Reacher Episode 4.1: Federal corruption, a gay-subtext sidekick, a lethal library, and The Girl. With Reach bulge and butt and a lot of Indonesian cocks

 

Reacher, on Amazon Prime, stars the hunky gay ally Alan Ritchson as a drifter with a tragic past who helps the helpless, sort of like the Lone Ranger, but with more angst. There aren't any identified gay characters -- Amazon is not known for its inclusivity -- but I've found gay subtexts in several episodes, so I'm reviewing Episode 4.1 (2026).  At least Reach Boy will take his shirt off.

Scene 1: Reacher is on a subway, eating a cheese steak (so you know he's in Philadelphia). He cruises a mousy-looking middle-aged man. Into ratboys, Reacher?  No, he's using his Sherlock Holmes skills to figure out the home country, job, and psychological profile of the other passengers.  For instance, that woman crying and muttering to herself, her hands inside a blue purse: a suicide bomber!

He approaches and tries to talk her down, but she keeps crying and tells him to leave.  The train jolts, and she pulls out a gun.  Reacher thought it was a bomb. 

"I can help.  I was a cop before I became a drifter."

 "No one can help me now." She shoots herself!  Why shoot yourself on a subway?  

Scene 2: Reacher is interviewed by two detectives. The Bad Cop claims that they're going to arrest him for murder, but he realizes that they're just stalling.  Good Cop: "The feds are coming down from DC to ask you some questions, if you wouldn't mind sticking around."

"Ok, if you bring me a cheese steak." 

Left: Reacher in his underwear-bulge modeling days.

Another problem; He saw four other passengers in the subway car, but they only found three.  What happened to Ratboy? 

While he's waiting, we meet the victim's brother Jacob, still in shock.

Scene 3: Three feds arrive. He surmises that they're the B-team, roused from their beds to interview the last person to speak to the dead woman.  They won't tell him their agency or their names, so he calls them Snap (Jason Diaz, top photo), Crackle (Michael Gaty, left), and Pop.  The mascots of Kellogg's Rice Krispies.  Is that still around?

Left: Michael Gaty is gay in real life, but his character doesn't say anything identifiable.

They accuse Reacher of treason, and asked if he received anything from the victim. Nope.  

"Are you sure you didn't receive something, and hide it, planning to come back later?"

Nope.  "What are you so concerned about/"

They won't say, so he leaves.

But he's not done.  Two more guys get out of their car, speaking Indonesian (Armando Alera, nude after the break, and Joe Labelle).  They ask  if she gave him anything. 

"No."

"Did you give the flash drive to the police?"  Didn't you hear what he just said?

They attack, so he clobbers them and walks away.

Scene 4: Jacob (Chris Marquette), the victim's brother, is in the coffee shop across the street. Reacher approaches him. 

"My adopted sister couldn't have killed herself, because she was a happy person.  She loved her job (Human Resources at an Army base), she loved her son (football star at Temple). Everything was perfect."  Hint: the important part is "adopted."

Reach asks if she had any enemies?  No -- the father of her son left when she got pregnant, then died in a car crash.  "I helped raise Ben."

You don't mention a wife and kids, Jake Baby.  For a 40-year old man, that's a clear queer code.

Son Ben doesn't know about his mother yet, since Jacob can't get ahold of him.  He's not answering his phone.  Well, it's only about 6:00 am.  He's probably still asleep.

Ben, played by Denis Wong (the one wearing clothes),  will appear in Episodes 2-4.  Looks like an ongoing story arc this season.

While they talk, the background song is "Morning, Noon, and Night," by Joe Turner:

Sit down baby, let's have a little drink
Love you, pretty baby, morning, noon, and night.

Come on, Reach, the guy just lost his sister.  This is not the right time to ask him out.

The Indonesians are back, so Reacher buys the flash drive of a coffee shop patron.  "You wait here and try to get in touch with your nephew.  I'll be back in 90 minutes.

Left: A random Indonesian guy.

Indonesia is one of the most diverse countries in the world, with over 60 ethnic groups. mostly Austronesian (Javanese, Sundanese).  98% are Muslim.  The Indonesian language is a lingua franca formed from a standardized Malay. 

English: Get on your knees

Malay: Berlutut

Indonesian: Berlutut-lah

English: I have a big penis

Malay: Saya mem-punyai zakar yang besar

Indonesian: Saya punya zakar yang besar

More after the break

Rick Gomez: What has Endless Mike of "Pete & Pete" been doing lately? Is Steve Zahn his boyfriend? Is he really endless? With Rick d*ck

Remember this?

Hey smilin' strange
You're lookin' happily deranged
Can you settle to shoot me?
Or have you picked your target yet

It's the theme song of The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1991-95), the first of the Nickelodeon "adults are insane" teencoms.  Two brothers, both named Pete, negotiate the weirdness of the city of Wellsville, where no one is really well. 

A bowling ball has mystical powers.

A garage band vanishes overnight.

Little Pete accidentally erases baseball from existence.

I liked Rick Gomez as Endless Mike, who knows more about the town's weirdness than he lets on.  He sometimes bullies and humiliates Big Pete, and sometimes acts as his ally and protector. You might even find a gay subtext in their interaction.

No one ever explains why his name is Endless.  Maybe the teenage boy is a manifestation of a transdimensional being who exists beyond time and space as we perceive it.

Or maybe he's got a big one.

When Pete & Pete ended, I moved on to other things, and thought about Endless Mike rarely, if at all.  And the years passed.

Recently we started watching Silo (2023-), a dystopian science fiction series where 10,000 people, all of surviving humanity (that they know of) live in a huge underground helix.  They can't go outside, or ever open the single door, because the air is poisonous (or so they are told). 

And there in the cast list was Rick Gomez!

He plays Patrick Kennedy, a maintenance worker with a dead wife (of course) who sells strictly-forbidden relics from the Before Time.  He starts to suspect that they are being lied to (they are, sort of), and joins the Resistance.  

Right: Steve Zahn plays Solo, who survived a rebellion in his own silo, where everyone went outside and died.  They buddy bond in Season 3.

A few years have passed, but you can still see that insoucient, all-knowing smile.  

I wanted to check what Rick has been doing since 1995, whether he is actually gay in real life, and if he is really endless.

Searching for "Rick Gomez," "actor," and "nude" yields a lot of photos of Rick kissing guys and showing his butt (left) in at least three movies, but it turns out to be a Google Images misdirection.  The gay/nude actor is Ricardo Gomez.

Our Rick starred in five tv series between Pete & Pete and Silo.

1. Hitz (1997), about workers at a record company (remember records?)

2. Band of Brothers (2001), about World War II soldiers. Rick plays George Luz, who does some buddy-bonding during the War, but then returns to Rhode Island and does the married-with-children bit.

Not much of gay interest so far.

More after the break

"Lost Boys": Music video by Phoebe Bridgers, with Skyler Gisondo escaping to Middle Earth, or not, plus the boyfriend's dick and two nude extras

  

I'm not happy with the Gemstone guys since the show ended in 2025.  Both Adam Devine (Kelvin) and Tony Cavalero (Keefe) were married to women, but they played a lot of gay-subtext roles, and in their social media, they minimized their heterosexual interests, even pretending to be into guys.  

When the show ended, it suddenly became wife and kids, marriage and family, all through their social media, and their productions are entirely gay-free, even gay-subtext free.

Gavin Munn filled his social media with buddies and grown-up beefcake guys, until the Gemstones ended.  Then it was "Screw this, I'm taking a girl to junior prom!"

Skyler Gisondo is the worst of the lot.  His social media was full of homoerotic buddy-bonds, with girls rarely if ever mentioned -- until the show ended.  Then it was "Here's my girlfriend!  Have you met my girlfriend?  I have a girlfriend!"  And his Superman (2025) involved blatant, slap-in-the-face queerbaiting: "I'm going to pretend I'm gay for two hours, then pull the rug out from under you in the last scene, har har!"

Skyler's latest work is in the music video "Lost Boys," by Phoebe Bridgers, an American singer/songwriter who has won four Grammies for her "melancholy" songs with complex lyrics mirroring personal issues. 

Left: The penis of Phoebe's partner, Bo Burnham.

Phoebe is bisexual and an advocate for LGBTQ rights, and "Lost Boys" usually has a strong homoerotic connotation: the boys are "lost" because they have rejected the heterosexist trajectory into job, house, wife, and kids in favor of the infinite joy of the world of men.

We stop the fight right now, we got to be who we are.

So doubtless the song is about that joy.  

Right?

Scene 1: Phoebe, dressed as the Elf Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings,, drives with her knight on a motorcycle to a LARP battle in an auto graveyard.  The players are dressed as Medieval warriors. But it's a real battle, with blood and fire.

The first stanza seems to be about joining the army, "Where they make you cut your hair/ Impatient with a rifle and your papers." 

Scene 2: They have dinner in a Japanese restaurant, looking depressed.

Scene 3: They stop into a convenience store for snacks, and clerk Skyler is awestricken. Phoebe pays with magic, smiles, and leaves.

Scene 4: Skyler rushes to the basement, grabs a pickaxe and a football helmet, and rushes out.  He spies on the group as they practice their swordsmanship and have another dinner at the Japanese restaurant.

The next stanza has nothing to do with the story.   Phoebe recounts a time in East Berlin where her ex "threw a tantrum with a 57 (microphone) and broke a rib."

More after the break

Jeremy Sumpter's half-naked Peter Pan gave a generation of boys their gay awakening. But has he done anything gay lately? Or naked?

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Spider-Man: Brand New Day: Spidey bulges, visits a bathhouse, and brings a guy flowers. But it's not what you think.

 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are not great at LGBT representation, and for some reason Spider-man movies are the worst of the lot: "Like all stories, and I mean every single story that has ever been told from Gilgamesh on to the present, including Death in Venice, The City and the Pillar, Call Me By Your Name, and Heartstopper, this story is about a boy and a girl."   So I went into Spider-Man: Brand New Day expecting to hear "feminine smiles are the meaning of life!" every few minutes.

I wasn't wrong.

There are three plotlines that actually could be three separate movies.

Plot #1: In the last movie, Spidey, aka Peter Parker (Tom Holland), zapped the memories of his True Love MJ and buddy Ned to "keep them safe."  Now he's living as a full-time superhero, ignoring the advice of his supervisor and the superhero Black Widow that he should get a girlfriend. 

Suddenly his powers start accelerating, giving him Hulk-style Roid Rage, but his web things fail to work at the most awkward moments.  He needs a device to inhibit some of his spider DNA while allowing the rest of it to keep giving him superpowers.  So he seeks out Incredible Hulk Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, left), who teaches at Empire State University.

Hulky has lost his True Love.

Cliche alert: His Advanced Physics class is held in a giant lecture hall, like all college classes in movies.

Plot #2: 

After interrogating the various people who helped the Supervillain Scorpion (Michael Mando) escape, Spidey realizes that they're dealing with a being who can jump from mind to mind, peering into their memories and controlling their actions.  They're interested in getting access to a secret vault at the Damage Control headquarters (where they clean up the damage caused by superhero fights, including a lot of superpower-enhancing detritus).  

Eventually the being occupies the mind of Spidey's True Love MJ, and threatens to kill her unless he helps with their goal.  But some of the stuff at Damage Control could kill millions of people, so Spidey refuses.

More after the break, with a spoiler and a cock.

Five things I like and five that I don't like about "My Brother, the Minotaur." #5 involves butts and Ely d*ck

 

My Brother the Minotaur (2026) is an Irish animated series about a minotaur boy named Lorcan (voiced by Ely Solan, left) being raised by humans.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur is a monster, the offspring of Pasiphaë and a bull, hidden away in the Labyrinth and fed human youth, but here minotaurs are humanoid beings with massive torsos and bull-horns.

Lorcan's questions about his heritage become urgent as he enters his teen years, and begins experiencing rage, sudden horn hardening (symbolic of something or other), and disturbing nightmares.  Meanwhile, strange things are happening in the village.

After watching several episodes, here is my evaluation:

Things I dislike:

1. Lorcan's main ally is his younger brother Charlie.  Making him a brother rather than a friend removes any possibility of gay subtext, even after they rescue each other, say "I'm not leaving without you," and so on.  

2. The boys have two female friends, Dana and Harper.  They don't express any romantic interest in the episodes I watched, but they may in the future.

3. The background players are entirely heteronormative. The boys have male-female parents and grandparents.  In crowd scenes, it's always male-female couples, never same-sex pairs.  Even in the school cafeteria, every table is occupied by boy-girl couples.

4. Leisure pursuits are entirely gender-polarized.  The boys' room is filled with stereotypic boys' toys.  In a later episode, we see a doll that Lorcan played with as a baby.

5. Antagonist Craignelder is an old-fashioned moustache-twirling melodrama villain, who wants Lorcan locked up because he's a bigot, and wants to buy the dad's coffee shop just to be mean, mwah-ha-ha. Wait -- isn't that doing the guy a favor?  He's also a femme stereotype, with ascot and ostantatious ring.

Left: Antagonist Craignelder is played by Michael Sheen.

Five things I liked after the break

Rooster Episode 1.1: Trashy novelist at an elite college, hetero romance problems, a gay sidekick, Dunster dick, and the guy from "Scrubs"

 

Robert Heinlein once complained that science fiction was about exploring the vastness of time and space, while mainstream fiction -- the Rabbit Runs, Appointments in Samarra, and  Complaining Portnoys of our college lit classes -- was about men who hate their jobs and their wives.  "For Heaven's sake, get new jobs, get new wives, and shut the f*k up."

I am reminded of that quote when I think of the works of Steve Carrell:  Anchorman, Dan in Real Life,  The 40 Year Old Virgin, Cafe Society,  Date Night, Dinner for Schmucks, The Morning Show, The Four Seasons, all about little men trying desperately to find meaning in jobs and wives that they hate. Coincidentally, this is precisely the "job, house, wife, kids" trajectory that I rebelled against growing up.

So I wasn't planning to watch the HBO MAX series Rooster (2026).  Then the promo showed a young man telling Steve, "nice washboard (abs)," referring to the hunk on the cover of his book.  Later he seems to become Steve's sidekick.  So Steve probably writes gay novels, and probably has a gay sidekick.  Enough potential to review Episode 1.

Scene 1:  Famous novelist Greg Russo (Steve) looks morose as he is escorted through the elegant Spanish Colonial campus of Ludlow College (actually the University of the Pacific, Stockton).  He sees a naked old guy, who waves -- but his escort, Eric (Myles Perez, left), doesn't see anyone.  A hallucination?

Eric tells him to wait here, then zones him out and refuses to speak anymore.  Fortunately, Professor Shepherd, who arranged his campus visit,  is just walking up. 

He's nervous -- he writes trashy beach novels, not literature: "Characters you like have sex, characters you don't like get shot in the face."  Why would elite college students want to see him?  

Scene 2: The reading, in a giant lecture hall.  The students criticize his protagonist, Rooster, for describing the Girl in food terms during their 17 sexual acts (18, if you count the blow job). Isn't that sexist?  

Russo counters that she is strong and powerful -- she rescues Rooster, remember? "But she takes off her bikini top to do it."   A jock praises that scene: "The Girl is smokin'!"  Hey, isn't he the gay sidekick?  I'm starting to suspect that I've been tricked.

Scene 3: Next Russo meets the College President (John C. McGinley, the homophobic, sexist jerk on Scrubs).  He strips to his underwear to show off his physique: "You're thinking, most college presidents are bookish shut-ins, but this guy is jacked!" He looks like the naked guy from earlier.  So it wasn't a hallucination, just a crazy act that would never happen on any real college campus.

They allude to a "sex scandal" involving Katie and Archie (not mentioned before), and the President offers Russo a job as Writer-in-Residence.  "But I didn't even go to college."  "Who cares?  It's over-rated."  Academic malaise at its snarkiest. 

Left: McGinley's butt

Scene 4:  Next stop: Another giant lecture hall, a lecture on French impressionism, Monet at Giverny.  It's Russo's daughter Katie, a professor of art history (and the sex scandal lady).  As the students leave, she notes that her Dad doesn't like interacting with other humans, so they can get extra credit for looking him in the eye and saying "I love you very much."  A student does it!

Next Katie points out that the college has asked Russo to do a reading a billion times; why agree now?  "Admit it -- you're checking up on me, to see if I'm ok after the sex scandal."  We finally find out what it is: her husband Archie dumped her for a grad student.  Hetero Romance Problem #1.  

She has no idea why. Everything was normal, and then she was moving into the dead hockey coach's house.   Everybody on campus knows, and keeps staring at her and asking questions.  And it's difficult to avoid running into him or his new girlfriend on a small campus.  She's about to crack.

She points them out, sitting on a park bench.  "The girlfriend isn't even hot.  She's like a regular person.  Why did he dump me for her?"  Maybe he liked her personality?

As Russo peeks through the bushes, husband Archie and the girlfriend leave, and a lesbian couple notice him.  They think he's a perv, har har.   He runs away as they film him.  

Spoiler alert: This is set up to have consequences, like Russo being arrested, or the job offer rescinded, but it is never mentioned again.

Scene 5: Russo stops at a convenience store for some water.  Tommy (Maximo Salas), the jock from earlier, praises the Rooster books. Uh-oh, he forgot his id, so Russo buys his beer for him.  If he's under 21, you're in big trouble, buddy.

More after the break

Charlie Ritter: John Ritter's grandson? Any on-screen roles? How many nude photos does it take to get through the girl-craziness?

 

When Charlie Ritter appeared on my Instagram recommendations, I assumed that he was the grandson of John Ritter, whose Jack Tripper pretended to be gay on Three's Company in the 1970s: the first time many of us had ever heard the word.  .

Grandson Charlie is obviously straight.  There are a few guy-hugging photos, but usually he's hugging, kissing, cuddling with, and frolicking with girls! girls! girls!

Just one girl, duck-lipping or peace-signing.

Two girls, one for each arm.

Four girls, two on his arms, one grabbing his shoulders, and the other on her knees for some reason.

When he goes to a museum, he photographs the statues of naked ladies.

Here he's just sitting in a restaurant.  Presumably being photographed by a girl, but none are visible...wait, there's one on the sidewalk outside. Even while sitting in a restaurant. You have to be within twenty feet of the Eternal Feminine at all times, don't you, Chuck Baby?

Come on, this is excessive, even for the Don Juan -- Casanova -- Arthur Fonzarelli of our generation.  How could you afford all the corsages?

At least he displays a nice physique, if you can find selfie shots, without the Girls! Girls! Girls!

You haven't seen most of the hugging, kissing, grabbing, pretending to strangle, duck-lipping, hand-holding, and boob-gazing, but I have, and I need a few cocks before going on to Charlie's acting career.

This might not be our Charlie, but I don't care.  I know where that cock has been.  Repeatedly.

More after the break

Mason McKenzie: From a fairy's dungeon to Poison Ivy, pickleball, Phi Psi and a physique. With Aidan, Mason, and the Hunter nude

 

Once Upon a Time, with the characters from all the Disney fantasy movies related in a complex genealogy, was almost entirely heterosexist.  There was a blink-and-you-miss-it lesbian romance (with the couple vanishing immediately after their kiss) and a few very brief gay-subtext romances. One of the most significant was between Gideon, son of the Rumpelstiltskin and Belle, and Roderick, his cellmate in the Black Fairy's dungeon.  They were played by Anton Starkman and Mason McKenzie as children, and Grayson Gabriel and Giles Mathey as adults.  

That's four actors to check.  

I've already profiled Anton Starkman.

Giles Matthey is extremely ugly, and straight.

There are too many Grayson Gabriels to find the actor.

That leaves Mason McKenzie.  At least he has a chest (above), a nice backside (left), and no tattoos to date.

Mason was born in 2005 in Barrie, Ontario, about an hour north of Toronto. After many tv commercials, he broke into scripted tv in two 2017 episodes of the soap When Calls the Heart, as the bullying nephew of evil railroad executive Jeremy Wyatt.  (Nikolas Ducik, left played his brother, Earl).

Then came the Once Upon a Time episode, a thriller, and two romcoms: Frozen in Love (2018) and Love Under the Rainbow (2019), not to be confused with Under the Rainbow, about the actors who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. 

You played the kids of the romantic leads, not the guys themselves, but still, it's not looking good for your gay representation score, Mason Baby.

In a 2019 episode of Project Blue Book, UFO researcher Hynek (Aidan Gillen, right) handles the case of a scoutmaster who disappeared after his troop witnessed a UFO.  Was he abducted by the Men in Black? Mason plays one of the scouts.

Another Aidan dick.

In a  2020 episode of The Baby-Sitters' Club,  Mary-Anne is hesitant about approaching her crush, so one-shot gay character Alex (David Raynolds, not Reynolds) tells her about his crush on a boy at theater camp.  Mason plays Toby, one of his friends, but not the crush. 

More after the break

The Lost Bus: Why did my partner choose this verkockten angst-fest for movie night? With McConaughey dick, ten hunks, and "Que sera, sera"

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