Black Friday: Devon Sawa fights holiday shopper-monsters and wins The Girl. With a nude due from the other movie.

Devon Sawa was the wunderkind of the 1990s, starring in some iconic coming-of-age movies with strong gay subtexts --  Night of the Twisters, The Boys Club, Wild America -- while getting the full Tiger Beat Fave Rave teen idol treatment.  In the 2000s he moved on to sleazy horror, like many former teen idols, and audiences moved on.  

After filling my review of Hacks with nude photos of the grown-up, bulked up, heavily inked Devon, I realized that I hadn't seen any of his work since Final Destination.  So I checked out his more recent work on the IMDB, looking for gay characters or subtexts.

No luck: a lot of gritty, hard-bitten cops, criminals, and cowboys who have sex with ladies. Two TV series: Nikita, with the icon of a lady showing her legs and the phrase "Looks do kill": and Somewhere Between, with an icon of a lady's face and bare shoulders looking bemused as she's floating in the air.  

 The only one that appeared to have gay content was the horror/comedy Black Friday, about the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., when shoppers mob the big box stores, jostling each other in search of deep discounts on Christmas presents. In this case, the shoppers turn into real life monsters, so toy store employees have to fight them off. I can imagine a lot of comedic bits, like a monster shopper using its disembodied arm to pull toys off a high shelf.  The Google AI notes that one of the characters is gay, and mentions a husband back home. 

Note: two movies called Black Friday, both about shoppers turning into monsters, premiered in 2020 and 2021.  This is the 2021 version.

Of course, I need to watch the trailer before investing in the whole thing.  

Scene 1: Pre-dawn, the morning after Thanksgiving. Toy store manager, horror veteran Bruce Campbell, says  "Happy Black Friday" over an intercom as Christmas music plays.  Horndog Devon Sawa makes a date with The Girl to get pancakes after the big rush is over.  It wouldn't be Christmas without the protagonist devoting his first scene to demonstrating that he's not gay.  

Femme Stephen Peck  assigns New Guy Ryan Lee to the registers.  Ryan Lee played Sue's gay friend on "The Middle," but most likely Stephen Peck, second from the left, is the one with the husband.  Unfortunately, the internet is full of another Stephen Peck, film legend Gregory Peck's son, so research is impossible.

Louis Kurtzman, who wears a flowery shirt, skates over to Gruff Michael Jai White,and announces that he's temping tonight. Flowery shirt -- maybe he's the one with the husband?

Left: Michael Jai White's physique.

Scene 2: Store Manager announces "There's no day more harmful than today." I thought stores made 30% of their sales on Black Friday.  New Guy, Gruff Guy, and a third employee pour booze into their coffees.

Scene 3: Showtime!  Everyone takes their places. They keep saying "tonight," but it must be before dawn on Friday.   

After a few shots of beserk, grabby shoppers, The Girl notices a shopper with head injuries growling about.  He rushes toward New Guy, who overturns a display of balls to stop him.

Left: Michael Jai White's side-butt

More after the break. Warning: Explicit

Carlin James: The third thug, a gay three-way, a queer romance, and Pretty Dudes.

In Episode 4.5 of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off starring Bob Odenkirk as a sleazy lawyer, a flashback to 2003 shows the young Saul/Jimmy McGill working in a cell phone store.  He starts a side-business selling stolen burner phones (popular with drug dealers, gang members, cheating husbands, and so on). 

While scoping out customers at the Dog House sleazoid-favored hot dog stand, he approaches teen thugs Peewee, Skipper, and Scooter. They don't need any phones, but they'll wait until he's done for the evening and beat him up his profits. Jimmy kicks himself for not being able to foresee that the interaction would go bad.

In the next episode, Jimmy approaches the guys at their laudromat-hangout and offers to give them a cut if they let him sell without harassment: a more reliable dividend stream than robbing him just once.  They decide that they prefer robbery, and chase him -- into a trap!

Jimmy's allies, Huell Babineaux and Man Mountain, tie them up, gag them, and hang them upside down in a piñata warehouse.  They begin smashing the piñatas with baseball bats, while Jimmy asks the teen thugs if they prefer to be smashed to death quickly or slowly.  

The thugs are so terrified that they promise not to bother Jimmy anymore, and to tell all the other thugs to leave him alone.  He calls off the smashing, but his goons pretend not to hear him until the bat comes withn inches of Peewee's face.  "You get one warning," he tells them as they whimper.  "And that was it." 

Other than the gay-subtext potential of the three guys hanging out without chatting up girls, I was interested in this scene because I have posts on two of the actors: Tommy Nelson, left, and Cory Chapman, center.  

Both would go on to roles in The Righteous Gemstones, but in different seasons, and both have a substantial amount of gay and gay-subtext work.  

So what about the third thug, Scooter?  

He's played by Carlin James, a Filipino-American actor from Long Beach.  His on-screen career begins in 2009-11, playing college students in dramatic shorts and guys who get killed in thrillers.

His first mainstream role was in a 2016 episode of  How to Get Away with Murder: he plays Martin, one of the guys that main character Connor, played by Jack Falahee, invites home for a three-way.

More Carlin after the break

Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost buddies, one gay, one bi, solve afterlife mysteries. With Luke Gage and WW1 soldier bonus

 

A growling, snarling World War I soldier -- played by Chris Pereira -- chases two teenage boy ghosts through the British Museum.  The intellectual Edwin surmises that his gas mask is cursed: they'll have to destroy it to restore him to wholeness, so he can go on to the afterlife.  They'll need the Minor Arcana, Volume 4, but the athletic Charles can't find it in his magic bookbag.  

With the ghost-monster in hot pursuit, they run through a mirror, but end up in a hotel, not back in the office.  Edwin explains that it's hard to locate the right mirror-dimension when you're being chased by a gas mask monster.  

Flashback to the Dead Boy Detectives office a few days ago: A World War I nurse explains that she's been hanging aroud the British Museum long after her death to help the many lost souls from her era enter the afterlife.  But one has been cursed and turned into a monster.  She hires the boys to help him.

Left: Chris's butt

Back in the present, the boys rush through the hotel, find another mirror, and end up in their office.  The monster follows!   Charles manages to tear his gas mask off -- the snarling monster underneath spews blood all over and tries to stab him. Meanwhile Edwin finds the right book, says the incantation, and the gas mask bursts into flames.  Back in human form, the ghost is calm, but confused.  The boys tell him that he 's dead, still fighting a war that ended over 100 years ago. 

Left: Chris's cock.  I know he only appears in this episode, but where else are you going to see it?

Uh-oh, Death is coming to guide him to the afterlife.  The boys have to hide, or she'll take them, too!

That's a lot of world-building in five minutes, but it comes while the boys are being chased, assaulted, threatened, and zapped about, so it goes down easily.  

The Dead Boy Detectives, a paranormal take on the common British "boy detective" genre, appeared in a number of comics and limited edition graphic novels during the 1990s and 2000s, all taking place in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe.  Edwin, the intellectual one, died in 1916, when some boarding school bullies tried to scare him by pretending to offer him as a sacrifice to Satan.  The spell worked, and he was sent to hell.  

He stayed until 1989, when some of the residents of hell escaped and laid waste to a boarding school. The athletic Charles was killed in the ruckus.  He would be going to the Sandman-world version of Heaven, but he decided to wait and hang out with his new ghost-buddy.  Now they are detectives, helping lost souls with unfinished business, lost memories, or curses that prevent them from moving on. They must keep a low profile and not perform much magic, to avoid detection from Death and an afterlife "Missing Souls" bureacracy.

Spoiler alert: In the comics, Edwin is gay, and Charles is bisexual.  They don't date each other, however: who said any two random gay/queer dudes must automatically be into each other? 

I watched the first episode of the tv series to see if the pair, now played by the considerably older George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, were heterosexualized.

The answer after the break

Arthur Napiontek: Comedian, model, geographer, heterosexist man-candy

 

In Pineapple Express (2008),  mild-mannered process server Dale (Seth Rogen), his dealer (James Franco), and their supplier (Danny McBride) must flee from thugs trying to kill them. At one point Dale goes to the high school to tell his underage girlfriend that he won't be able to have dinner her parents, because of that fleeing thing.

But then a hot guy named Clark (Arthur Napiontek) approaches.  She praises his performance in drama class.  He returns the gym shorts that she left in his car when they worked out last week, assures Dale that he will protect her in college next year, and heads out to home economics class: "It's time to suck today's dick!"   Obviously gay, but Dale is still jealous and agrees to go to the dinner after all. 

I'm not sure if the phrase "It's time to suck today's dick" is gay-positive or homophobic.

This was Art Napiontek's first major movie role.  Although the 21 year old was cast for his comedic talent, not his physique, he took his clothes off in The Brotherhood V (2009), one of those David DeCouteau movies where straight guys bond in their underwear.  

Oddly, most of his later movie and tv roles do not involve flexing.  He did manage to take his clothes off for a gig on Conan (the talk show, not the Barbarian), but otherwise he has played a series of fully-clothed frat boys and hot guys, usually in comedies. 

Occasionally with gay content but usually not: Looking is a gay-themed series, but Boys from the Bar (2011) is about straight bartenders in a gay bar who just want to watch the game, and Switch Hitter (2015) is not about bisexuals,

In real life, Art has a wife and child and posts about how much he likes vaginas, so I'll assume that he's heterosexual. This photo spread in OK Magazine assumes that only ladies are interested in "Man Candy." 

More Arthur after the break

Cory Chapman: Lots of man friends, some gay roles, a queer buddy, nude costars. So where's the beef?

 

Atlanta-based actor Cory Chapman leans toward the dark, deviant, and dangerous in his acting roles.  His demo reel shows him being shot, beat up, and arrested over and over.

He first appears in the IMDB in 2012 as "Bad Guy" in Dark Child: The Short Film.

Then a teenage bully in A Love Story.

An "obnoxious egghead" in Foul Mouths: A Teenage Rage, 2013.

A bully in Hear no Evil, 2014.

A bully in Core: A Short Film about Bullying, 2014.

A robber in Hi, 2014

A thug in Better Call Saul, 2018

A stalker in Creep, 2018.

A militia man in The Righteous Gemstones, 2023

One would expect I'm Not Ashamed, 2016, to be about LGBT people, referencing Marlon Brando's famous statement: "I have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed."  Actually it's about the Columbine school shooting.  

Cory has worked in some comedies and dramas, too.  He specializes in playing the white guy in movies and tv shows with an African-American cast: Groomsman, Kita Lashon, Off the Chainz, Divide and Conquer, The Generational Gap. 

And some gay-themed projects, such as the Facebook series One Love and Boys 2 Gay, and a short about oral sex.

When I was researching Jamar Pusch, I kept complaining that his social media had no interesting photos or clips: no travel, no humor, no family and friends, just flexing and flexing and flexing.  You can only swoon over a guy's muscles and penis for so long. After awhile you're going to want to have a conversation. 

With Cory Chapman, I have the opposite complaint: no flexing.  Social media filled with beautifully framed photos in interesting backgrounds, and lots of family and friends.

Nude dudes after the break

Michael Provost: Perennial heterosexual boyfriend with some nude pics and maybe a coming out video

Now I'm collecting Michaels.  

Remember the butts identified as "Michael Provost" in the Gavin Munn photo collection?  I did some research, and discovered that he is an actor born in 1998, in Atlanta or Bridgeport, Connecticut, depending on who you believe, known for Insatiable, The Holdovers, Lucifer, and Fear Street.  

Also he's apparently gay.  TikTok has a number of videos dedicated to "Michael Provost" coming out.  So let's check for gay roles or subtexts.

The Case for Christ (2017). Probably not.

Lucifer Episode 4.8 (2019).  Reformed Big Bad Amenadiel(D.B. Woodside) mentors Michael's Nate Mifflin, whose parents are divorcing. Nope.

Insatiable (2018-19): a girl who is bullied for being fat becomes thin and sets out to get revenge and win a beauty pageant Bob Armstrong(Brett Rice), her beauty pageant mentor, has a long, slow, painful coming-out. and begins dating long-term antagonist Bob Barnard  (Christopher Gorham).  

Michael plays Brick Armstrong, Bob's son, who is heterosexual: he has an affair with an older woman before settling down with the formerly-fat girl.  He does get several semi-nude and rear nudity scenes.

Saving Zoe (2019).  A girl named Echo and her boyfriend, Michael, investigate the murder of her older sister.  Nope.

Most Guys are Losers (2020). College boy Michael seeks the approval of his girlfriend's dad, who wrote a book, Most Guys are Losers.  Nope.

Plan B: When a girl's crush, Michael, leaves a party with another girl, she gets even by having sex with a loser, and has to track down a Plan B, post-coitus contraceptive, before she gets pregnant. There's a lesbian character, but Michael is straight.

Fear Street:Two sisters at a summer camp in 1978.  One has sex with Michael.  

It's not looking good so far.  I'll just check one more.

The Holdovers (2023). "Holdovers" are people who have to stay at a fancy prep school during the 1970  Christmas holiday: A cranky Classics teacher, a grieving cook, and some students, including jock Jason (Michael).  Two youtube guys with the bizarre name "the gay homosexuals" promise spoilers, but the first 10 minutes of their 30-minute review didn't reveal any gay subtexts. But Jason gets a girlfriend, quite a feat in an all-boy school.

More Michael after the break.  Warning: Explicit

Michael Fassbender and Rainier Fassbinder: The unbearable agony of gay life, with dicks and butts

Through an internet rabbit hole too convoluted to explain, I set about to research David Boreanaz, and ended up with nude photos of Michael Fassbender -- from 2007.

Every gay person coming out in the 1980s knew about Michael Fassbender, the German director who specialized in movies about the "unbearable agony of gay life" -- thieves, hustlers, derelicts, outcasts, wandering through industrial wastelands in search of sex or death, both unattainable, hooking up with straight men in the hope that this time, finally, they have met their murderer.

Who could forget Brad Davis, ripped, sweaty, and bulging, as the doomed sailor/murderer Querelle.  "Each man kills the things he loves".

Then there were Fox and His Friends, Despair,  In a Year of 13 Moons, Germany in Autumn, Berlin Alexanderplatz...

Whoops, sorry, that was Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982.

Although he does show his penis in Germany in Autumn(1978). 

The new guy is Michael Fassbender -- no connection -- born in Germany in 1977 and raised in Ireland, with 63 acting credits on IMDB, including two Oscar nominations. 

I think I've only seen him in the X-Men franchise, where he plays Erik Lensherr, a Holocaust survivor who has a gay-subtext romance with Charles Xavier before becoming his enemy as the supervillain Magneto.  But he has played several canonical gay-ish characters.

In Shame, 2011, Michael plays a business executive who has sex with multiple female partners several times a day, even when he should be doing other things, like helping his sister out of a jam.  One night after he is beat up by the boyfriend of the woman he just screwed, he goes to a sleazy, decadent gay bar and gets a blow job from a guy in the back room.  

Got it, gay men are still wandering through industrial wastelands, eternal outsiders, eternally depressed. But we see his dick.  And his butt, top photo.

More agony after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.5: A gay boy's bare butt, castration anxiety, a pukka shell necklace, and three random cocks

Previous: Episode 3.4 Continued: Mistaking dependency for love, two breakups, Kelton's butt, and some Cantonese cocks

Episode 3.4 concludes with the family in disarray. Both BJ and Keefe have broken up with their partners in the aftermath of a betrayal, Jesse and Pontius are sparring, and the Montgomery Boys are secretly planning a violent retribution. 

Title: "Interlude III." The interludes are meant to build suspense by postponing the action for two weeks, plus give us some background on the major characters.  Interlude I centered on Jesse, and Interlude II on Kelvin, so I imagine that this time it will be Judy.

Judy's Back Story: Rogers High School, 2000.  High school-aged Judy tries to flirt with her crush, art student Trent (Braxton Alexander), by throwing her hair over his desk.  He asks her to stop several times, but she says "You know you like it, Stud," embarrassing him in front of the class.  Finally he gets even by cutting her hair. Wait -- why isn't the super-rich Judy in private school?

She doesn't notice until the girls in the restroom laugh at her.  Then she storms into band practice and smashes his saxophone, yelling "I liked you, asshole!  I loved you!"

Some fans wonder whether Trent is gay.  Of course, lots of straight guys would reject Judy's vulgar come-ons, but Trent wears a pukka shell necklace: according to my research, around 2000, that was a queer code, a way to identify other gay people while leaving the straights oblivious. Plus he's an artist and a musician.  "Artistic" and "musical" are  often code for "gay."

Y2K is Real:  Remember the Y2K panic that Eli and his wife Aimee-Leigh profited from?  A reporter from Time Magazine shows Eli the commercial, telling folks that God wanted them to buy Gemstone Brand survival buckets, first aid kits, commode liners, and so on.  "So...do you think it's ethical to scare people and then benefit from that fear-mongering?" 

"I was trying to help."

"You said that Jesus told you that Y2K was real.  Who was wrong, Jesus or you?"

Wait -- most evangelicals are pre-Dispensationalists, believing that all of the Christians will be caught up to heaven in the Rapture prior to the various seals, trumpets, and bowls of the Tribulation.  Why would they need survival supplies?

Kelvin's Little Tiny Doll Pecker: College-age Jesse brings his girlfriend Amber home to meet the family. Is she pregnant?  Gideon is going to be born in a year or less.

At dinner, Judy criticizes her for coming from a poor family.   Jesse says "Suck my dick!", and she responds "I want a meal, not a snack."  

Left: not a tiny little doll pecker.

Kelvin laughs: "That was good.  She means you have a tiny little titi" (pronouncced tih-tee).  Jesse then criticizes Kelvin's "tiny little doll pecker."  It is probably perfectly normal for a prepubescent boy, but Kelvin doesn't know that.

Presumably the adult Kelvin is the same size as the well-hung Adam Devine, yet the siblings continue to disparage his penis into adulthood. How, exactly, do they see it?  My sister has never seen mine.  The result is a paralyzing fear of sexual intimacy that jeopardized every potential romantic connection before Keefe.  And only Keefe's superhuman devotion kept him by Kelvin's side as he vacillated between withholding sex and demanding it constantly.

Background Note: "Titi" is a type of shrub, a type of monkey,  your aunt, and an unattractive drag queen. Apparently the writers invented the "penis" meaning to bring to mind the adult Kelvin's obsession with "titty meat."

The Snake Handler. After a scene where Judy bullies Amber and steals her ring, setting up their squabbles in the present, we cut to a service at Peter Montgomery's Pentecostal-like snake-handling church.  Actually, he's the only one playing with a snake, while his sons play the guitar and violin, and his wife May-May goes into a filled-with-the-Spirit ecstasy. 

Background note: Snake-handling, based upon the injunction to "take up serpents" in Mark 16:17, was introduced by the Church of God with Signs Following during the Great Depression, and spread throughout Appalachia.  Today the practice is illegal in most Southern states, including South Carolina, and there are no more than 100 snake-handling churches left.  

In Them That Follow (2019), Walton Goggins (Baby Billy) plays the pastor of a snake-handling church.

Gemstone-Montgomery Tensions: At the Gemstone Compound,  May-May complains about having to identify herself at the security station, just to put flowers on her father's grave. "You can visit the grave whenever you want," Aimee-Leigh assures her. "We'll have security flag you right on through." But she's not satisfied. Geez, he's been dead since 1995. Haven't you figured out the visitation schedule by now?

Later she bosses Peter around and rejects every effort of Aimee-Leigh to be friendly, suggesting a long-standing feud.  We can see parallels in Amber and Judy in the present.

Gay boys and bare butts after the break

"Brassic": The top ten beefy, brawling Midlands blokes, with some bonus Brummie knobs

Brassic (slang for "poor") follows a gang of working-class lads in the town of Hawley, near Manchester.  Their escapades involve mostly thefts that go wrong, marijuana deals that go wrong,  and brawling -- lots of beefy guys sweating in barns.  A lot of male nudity, of the butt variety.  And, surprisingly, some gay representation.  

Here are the top ten hunks: 

1. Dylan (Damien Molony. right), who passed up a chance to go to uni to stay with the lads.  

2. Tommo (Ryan Sampson, left) runs secret S&M nights for the town's businessmen.  Presumably heterosexual S&M, although actor Ryan Sampson is gay.  He came out while starring in the comedy Plebs, and introduced the world to his boyfriend on instagram.

3. Vinnie (Joe Gilgun), the leader, grew up in a safe-blowing family.  He suffers from bipolar disorder, and has a son with his best friend Dylan's girlfriend. 

Ryan Sampson's bum in Plebes

4. Ash (Aaron Heffernan) grew up in a fighting family of Irish travelers (nomads).  He is still a bare-knuckle boxer and the muscle of the gang, and gay (out to his friends, but not to his family).  Nothing in the episode synopsis about getting a boyfriend.

5. Cardi (Tom Hanson) got his nickname from "cardiac arrest" due to his weight (although you'd never know it from his nude scene).  He appears to be cognitively disabled, and acts as the runner for the gang

Midland dicks after the break

"The People We Hate at Weddings": Two sisters and their mum find love, the gay guy doesn't and there's only one penis

  

The 2017 novel The People We Hate at the Wedding is about a wealthy British girl, Eloise, hoping to reconcile with her two American half-siblings, Alice and Paul, by inviting them to her lavish wedding.  Paul is gay, complete with longsuffering boyfriend. 

 Knowing how much Hollywood loves to straighten gay characters, I watched the 2022 movie version on Amazon Prime to make sure that Paul stays gay.

Scene 1: Various childhood antics of the half-siblings, including a disastrous Santa Claus-sitting with a very cute, harried harried Elf photographer (Brandon Johnston, left).

Scene 2: The young adult Alice, who works at a small desk in a big office, checks her mail: the invitation to her half-sister Eloise's wedding!   She calls her brother, Paul (Ben Platt), who works at some sort of counseling center, to see if he got one.  Yep.  "But We're not going.  We hate her!"  

Scene 3: The siblings' Mom tries on clothes and plot-dumps on the sales clerk: Her husband is dead, so her romantic life is over (she'll find love by Act 2). Also, her kids aren't going to Eloise's wedding because they hate her.

Scene 4: At work, Alice gets summoned by the Boss (Jorma Taccone), to screw in the supply closet, followed by lunch.  Jonathan wonders if she just likes him for his money.  "Of course not.  I like you for your dick."  

Scene 5: Paul is out with a straight guy(Randall Park) and three femme, double-entendre-spouting gay guys (Greg Barnett, Karan Soni, Pedro Minas), who brag about the new guy they've added to their threesome. Wait -- they are already a threesome, aren't they?

Three guys doing gay stuff together!  Paul is sick of gay hypersexuality and flamboyance, so he hangs back to talk to the straight guy. So this Paul is straight, too? 

 Then they all go to see King Lear.  At the line "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!," Mom texts Paul, asking him to please come to the wedding. 

Scene 6:  Alice drops Boss off at his house, pretending to be an Uber driver so his wife doesn't get suspicious.  He wants a permanent relationship, so he's going to ask for a separation -- sometime.  Wife comes out of the house carrying a baby, making Alice feel guilty.

Scene 7:  Paul in bed with his boyfriend, discussing their disapproval of the three-way relationship. Wait -- he was one of the flamboyant three-way guys.  I'm confused.   

All they do is hug and chat, but I guess that's enough to make Paul canonically gay at Minute 14.

Paul explains why he hates his Mom: after his dad died, she threw out all of his stuff, and never mentioned him again.  Boyfriend talks him into the wedding anyway, because it's in London.  Ugh!  London is my least favorite city in Europe. I've visited 5 or 6 times, and never had a positive experience. 

Scene 8:  Alice watches her boss/boyfriend living a public life without her and decides to go to the wedding after all.  Then she goes into his office and slips off her underwear -- just as the housekeeper shows up.  Hey, the housekeeper is D'Arcy Carden, who starred with Kristen Bell in The Good Place!  I wonder who else from that show will appear.  Maybe Ted Danson?

Scene 9:   Paul at work.  He mentioned that he doesn't like scones, so the Boyfriend sent him a scone basket to be mean. Mom calls; he hangs up on her.  

Next, the Counseling Center boss, Dr. Goulding (Tony Goldwyn), found security-cam footage of him hugging a patient after an emotional breakthrough. Inappropriate!  A month of unpaid leave!  Now Paul has no choice but to go to the wedding. 

I'm bored.  I'll fast-forward to the good parts.

On the plane to London, Alice has a meet-cute with Love Interest #1 (Dustin Milligan, left). 

There's an establishing shot that doesn't show the Tower Bridge or the Eye in the Sky!  

We see Rich Sister  Eloise is in bed with her fiancee, Ollie (John Macmillan).  Nice chest shot.

Alice decides to bring Love Interest  to the wedding as her plus-one.  They have sex on the floor of their palatial hotel room, next to the bed. Nice chest shot.

Later he dumps her: "You have everything that any sane man would want, but you don't want a sane man."  So gay men are insane?  Or did you forget that gay men exist?  

More Love Interests and at least one cock after the break

"The Other Two," Episode 1.6: Cary goes shirtless, Chase twerks, and there's enough bulges and butts for everyone

The Other Two are the struggling, closeted actor Cary  (Drew Tarver, left) and his sister, failed dancer Brooke.  When their little brother Chase (Case Walker) suddenly becomes the pop sensation ChaseDreams, the Other Two are torn between jealousy, pride, and over-protectiveness: "You can't perform at the White House unless your math grades improve."

I prefer the first season, when the family dynamics take precedence, and we can see some genuine affection between the siblings and their teen idol brother.  In later seasons, delayed due to COVID, Chase is grown up and wacky, and eventually doesn't appear at all, as episodes concentrate on the stardom of the siblings and their Mom, Pat. 

I'm reviewing Episode 1.6, because of guest star Patrick Wilson, Prince Orm in the Aquaman series. There are two plotlines, featuring Cary/Mom and Brooke/Chase, so I'll review each separately.

Cary/Mom's Plot: Chase recently outed Cary with the music video "My Brother's Gay, and That's OK."  This led to an offer to play the Shirtless Bartender on the real-life talk show Watch What Happens Live, hosted by Andy Cohen (playing himself)  

He complains that he doesn't have any lines; they just hired him for his looks.  "Big deal, you'll be seen, and you can meet the guest stars."  Who are they, anyway?  He looks it up: Patrick Wilson...and Mom Pat!  She'll be talking about her children's book based on Chase's rise to fame.  Uh-oh, being shirtless in front of his Mom!  

Plus he was cast without anyone asking him to take his shirt off.  What if he doesn't have the pecs for the job? 

The only gay guy on Earth who never works out, Cary drops into a gym and asks to "get jacked fast" for his Shirtless Bartender gig.   Um..it's going to take at least a year, buddy.  Turns out that the Receptionist (David Arquilla) has been the Shirtless Bartender, too; he's not an actor, but he has pecs.  Uh-oh.

We cut to Cary using the equipment wrong and getting sneered at by muscle studs. The staff will be happy to demonstrate. He wants to give up after one minute, but he can't leave and have the Receptionist see him, so he hides out in the locker room and runs into Lance  (Josh Segarra), his sister's on-off boyfriend.

Lance encourages Cary to pose, and gives him a self-actualization talk: "You are a sexy and beautiful man, thin but tight." 

We cut to filming Watch What Happens. Andy Cohen introduces Patrick Wilson as the star of Candy Land, and Pat Dubek, as mother of ChaseDreams -- "I'm obsessed with your son," he admits.  In a non-erotic way: unlike most teen idols, Chase has fans in every age group.  Nearly everyone the siblings meet gushes over him.

Next Andy introduces Pat's other son, the Shirtless Bartender, and asks: "What do you have for us tonight?"

Uh-oh, Cary didn't know that he would have to perform.  He doesn't have anything ready except an angsty monologue from Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead: "We are born with an intuition of mortality..."  Ulp, Andy meant what cocktail is he preparing.

As the interviews continue, Cary knows that he's supposed to just look hot and laugh at the guests' jokes, but he can't help interrupting with bits of his own.  Patrick takes pity on him and asks if he has any projects he would like to promote -- but he doesn't.  

Later they bond while waiting for the elevator.  Well, Cary thinks that they bond; Patrick is just trying to get rid of him.

My grade: I didn't feel the stakes, and Patrick suddenly withdrawing support seemed a little forced, but I liked seeing Cary shirtless for the entire scene. B+

Brooke/Chase's Plot:  Preparing to film a new music video for his song "Stink," Chase is doing push-ups while his Trainer (Brock Yurich, left) encourages him: "Push it, baby!  You are a god!"  Spoiler alert: in the next episode, the Trainer and Brooke are dating, but he is just interested because she can get him close to Chase. In a non-erotic way.

They're ready on the set, so Brooke, working as Chase's assistant, comes to fetch him.  Nope, Sleazy Manager (Wanda Sykes) says that he needs to do more push-ups to "get his pecs to pop."

"Can a 13-year old's pecs pop?" Brooke wonders.

Sleazy Manager continues: "We already did gay, so now Chase has to be a fuckboy."

"Um...isn't he a little young to be a fuckboy?"

The fuckboy and some dicks and butts after the break