Jonathan Taylor Thomas: The teen idol superstar plays gay characters, retires from acting before he can show us his dick. Probably.

 

During the early 1990s, ABC offered a "family-friendly" lineup on Wednesday nights, beginning with The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage courting the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.  We sang a parody of the theme song, the Beatle's "With a Little Help from My Friends":

What would you do if I shat on your shoes?
Would you get up and kick me to the moon?

Before turning the channel to CBS, with The Nanny and Melrose Place.

But we knew about each of the shows, because you knew about every show in the era. They included:

Doogie Houser, with Neil Patrick Harris (right, recent photo) as a 13 year old doctor named Doogie.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a coach.

And Home Improvement, with Tim Allen as a grunting, sweating macho man who hosts a tool-themed tv series and tries to instill grunting, sweating masculinity into his three sons.  Zachery Ty Bryant (playing Brad), the eldest and most muscular, was promoted as a teen idol to draw in teenage girls (they weren't aware of gay boys).  But oddly, it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas (playing Randy) who took off, causing millions of teenage and preteen girls to tune it (again, no gay boys exist).  It quickly jumped to #2 in the ratings.

Wait -- Brad is a jock, a football star, a letterman who every girl in the school swoons over.  Randy is soft, bookish, somewhat femme, playing "a fairy" in the school play, an aspiring actor and journalist.  How did Jonathan Taylor Thomas do it?

The showrunners were stumped. They should have realized that straight girls and gay boys just starting to recognize their romantic interests prefer soft, cuddly, and relatable: Malcolm, not Reese (Malcolm in the Middle), Chris, not Drew (Everybody Hates Chris); Adam, not Barry (The Goldbergs). 

In the mid-1990s, Home Improvement moved to Tuesdays, in the hope that its popularity would help stragglers like Spin City.  We still steered clear of the grunting, sweating Tim Allen, quickly changing the channel to Frasier (CBS) and then back for Drew Carey (ABC).    

But we could hardly ignore JTT; he was on every magazine cover, in every talk show.

He presented at the Emmies and the Golden Globes.

We saw him waving in Thanksgiving and Christmas parades

He appeared in specials honoring Tom Cruise and Lauren Hutton

He praised James Bond in a documentary about the super-spy.

Elton John hugged him.

He played Tom Sawyer opposite Devon Sawa's Huckleberry Finn in Tom and Huck (1995), with a story only vaguely related to the original novels.

An adventure boy opposite Devon Sawa and Scott Bairstow (left) in Wild America (1997).

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Fresh Off the Boat Episode 3.2: Musclemen flex, Walter is homophobic, Evan finds a new boyfriend, and Eddie is traumatized by cocks.

Since identifying Hudson Yang as "probably gay," I've been going through his tv series, Fresh Off the Boat, about a "fresh off the boat" Taiwanese-American family in the 1990s.  There are a number of recurring gay characters, but I'm looking for gay texts and subtexts among the sons, Eddie, Emery, and Evan.  Episode 3.2, "Breaking Chains" (2016) has some, plus beefcake and homophobia.

I'm skipping the A Plot, where Dad Louis (Randall Park) hires a housekeeper, thus insulting his wife Jessica, who thinks that he thinks she is a failure as a woman (because her gender identity is based on her ability to clean up?) 

In the B Plot, Eddie (Hudson Yang) and his friends are about to enter eighth grade, so they'll need either great gear or great stories.

Trent (Trevor Larcom) has great gear: he went to a theme park and got a scrunchie depicting the mascot.

Walter (Prophet Bolden) tells him that it "looks like a gay raindrop." 

 Homophobic comment, buddy.

Brian (Dash Williams) has a great story: he had mono, so he stayed inside watching Cinemax.  Now he knows a lot about boobs, and wants to become a pizza delivery boy.  Ugh, heteronormative girl-craziness.

Dave (Evan Hanneman) argues they don't need gear or stories, because they'll be eighth graders, practically upperclassmen.  Eddie (Hudson Yang) agrees: "We'll be men among boys!"  Sounds like their middle school covers grades 7-9, and high school grades 10-12.

Cut to a fantasy of the guys as grown-up musclemen flexing and grinning. I count six girls and one boy swooning over them -- but the one boy acknowledges the existence of LGBT people. 

Eddie's brother Emery is also impressed.  He gasps, "Who are those MEN?"

"Nah, son," Adult Eddie answers.  "We're eighth graders."

Ok, two boys are swooning over the musclemen.

In case you were wondering, Trent becomes Chris Kimball (below); Walter, Cleveland Berto, Dave, Colin Owens; and Eddie, Chen Tang (left)

Some dicks after the break

Melvin Mellblom: Sad Swedish-Thai model with muscles, a constantly changing hair color, and a backside. With Peebles and Algerian d*cks

 

I was drawn to Melvin Mellblom on the teen idol website because he posts a blurry muscle photo.  Who would do that?  

And because of his name.  When I was in high school, bullies used "Melvin" to disparage kids that they considered clumsy, awkward, or book-smart. And God help you if that was really your name!  

Most actors saddled with the name Melvin change it to Mel.  Google lists only three who didn't: Melvin van Peebles (left), Bonez Estivez, and Gregg. So why didn't this Mellblom fellow avoid the giggling and change it to Mel?

Melvin (really?  not Mel?) was born in Sweden, but moved to Thailand at age three, so he speaks Swedish, Thai, and English.   His Instagram and Facebook pages say that he is an actor, model, and social media influencer, but there are no acting roles listed on the IMDB, and only two on his professional resume:

The music video Without You (2016), by Marcus & Martinus, a Norwegian dance pop duo.  A boy wanders around some temples and historic sites in Thailand, being sad, crying, screaming, and looking at photos of his ex-girlfriend. 

Is it over? I just gotta know
Cause I'm reaching, but where did you go?
Tears are falling, while I'm calling
Can't make it alone, no

I don't like where this research is heading.

And a short, The Gold Star Kid (2017): A boy living in Thailand finds a 20 Euro note, and uses it to pay the restaurant bill of a soldier who reminds him of his dead father  (Algerian actor Rachid Oumakhlouf, nude after the break).

The IMDB says that the boy is played by Nils Bento Connault.

Melvin's Instagram and Facebook pages begin in 2017, with a lot of modeling photos.  He looks sad in most of them.  No girl-hugging, but he posts "Sorry boys, I like girls," to clear up any misconceptions.

Bummer. 

In February 2020, he posts to fans from bed.  Some guys comment on his hotness.  So, did you change your mind about liking boys, Mel Baby?

In April 2020, he poses wearing a Sylvester Stallone t-shirt, and gets purple hair.  A pride color?

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

Eldon Jones: Dancing Atreyu, drawing penguins, learning to snap, bringing gay promise. With nude co-stars and Patrick Swayze's bum

Eldon Jones as Cody,  grandson of focus character Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina,  right) , was the one bright spot in the overwhelming heterosexism of  the Netflix paranormal series The Boroughs.  While enduring the endless "My wife! My wife! My wife", it was a relief to check out the photos his mom posted of Eldon in feminine outfits, hanging with his gay brother, and attending Pride events.  Maybe the kid is gay in real life, maybe not, but he provides a reminder that LGBT people exist, no matter how aggressively they are erased.

Eldon was born in 2011, son of Neal Jones, best known for Dirty Dancing (1987): he plays the "kind-hearted" Billy, who gets his cousin Johnny (Patrick Swayze, left) a job at the Borscht Belt resort, and introduces him to "dirty dancing."   

The family lives in Albuquerque.  Older brother Jax (middle) graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in fine arts in May 2026.  Mom often posts photos of him and his boyfriend.  

Eldon is in the front, and sister Marian, also an actor, is in the back of the sibling pile. 

Eldon is remarkably accomplished.

A member of the permanent company of the National Dance Institute of New Mexico.

Studies piano at the New Mexico School of Music.

An artist, interested in penguin comics and watercolors.

A chef, baking bread and making soup for the family.

A fashionista.  He attended the Copenhagen Fashion Week in 2023.

Literary.  When they visited London, he checked out the bookstores (that's the first thing I look for, too).  He was reading Herman Hesse at age 12.

I've read some Hesse (Siddhartha and Steppenwolf), but I never even heard of the book he's reading: Knulp, about a "carefree vagabond who lives outside societal rules." 

And of course Eldon is an actor.

He started as a background player in three 2022 episodes of Walker: Independence, about a woman in the Old West searching for the guy who murdered her husband. Apparently there's a gay character.

Left: I couldn't find the gay guy in the cast list, but I found Jeff Pierre, who played Cameron Monaghan's boyfriend on Shameless.

More after the break

"The Naked Brothers Band," the most heterosexist teencom on Nickelodeon. Plus the grown-up brothers' cocks, butts, and gay-vague characters.

Around 2008, I researched queer codes on children's tv for what turned out to be three scholarly articles.  I gave high scores to Drake and Josh,  Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide,  The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, The Wizards of Waverly Place, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.  Phil of the Future, Ed Edd and Eddy, and Zoey 101 got low scores, and the lowest: The Naked Brothers Band.

It was a mockumentary about the misadventures of a fictional band led by preteen brothers, Alex and Nat Wolff.  They never explained the embarrassingly salacious name, but I assume that it meant that you would be seeing their real life, uncurated and unmediated. 

Of course, it was curated and mediated.  Alex and Nat did have a band, and some of their real-life bandmates (like Dan Levi, left) were in the cast, but most of the characters and situations were purely fictional.  They were not at all famous.  Yet.   

In 2004, actress Polly Draper had the idea of making a mockumentary about her sons' band, sort a preteen Spinal Tap or A Hard Day's Night.  She got her wealthy (or wealthier) brother to finance The Naked Brothers Band, filmed it in mid-town Manhattan, and entered it the 2005 Hamptons International Film Festival.  Nickelodeon bought it, and suggested a teencom spin-off, competition to the upstart Myley Cyrus in Hannah Montana. 

 Nat Wolff was only twelve years old, and Alex was nine,  a little young to handle a teencom by themselves, so Polly added adults to the cast to pull some of the weight.  Mostly her relatives: husband Michael Wolff as the boys' widowed dad; niece Jesse as their babysitter; brother Tim as the school principal. Plus a steady stream of celebrity friends, including Ryan Seacrest, Tony Hawk, and Whoopi Goldberg, popped by to play themselves.

The result was three seasons of intense nepotism and aggressive "girls! girls! girls!' hetero-horniness (2007-09).

I only watched one episode for my research project (there were over 30 programs in my dataset), so to be fair, I just watched another:  "Three is Enough" (February 8, 2008)

In the teaser, Alex wants to practice putting his arm around his "true love" in the movies.  Nat is skeptical -- he has a new "true love" every week.  But he agrees to play the girl.  Then Alex plays the girl so Nat can practice.  The gender-play is a queer code, but it's drowned out by the endless discussion of how many girls they like.

Next: they have writen a new song, "Three is Enough."  Babysitter Jesse agrees: three is the perfect amount of everything, from donuts to boys. For instance, she can't choose between the three "adorable Timmerman Brothers" (played by Polly's excessively rich nephews).  She implies that she is dating all of them, and perhaps not one at a time. Maybe they are involved in a queer four-way romance.

Then the Handsome Foreigner next door (Michael W. Barry)  asks her to the big horror movie.  The Timmermans get jealous and decide to spy on them.

At the studio, famous cartoonist Jules Feiffer, playing himself, is drawing cartoons to project over the band's new song.  Alex asks to be portrayed as cooler and more teenager-ish, and for the girl he is in love with to look more like his real-life true love.  

The main plot: their manager, 12-year old Cooper (Cooper Pillot) accidentally asks a girl for a date.  The band suggests various ways to get out of it, but he doesn't want to get out of it. He just wants Nat to come along for moral support.  But Nat needs a date, and he can't ask his on-off girlfriend Rosalie while they're "on a break."  Can he?  This section can't be easily queered; it's boys and girls all the way down.

Verdict: A few gender-bending moments , but no gay subtexts.

I couldn't even find any gay actors in the cast, except for Andre Keenan-Bolger, who played the snippy director Christophe in four episodes.

After the break: Have the Naked Brothers continued their heteronormative erasure as adults?  Have they gotten naked?

Jack Caroll is trollied, eaten by lions, endures soap opera angst, does stand-up comedy, shows his backside and his dick

Mobility is a BAFTA Award-winning comedy short about three boys from Huddlesfield, Yorkshire, who get on each other's nerves as they ride the mobility bus to school.  

Surly Dan (Ruben Reuter) insults everyone, mostly by references to the sexual proficiency of "your Mum."

Upbeat Sonny (Zak Ford-Williams) announces that "the only disability is a bad attitude," and chastises Dan: his behavior is not in keeping with the spirit of the Duke of Edinburgh award. 

Entrepreneur Mike (Jack Carroll) claims to be the future Wolf of Wakefield; he's going to make a fortune on the stock market.

I researched Ruben and Zak, and discovered that they are both gay in real life.  Coincidence, or a deliberate casting decision?

Time to check out the third, Jack Carroll, who also co-wrote the script.  

He has the longest resume of the three: Born in 1998 in Bradford, Yorkshire, started his career at age 12.  Comedian Jason Manford saw a video of Jack performing at his parents' wedding anniversary, and invited him to perform at a show at St. George's Hall.  

A film of his comedy bit aired on The One Show,leading  Britain's Got Talent, where he was runner-up, and 13 episodes of the sketch comedy show The Ministry of Curious Stuff (2012). Episodes of 4 O'Clock Club, Katy, Big School, and Ministry of Justice followed.

And the feature film Eaten by Lions (2018).  After their Gran dies, half-brothers Pete and Omar (Jack, Antonio Aakeel) go off in search of Omar's estranged dad. They find him in the tawdry, seedy tourist trap of Blackpool (for Americans, think Atlantic City).  Pete gets a girlfriend, and shows his bum.  I reviewed it several years ago.  It got a low grade for heteronormativity.

Next came 25 episodes of Trollied (2014-18), about the workers in a run-down supermarket (for Americans, a trolly is a shopping cart).  Mark Addy, who stripped down in The Full Monty (1997), played head butcher Andy, and perennial nude dude Joel Fry played nice guy Leighton.

Jack's character, 16-year old Harry, is the brightest of the group: he received 9 A-grades in his GCSEs (tests taken during Year 11 of secondary school).  He's heterosexual.

In the short Newbie (2023), a new teacher is worried that students won't accept him because of his disability.   Weird-- the guy played a high school student that same year.  But Cole Sprouse was 30 when he finished playing high schooler Jughead on Riverdale.

 

Jack's biggest role to date is Bobby Crawford in 69 episodes of the soap Coronation Street (2023-25). 

In 2023, the teenage Bobby argues with his mum's boyfriend, and gets kicked out.  He looks up his birth dad, Rob Donovan (Marc Bayliss), who is in prison, and gets a referral to live with his Aunt Carla on....Coronation Street.

Ulp...maybe a soap opera community is not the best home.  Aunt Carla has a life-threatening illness, then disowns Bobby due to his friendship with his birth dad. He is kidnapped, becomes a hostage, is accused of murder....

His crush Lauren disappears, presumably murdered; then she reappears, is accused of murder, and is blackmailed.  Am I getting this right?  It seems rather repetitive.  Finally Bobby has had enough; he runs away to Majorca to work on a fishing boat with a male friend.  

Jack explains that he had to leave the show to prepare for a national tour, but maybe he was getting tired of the angst.  He's primarily a comedian, after all.

He has performed on Britain's Got Talent, Britain's Got More Talent, Loose Ladies, Pointless Celebrities, Sunday Brunch, This Morning, The Stand Up Sketch Show, and Would I Lie to You?, as well as many live venues.  In 2026 his "Fall Guy" tours Scotland, beginning in Edinburgh. 

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

Under the Banner of Heaven: Murder and crisis of faith in a fundamentalist Mormon familiy with five brothers (and five dicks)

 Under the Banner of Heaven, a Hulu series about corruption in the LDS Church, was written and produced by Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, so there's bound to be some gay characters or subtexts.  Besides, who isn't interested in cute Mormon missionaries?  

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Salt Lake City.  Jeb (Andrew Garfield), a super clean-cut nuclear family Dad, is listening to "Let's Hear it for the Boy."  A gay anthem!  So the protagonist is gay?   His preteen daughters, who wear long pioneer dresses, ask him to do loving-father activities, like lasso them.  Wife, who wears a modern t-shirt and cut-off jeans, calls him to the phone.  He has to go to work, so everyone has to do the evening prayers early.

We hear all the prayers: for the Mormon missionaries (how about a visual?), for Church President Kimball, for Grandpa in heaven, and for an Easy-Bake Oven.  "Let's Hear it for the Boy" came out in 1982, and Spencer Kimball died in 1985, 

Scene 2: Continuing to pray, Jeb the Cop puts the siren on his car and heads to a house surrounded by yellow tape and police cars.  Inside: the tv on, bloody footprints, scattered toys, a dead lady, and something in a basinet that makes him say "Evil."  The dead lady's murder was not evil?    He goes out to the yard and arrests the bloody young man who happens to be walking around.

Scene 3:  At the police station, Jeb the Cop and his Gentile (Non-Mormon) Partner do the good cop-bad cop routine on the blood-splattered suspect, Allen Lafferty (Billy Howle), who happens to belong to one of the most important familiies of the Church.  He claims that for the last year, "peculiar men" dressed like Mormon prophets have been stalking his family, so no doubt they did it.  They are probably after his brothers and their wives and kids, too.

Left: Billie Howle, Dick #1

Scene 4: While they book and strip Allen, Jeb watches, flashing back to someone he saw at church (was this a flash of same-sex attraction?).  They send a squad car out to check on the only brother whose address Allen knows: the others all moved to hide from the humiliation of having a brother who left the Church.

Scene 5: Jeb is too disgusted to continue the interrogation, so his Gentile Partner continues alone.  Stunt casting: he's played by Gil Birmingham, a bodybuilder who appeared in Diana Ross's music video "Muscles" in 1982.

Allen: if you want to know who did, check out the Mormon saints.  

Flashback to his future wife Brenda winning runner-up in the Miss Twin Falls, Idaho contest in 1980, then going to Brigham Young University, to stay away from the "Democrats and crazies," and studying broadcast journalism.  She meets Allen at church.  

Back at the interrogation, Allen blames the Church on his wife's death: "My only regret is that I didn't drive her out of Zion (Salt Lake City) to protect her from our people."  

Scene 6:  Jeb the Cop continues to ruminate about how evil Allen is, to do that to a baby (and an adult?).  They're still having trouble tracking down the addresses of his brothers and their wives/kids, so Jeb calls his wife -- they went to church with the Lafferty family, so maybe she has some of the brothers' addresses.  

He returns to the interrogation: Jeb: "So, you despicable monster, was there anyone besides you who hated Brenda enough to do it?"  Allen:  Everyone hated her because she was so perfect."  Yeah, I heard that a lot in high school.

Scene 7: Flashback to Allen introducing Brenda to the family at a picnic. "Just don't say much," he warns. Patriarch Ammon (Christopher Heyerdahl, Dick #2) wants to know why she abandoned Twin Falls, Idaho for the evil Big City (Provo, Utah?).  There are an endless number of boisterous brothers, Stepford wives, and staring kids to meet. 

More Lafferty boys after the break

The Brothers Ferox: A bodybuilder, a swimmer, and the Joker's nemesis walk into a gladiator arena. With bonus nude short guys

  

In Episode 1.1 of Spartacus: House of Ashur, a dwarf gladiator team called Brothers Ferox (shouldn't that be Frates Ferox?)  fight Ashur's champion Logus (Joe Davidson).  He yells "My cock stands larger threats!",  thinking that they'll be easy to defeat, but they best him, and further humiliate the House by urinating on his corpse.

We see them briefly in Episode 1.2.  The gladiator Achillea is assigned to fight them, but after she fends off an attempted rape by Creticus (Stephen Madsen) -- and slices off his private parts -- she has to fight Korris first, and is killed in the arena.  

The brothers appear in every future episode; hopefully we will see more of their fighting, and some of their lives outside of the arena. 

I'll profile each of the actors separately. From left to right, Daniel Bos as Balbus, Leigh Gill as Satyrus, and Mikey Thompson as Musicus. 

Daniel Bos, from Perth, Western Australia, has been competing in the Paralympics since he was 12 years old. In 2025 he beat two Oceanic records at the World Para-Powerlifting Championship in Egypt

He is also a competitive bodybuilder.

Spartacus: House of Ashur is Daniel's first acting gig, but he calls it "the best thing I've ever done," and is anxious for more.

The heavily inked Leigh Gill, sharing a hot tub with an equally inked buddy or boyfriend, has 27 acting credits listed on the IMDB.  He is best known as the hetero-horny actor Bobono in Game of Thrones (2018) and Gary Puddles, a clown traumatized by his gay-subtext friend's murder, in two Joker movies (2019, 2021).

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Left: The buddy or boyfriend nude.  I forgot to record his name.  

More after the break