suggests that they try it out first.  

Cut to the three of them in the tub in bathing suits.  She proceeds to flirt.  They are uncomfortable. Hey, writers, the actors are over 18, but the characters are 14 or 15-years old.  This isn't funny, it's cringey.

Ozzie comes out after the break