"We're Here": Drag queens bring love to homophobic small towns. With bonus small town guys' dicks

When I "figured it out," back in the 1980s, I immediately started looking for a safe place, where you weren't asked "What girl do you like?" every thirty seconds, where your friends wouldn't run away in horror if they found out, where you didn't have to hide all the time.  

Everyone did. They called it The Great Gay Migration: every gay man who could afford it, and many who couldn't, fled from their homophobic small towns to the gay neighborhoods of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York -- that's all we knew about, at first.  Later, some chose smaller gay neighborhoods in Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, and Toronto.  We went home once a year, maybe, to field questions about the hotness of California girls at Thanksgiving Dinner.

We knew that some LGBT people stayed home, or made the Great Gay Migration, then changed their minds and went back.  We had no idea why.  I still don't, after watching several episodes of We're Here, a reality series where three drag queens sashay down the street in small, redneck towns like Selma, Alabama; Watertown, South Dakota; and St. George, Utah.  I'd be afraid to go near them, even as  cisgender and masculine-presenting.  Establishing shots minimize the horrified looks and screeching about the Book of Leviticus, probably because you have to get the screechers' release: most people seem delighted by the sashaying queens in their dull, colorless town.

The queens teach some of the locals the basics of drag, like how to hide your bulge, and put on a show with them. 

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, amid the Confederate flags and monuments, they help:

A femme guy who works the makeup counter at the drug store.  His only gay friend in town moved to Philadelphia.  Why didn't you?

A cisgender straight guy who wants to do drag as an ally.

A woman who rejected her daughter when she came out as bisexual -- "I just thought, 'she's going over to the enemy."  Then she found the daughter's diary, and wondered what she did to make the girl consider suicide.  Being rejected by the family, maybe?  She wants to do drag to restore the relationship.

In the immensely Mormon, cowboy-redneck Twin Falls, Idaho, which looks horrible no matter how hard the queens work at finding it quaint, they help:

A queen who can spend months without ever seeing another queer person.

A reformed homophobe -- "I threw the slurs around.  I just thought, 'They're bad people.  Good people don't do that.'"

A transman and his wife. who haven't exactly been rejected by the family -- "Mom came to our wedding, but she wasn't happy about it."

In Christian-central Branson, Missouri, they help:

A Dad who wants to do drag to become more emotionally available to his sick daughter.

Tanner, who came out at age 17.  His mother was completely supportive.  Then he decided that he had to choose God over the "homosexual lifestyle."  She doesn't get it.  He wants to do drag do let Mom know that it's ok, he's going to heaven, so he doesn't need sex or romance on Earth.

Grr -- the second thing I did after "figuring it out" was to find a gay-friendly church, and there was one in my homophobic small town 40 years ago.  Somebody tell this guy that the five "clobber verses" in the Bible have nothing to do with contemporary LGBT people or committed gay relationships, being gay is ok in most mainstream Protestant churches, and 70% of young evangelicals support gay marriage.

More after the break

Black Monday Episode 2.4: Downlow financier, closeted Congressman, and a photocopied dick in the homophobic 1980s.

 

Black Monday, October 17, 1987, is named after a stock market crash that resulted in a drop of 22.6% in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and $500 billion in losses in the U.S., 1.7 trillion dollars worldwide.  I didn't hear anything about it at the time: in West Hollywood we didn't concern ourselves with such trivial matters as finances.  But apparently in the straight world, it was a big deal.  

I still find the world of finance immensely boring, but I happened to notice that an episode of the 2019-22 Black Monday tv series showed Andrew Rannells having sex with a guy -- the scene I used as an illustration for my Gideon-Keefe fan fiction -- so I checked out Episode 2.4, "Fore."

Scene 1: Bosses Dawn, a middle aged black woman, and Blair (Andrew Rannells) , a swishy white man, show horndogs Wayne and Yassir(Horatio Sanz, Yassir X) a photocopy of an enormous penis. They've received an anonymous sexual harassment complaint.  Blair yells at them: "The women in the office don't want to look at that, and neither do I."  

And this is a bad time: Congress is about to pass deregulation, so we'll be getting generational wealth. You'll be able to set up your kids' kids' kids If Amerasavings gets wwind of this,.... Ugh, economics and politics.  Let's get some zombies up in here.

The guys protest that it wasn't them, but they are punished by being placed in the "Rubber Room" for a month, and they have to apologize to every woman in the office.  Then Blair leaves --- he has to go play golf with Congressman Roger  (Tuc Watkins, Andrew's real-life boyfriend) to ensure that he will vote for deregulation.  Dawn can't come, because she's not a white man. Wait -- he calls her "babe."  Are they romantic partners, too?

Scene 2:  The horndogs figure that they've been framed, targeted by "some lying bitch" for being the last old-school "women should enjoy getting their butts grabbed" horndogs in the office. Their plan: find out who issued the bogus complaint, apologize, and then "get revenge." 

Scene 3: Blair goes back to his apartment -- still under construction -- and starts making out with his boyfriend -- Congressman Roger!  

Meanwhile, a lady bursts into the office to yell at the "home-wrecking harlot" who's destroying their marriage.  She wasn't expecting a middle aged black lady: "Blair" sounds more like a young, giggly blond, like the girl from Facts of Life.   

"This is a mixup from the tits up," Dawn assures her.  Blair is a man.  He goes golfing with Congressman Roger to push for his deregulation vote.  A downlow romance!  Neither of the wives know!

"But they golf all the time, in Palm Springs, San Francisco, Fire Island,,," Gay meccas, har-har.

"Standard business trips." A perfect example of heteronormativity: gay men cannot exist, so everything must have a heterosexual explanation.

The Wife, Corky, insists: "Blair and my husband are having sex...with other women, and using each other as alibis."  Come on, no one is that stupid!

Dawn calls Blair to prove that he is playing golf -- just as he is about to.... The wives will be driving out to the country club to meet them on the golf course.  "um...what hole are you in?"  Har-har.

Uh-oh, Blair knows nothing about golf, and it's too late to learn!

Scene 4: The horndogs try to play "good cop/bad cop" while interrogating the women. Except Yassir thinks they're supposed to both be bad cops, because "all cops are bad."

Scene 5: On the way to the country club, Wife Corky complains that Congressman Roger has betrayed her with a "nancy."  Dawn insists that Blair isn't gay, but Wife  Corky meant "a Nancy Reagan," who stole future President Reagan away from his first wife, Jane Wyman. Har-har.

She does happen to be the daughter of a Jerry Falwell-like homophobic televangelist.  He sells a special cologne that can "spray the gay away."

More after the break

"A Man in Full" or "The Fullness of Man" or "Filling a Man." Whatever, it has a wild penis scene

 

While I am scrolling through my new photo feed, I am shocked to find two that are extremely explicit (after the break).  In the first, an older man wearing a suit catches a young man having anal sex with his boyfriend.  So Dad didn't know that he was gay?  In the second, the young man confronts the older man -- while fully aroused, and huge!

The caption says Tom Pelphrey, whom I've never heard of, in the movie A Man in Full.  It must have a gay theme -- gay men being accused of being "not really men," and all that.

Tom Pelphrey has 10,000 photos on the internet, but he usually looks much older, so this must be a movie from early in his career.  Probably European -- what American movie would show full arousal?

More research reveals that he starred in Ozark, but I can't tell which character.  An article in People says Perry Abbott, but a Reddit feed says that he was AMAZING as Ben.  The Ozark wiki mentions Ben, "a major antagonist in the third season," but not Perry Abbott, so People must be wrong.

Here's a long shot of Ben's butt.

Next I try to look up A Man in Full, but it's such a nonsensical title that I keep searching on A Full Man and The Fullness of Men instead.   When I finally get the title right, it's not an artsy European movie from the early 2000s, it's a tv series that dropped on Netflix in 2024!  Atlanta real estate mogul Charlie Croker, played by famous actor Jeff Daniels, goes bankrupt, and has to defend his empire. Isn't that, like, "Succession"?  

Jeff Daniels is best known for the adulation of 1990s stupidity Dumb and Dumber. Here he shows a bulge in Something Wild (1986).

Tom Pelphrey plays "Raymond Peepgrass" Ridiculous name! This guy is a voyeur of lawns?

Wikipedia doesn't say who he is, so I'm assuming from the photo, the rich guy's lawyer?  Why would he care if his lawyer is gay?

Looking for a photo of Croker and Peepgrass -- Peepgrass? --  together, I get the name of the series wrong again!

Reviews mention "a wild scene" and "a shocking scene," but fail to say what episode, so I surmise the last, "Judgment Day."  I fast forward to the very last scene of the series.

A peep at Peepgrass after the break. Warning: Explicit.

Andrew Santino: "Aren't gay guys hilarious? But have you heard what they do in bed?"

Today I started a review of Royal Crackers, an animated series on MAX about a family running a cracker empire.  As usual, I checked to see if any of the actors have beefcake photos or are gay.

Andrew Santino, who plays the washed-up rock star son: About a dozen beefcake photos.

Including a group rear.  Notice that the guy on the left has a cock hanging down.

And a frontal with a sock.

Gay: he's on a list of gay male celebrities, but there are also clips saying "Andrew responds to gay rumors," "I'm not gay no more," "Andrew finds out that he's gay,"  "Andrew's gay lover," "Andrew fails the gay test."

Well, which is it?  Is he gay, ex-gay, straight, bi, pan, straight but pretending to be gay as a joke?

Who is this guy, anyway?'

He appears in Game Over, Man and Adam Devine's House Party, and later interviews Adam on the Whiskey Ginger podcast: "What was your worst review?"

Adam: "I don't really get bad reviews, but sometimes they devote three paragraphs to my dick and only two lines to my acting."

More Andrew after the break. No more Adam, though.

"Pitch Perfect": Nerd Ben Pratt, hunk Skylar Astin, and jerk Adam Devine. What could go wrong? With nude dudes

 Pitch Perfect (2012) is comedy about dueling a capella choirs.  I didn't even know that a capella groups were a thing, but wikipedia lists dozens of them, and Music Grotto ranks the best groups (#1 is Pentatonix).  Regardless, if it's about music, there's bound to be some gay characters.  

Scene 1: An all-male a capella choir, the Barden University Treblemakers led by Bumper (Adam Devine), performs "Don't Stop the Music" at Lincoln Center, to rousing applause!  

In the booth, the judges discuss how perfect they are for the International Championship of Collegiate A Capella Groups (I want this to spell something dirty, but it doesn't), and how all the ladies in the room are hot for them.  Ugh, heterosexism in the first second: the only reason a man does anything is to get ladies.  

They perform some cool moves. Bumper does a "sexy man-split", struts for the fangirls, and insults the next group: an all-female choir.  They're the first girl group to get this far in the competition because, according to the judges, girls just don't have the range.  I think we're supposed to condemn the judges for being sexist.

Dressed like 1960s stewardesses, the Bellas sing a snoozefest song. Then one throws up.  Projectile vomiting in the first five minutes!  Yuck! The judges actually like this: it add excitement to their act.

Scene 2:  This must be a flashback.  Beca takes a taxi to move-in day at the stately, ivy-halled university.  She meets her new roommate, who hates her from the start, even more when she brings out her DJ equipment.  

Her dad drops by: Dr. Mitchell, a Professor of Comparative Literature.  I majored in that in grad school, for about ten minutes. It was stiflingly elitist. He insists that she give college a chance; she can move to California and become a dj later.

Meanwhile, the hunky Jesse  (Skylar Astin, left) meets his new roommate, Benji (Ben Platt, below), a Star Wars nerd and amateur magician.  To his credit, Jesse doesn't insult him.  (Ben Platt is gay in real life, so maybe his character is gay).

Scene 3: The Activities Fair.  Hunky Jesse tells Magician Benji that the hottest club on campus is Bumper's A Capella Group. It's what being a man is all about.  He points to where Bumper is asking passing girls if they want him to whip it out. But they're sexist jerks!

Meanwhile the head Barden Bella rejects a girl because her boobs are inadequate.  More sexist jerks!  She only wants "super-hot girls with bikini bodies who can harmonize and have perfect pitch." Her assistant suggests maybe recruiting girls who can sing, like Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson).  Yes, she calls herself that.  

Scene 4: An incredible hunk in a swimsuit is passing out fliers, but Beca ignores him.  Maybe we're supposed to conclude that she's gay?   

She stops at a booth called the Barden DJs, since she wants to be a DJ, but it's actually a group for Deaf Jews, har har.

Head Barden Bella tries to recruit her for the Bellas, but she refuses: it sounds tremendously lame. 

Meanwhile, Nerd Benji is desperate to join the Treblemakers, but Bumper says no.  But Bumper's singing changed his life!  Maybe they could hang out sometime?  Nope: "The smell of your weird is affecting my vocal chords."  Dude, pick someone who doesn't sneer all the time.  Your new roommate seems nice.  

Scene 5:  Beca finds a campus radio station that plays funky alternative music. Wait, she has a job there.  On move-in day?  Turns out that Hunk Jesse works there too.    Time for a meet-cute?  Nope, she hates him. Station manager Luke (Freddie Stroma, left) tells them that, as freshmen, they can't go into the DJ booth; their job is to sort CDs.  Ugh!  

Scene 6: Dad wakes Beca up.  "You've been here a month, and still no friends?  Geez, I thought it was the next day.  "Get with the program."   "I work at the radio station?" "With those weirdos?"  He forces her to join a student club. 

She heads to the shower room (fortunately, we don't see anything.)  Surprise -- she's being stalked by the Bella Aubrey, who gets way too close as she importunes Beca to join.  Ok, ok, just get your hands off my junk!

Scene 6:  The auditions for all four a capella groups at once.  I guess you sing for all of them, and we can watch Bumper insulting more people. 

The host, Kolio (David Del Rio), specifies that this is not a high school club, where you "can sing and dance your way through any social issue or confused sexuality."  Ok, that's homophobic, claiming that gay people are "confused."   "This isn't high school, it's real life."  I get it: gay people do not exist in real life.  

The auditions are mostly awful.  I expected Beca to nail it, but she does a weird thing with clapping and a cup.  Everyone is shocked by how awful she is, but she's in anyway.  Almost everyone who auditioned gets in. 

More a capella after the break

Steve Zahn: From 1990s golden boy to 2020s depressed dad, with nudity all the way down.

 

Steve Zahn started his career in theater Biloxi Blues, Bye, Bye, Birdie, and the off-Broadway Sopistry: "a beloved philosophy professor is charged with sexually assaulting a male student. Gay themes are starting early.  

Both Steve and his costar Ethan Hawke were cast in Reality Bites (1994), about depressed Gen X-ers in Houston. Steve plays one of those endlessly depressed gay guys you see in movies of the era, who doesn't actually do anything gay except come out to his mother.

 More weird, experimental, and depressing bits followed, such as SubUrbia (1996): Steve plays Buff, one of a group of disillusioned teens in the bleak urban wastelands of the 1990s.  I didn't live in a bleak urban wasteland, and there were no gay characters, so I couldn't relate. 

In a 1995 episode of Friends, we learn that Phoebe married a gay Canadian ice hockey player (Steve), so he can get his green card.  Except he decides that he's not gay after all.  Seems like a pattern developing. 

Next came The Object of My Affection (1998), which I didn't see because it seemed homophobic: a gay guy turns straight because women are so hot, but then goes back to gay again.  Steve plays the gay-straight-gay guy's brother.

I avoided Saving Silverman (2001), thinking that it was about a lesbian who changes to straight. That appears to be another movie: this Silverman is a guy about to make a disastrous marriage, so his friends try to reunite him with the Girl of His Dreams.  One of the friends, J.D. (Jack Black), comes out and marries his high school Coach (R. Lee Ermy), but I think it's played for homophobic laughs.  Steve plays one of the friends, who here is trying to become flexible enough to perform oral sex on himself.  Just ask JD to do it for you.

In the thriller Joy Ride (2001),  Lewis (Paul Walker), traveling cross-country to pursue the Girl of His Dreams, of course, stops to pick up his estranged brother (Steve).  

They run afoul of a road-rage driven trucker, but meet a girl for Steve to fade-out with.  Plus they have to walk into a gas station nude.

More Steve after the break

"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big.

During the 1970s and 1980s, gay men appeared in movies almost exclusively as limp-wristed hairdressers and drag queens with murderous split personalities.  Cruising, 1980, promised something different: gay men with apartments, jobs, and hangouts; and who were masculine, actually super-macho, with muscles, club bulges, and leather chaps.

Sounds like fun, right?  Wrong.

The tv promo said only that Al Pacino would play a cop who "disappears into the darkness," and the theatrical trail showed him putting on makeup, plus men dancing together, and brief flashes of the words "homosexual,"  "violence," "murder," "fear," and "sex").  
The movie wasn't playing in Rock Island, so one cold Saturday my boyfriend Fred and I drove an hour west to the college town of Iowa City to see our first gay movie, ever.

The plot: in sleazy, decadent gay bar, a "homosexual" played by Arnaldo Santana cruises a mysterious stranger.  After discussing what turned them gay, they go home together, where the stranger politely asks the "homosexual," to lie still while he stabs him to death.  Santana complies!

During the 1970s, criminologists often theorized about why gay men would pick up total strangers for sex.  Some said that they were unable to control their "deviant" sexual desires, and others, that they were looking for a quick, easy way to destroy society by "wasting their seed" instead of making a baby. But most said that they felt so guilty over being gay that they wanted to be murdered.

More bar pickups, more murders. There's a gay serial killer out there "targeting his own!"  Police detective Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is asked to go undercover and catch him.  

So he moves into a sleazy apartment in the bad part of town, puts on a leather vest, applies makeup, and goes cruising.

He befriends his next door neighbor (Don Scardino), but runs afoul of Ted's effeminate, histrionic dancer-boyfriend (James Remar).

Occasionally Steve sees his girlfriend, but he becomes less and less interested in her as he is infected by the "gay lifestyle."

More sin, degradation, and dicks after the break

Aaron Taylor-Johnson: Varying levels of hotness and homophobia, but his cock stays the same.

 

I seem to be collecting Aarons. This is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, born in 1990 in the quaintly named High Wycombe, 29 miles west of Charing Cross.  You can't get more English than that. He began acting at the age of six, did local theater and broke into film with a string of gay-subtext relationships: 

Tom and Thomas (2002), about two brothers (both played by Aaron) who find each other after many years apart and embark on an adventure in order to stay together.

The Thief Lord (2006), an adaption of the German novel about two outcasts who find each other on the mean streets of Venice.

The Magic Door (2007), a heroic fantasy with a rather buffed elf helping a human boy defeat a troll.

Then things get very heterosexist very fast.

Nowhere Boy, 2009, a biopic of the teen years of future Beatle John Lennon.  I suppose they couldn't help making the young John hetero-horny, but having a girl give him a blow job to seal the deal?

Kick-Ass (2010) is about a teen nerd who becomes a superhero. Funny, we never see high school A-list jocks getting superpowers.  When his bulgeworthy spandex costume is discovered, he's assumed to be a gay hustler, to the constant teasing of his classmates.  However, the assumption of gayness allows him to win The Girl of His Dreams.

Chatroom (2010) is a rather homophobic drama about a sociopathic teen using social media to encourage bad behavior.   He convinces his friend Jim to commit suicide, and kisses him to "seal the deal."

Next Aaron starred in Savages (2012) as pot grower Ben, who is in a triadic relationship with Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and their shared girlfriend.  It's all subtext, but sometimes subtext is good enough.

At least we get a more explicit butt shot -- while he is sexing the girl.

More homophobia and dicks after the break

Empire: Which son should run the hiphop empire, the finance major, the big dick, or the gay one? With some butts and bulges

 

Since I used nude photos of Jussie Smollett and Terrence Howard as illustrations in the Gemstones Episode 3.8 review, I feel obligated to review the series they're in: Empire (2015-2020), about a hiphop mogul trying to decide which of his children should get his multimillion dollar recording business after he dies. 

Scene 1: A woman in a recording booth, singing a R&B song, while Terrence Howard's Lucious, head of the recording empire, listens: "I got time on my side...why you leaving so soon?" Uh-oh, Lucey is doomed!   

He tells her to "sing like it's your last day on Earth."  Ok, enough foreshadowing.  Let's get on with the terminal diagnosis.  He flashes back to it, then tells her to sing like she just had to identify her brother's body after he was murdered.  Ok, now she's singing in an agonizing shriek.  Lucey is satisfied, kisses the hand of a masculine-presenting woman, and wakes up the fat guy on the couch. 

Scene 2:  Party on the deck of his platinum-album-strewn office.  Ugh, close-up of a bikini babe.  I counted ten bikini babes, four fully-clothed men. So far, so heterosexist.

Gross, a woman is feeding a man!  That's a major trigger, causing immediate disgust.  Get your own damn food!  In-universe, it's meant to designate that he has such a big penis that women would do anything to get him in bed.   Another gives him a whiff of a cigarette.  Big Penis appears to be Lucey's youngest son, Hakeem, played by Bryshere Y. Gray.

Cut to another guy composing music on the piano.  Big Penis jumps in.  They sing about being ready to hit the top, go to the limit, get money and girls.  Why, are you going to get 30 women instead of your usual 15?

A slightly older man in a suit and his wife look down from above, disapproving of his brothers' rambunctiousness, wondering why Hakeem is singing when Dad's not around.  

Scene 3: Lucey and the masculine-presenting woman in the back of a limo, talking about his big announcement. They arrive, get mobbed by reporters and fans, and go into a gigantic office, where he kisses her.  Must be his wife Porsha, played by Ta'Rhonda Jones, who is an LGBT ally but doesn't usually have a masculine gender presentation. 

Lucy's secretary gives him a rundown of the day's requests.  He says no to The Tonight Show and grudgingly ok to President Obama -- "but this is the last timee."  

In a board room, twirling a basketball, Luscious waxes nostalgic about the music that kept him alive when he was growing up on the streets. But now people download music for free, so kids growing up in the projects can't escape by composing and singing songs. Well, to be fair, less than one in a million wannabes makes a living as a singer/songwriter, but it's a nice hobby.  Empire Music is going to change all that by being a commodity on the New York Stock Exchange.  

Scene 4: Dining room, with a painting of a hot guy on the wall, although yellow pants against a yellow background might not be the best choice.

The guys who did the "I'm ready to be rich and famous" song are sitting at the table. There's no food.  

The Suit Guy enters and asks Jamal, the one who was playing the piano, about "that friend of yours."  Euphemism for a gay partner?  Jamal is upset because Suit Guy didn't show up for dinner; they cooked and everything.  "I forgot."  

Lucey enters and lambasts them for not being prepared to take over his music empire. He's going to die soon, and "I need one of you to man up and lead it." He'll be deciding who during the next few episodes. 

Scene 5: Cookie, a woman with big hair and a very short skirt, is leaving prison. 

 Meanwhile, Looney and Suit Guy  observe a wrestling match and congratulate each other on how much money they're going to make on the kid. He must be Lucey's eldest son Andre, played by Trae Byers

Suit Guy suggests that since he has a degree in finance, he's best qualified to run the company, but Lucey disagrees: it should be a celebrity, like Big Dick.

Later, Lucey's assistant reveals that Cookie has been released from prison.  Lucey wants round-the-clock surveillance. 

Scene 6: Jamal, played by Jussie Smollett, complains to his boyfriend that Dad would never choose him to run the empire, because he's a card-carrying, slur-slinging homophobe.  He's out at Minute 11 of the first episode.   Hear that, Kelvin?  

More gay guys after the break

LIttlekenny: A kid-sized version of "Letterkenny," with a gay kid, less homophobia, and some grown-up butts

 

Someone told me that Letterkenney, one of the numerous comedies about quirky small towns in Canada, was "quietly queer-friendly."  So I watched the first episode. Umm...it was about trying to get the central character Wayne to fight by saying that he was like a woman, or that he was gay, with more homophobic slurs per minute than a high school locker room after gym class.  Interestingly, one of the homophobes told his chums that he was, in fact, gay.  

The head homophobe said "We know, and we support you.  Now let's get back to implying that Wayne is gay to get him angry enough to fight."  That is way homophobic. Imagine if, instead of gay, they figured that the best way to get Wayne angry was to imply that he was Jewish. 

Other guys in the episode get gay or woman accusations for dating a "good Christian girl,"  for having his girlfriend stolen by another guy, and for using the Tindr heterosexual dating app. Definitely not "quietly queer."

So when Hulu dropped a kid's version, Littlekenney, I streamed it out of curiosity: kids are usually much more homophobic than adults, but six homophobic slurs per minute would be a tough record to break.  How low could they go?

It's not actually for kids, it just features child-versions of the characters.  There are only six episodes, each about two minutes long, and about a third is taken up by a "Mature" proviso and Hulu displaying the name Hulu over and over -- you don't notice how annoying it is until you see it every two minutes.  Half of the episodes don't have a plot: they consist of the boys reciting the problems of other kids at Letterkenny School, like getting in trouble for farting or eating paste.

Episode 1: Two boys recite some of the problems.  They promise that with 500 kids, there will be 500 problems, but we only hear eight or so. No homophobic content.

Episode 2: The teacher tries to mentor the mentally disabled Darryl.  Then two bullies harass him.  Next, she tries to mentor the surly outcast Wayne.  After school, the bullies harass Katy.  Wayne intervenes, and they all become friends. 

I think Wayne grows up to be the central character, played by Jared Keeso, who everyone is trying to force into fighting by calling him gay and a woman.

 

Bonus: Jared Keeso's butt.

Episode 3. More problems. Three involve being gay, or Dad trying to prevent you from "turning" gay:

"Your friend showed you his dick and said it was a mouse, and you said that was the only one-eyed mouse you ever saw."

"You and your friend touched tubes, and your Dad got real cross, but he got even meaner when Mom said he probably did that as a boy, too."

"You got campiest camper award at the Cub Scouts, and now Dad wants you to play football instead,"

More after the break

Workaholics Episode 3.7: Bodybuilders for the Lord turn out to be gay, so the guys try to help. With Kali cock

Adam Devine said on his podcast that Workaholics Episode 3.7 inspired Danny McBride to offer him the role of Kelvin on The Righteous Gemstones.   I'm not so sure: this episode aired in 2012, long before the Gemstones,     Unlikely, since it aired in 2012, long before The Righteous Gemstones was ever conceived of.  But there are certainly parallels between the Gaylord's Force and Kelvin's God Squad.

Scene 1: The guys are hiding in a supply closet at work, watching The Lord's Force, bodybuilders who perform strength stunts.  "How did these buffed dudes escape my radar?" Blake wonders. Their interest in hot guys has never been more obvious.  

The Lord's Force is performing in town tomorrow. Adam wants to watch the show, then try out.  Der protests that the show is religious, and Adam doesn't believe in anything. 

"I'm very religious!  Father, Son, whatever.  Noah's ark, two animals having sex."

Scene 2: The show is sold out. They try to get in by claiming to be bad people who need salvation:  Doesn't work. Darn, I wanted to see the actual show.

Scene 3: They wait outside until two members of the Lord's Force, Ram and Samson (Adam Dunnells, Scott Connors), come out.  Adam begs them to go out for a beer with him.  Wait -- Evangelicals don't drink. 

Scene 4: At the bar, drinking shots. Ram and Samson go out to smoke. The guys don't smoke, but decide that it would be cool, so they rush out to find Ram and Samson.. .kissing?  They are shocked.

Of course, bodybuilders can't be gay, so the guys figure that they're just good buddies, checking o each other's breath, so they are ready to "kiss hot chicks"?  Strangely, I heard that on fan boards after the Kelvin-Keefe kiss. 

Their manager, Rev. Troy, pulls up.  This is a homophobic squad -- the guys are busted!  They claim that they are playing "gay chicken," where straight guys try to out-gay each other. Der demonstrates by moving in for a kiss with Adam, who backs away. "You lost!"

Rev. Troy asks God what to do about "the gay thing."  God says "Fire them." But they'll be stranded in a strange town in the middle of a tour. 

Scene 5: The guys are letting Ram and Samson stay with them.  They offer a "proposition." Misunderstanding, thinking that they want sex, Samson insists that they are not gay.  "No, of course you're not gay, Dudes with giant muscles are never gay." 

"Maybe I am gay," Ram says.  "I'm just really confused right now." Is he really "questioning," or pretending so he can stay in the closet.

Easy way to find out if you're gay: kiss.  If you don't feel anything, you're not gay.  Ram and Samson start kissing, and end up pawing all over each other. The guys are shocked, but double-down. "Ok, you've proven that you're not gay.  You can stop kissing now."

On to the proposition: let's start a Lord's Force. Samson and Ram aren't sure.

Scene 6: A montage of the guys going about their daily activities, running into Ram and Samson getting it on, and being embarrassed.  No one can sleep because of the bed-squeaking and moaning ("You're injuring yourselves working out").

 Adam catches them showerng together ("to conserve water"), and notes that they have monster dicks: "Chicks must love sucking those." 

Scene 7:   Finally catching on, probably because Ram and Samson are having sex right in front of them, the guys propose the Gaylord's Force, with a bicep-and-penis logo and and the motto: "If you can take the pain of a man's unit pressing into your butt, you've got the strength to do anything."  This is homophobic: not all gay men are anal bottoms, and those who are don't see it as an ordeal, but as an enjoyable sexual act. Plus "Gaylord" is often useds as a slur.  But the guys seem to believe that they are helping.

Der has had enough: "I don't mind the sucking and screwing, but are you going to be part of this show are not?"  That's not what I expected him to say.  Ok, they agree.

Scene 8: The guys are setting up a "gay stage" for the show, when Rev Troy pulls up in his van. He wants Samson and Ram back.  He'll offer up to $38,000 per year. A terrible salary!

They decide to go back.  They explain that they're not gay anymore: it was just a phase. They're actually just hypocrites, willing to stay in the closet to promote their career.  But the guys are welcome to come to their show tonight.

Scene 9: Rev. Troy begins the show: "We are the Lord's Force, and we are going to murder the devil." David (Kali Muscle) breaks a baseball bat in half. The Wolf breaks concrete blocks. Samson and Ram try to lift a 1,000 pound cross over their heads, but struggle.  Notice the parallel with the much-bigger cross in Kelvin's God Squad.

"I should never have asked you back, you pillow-biters!" Rev. Troy sneers.

Adam comes to the rescue, suggesting that they use "the Gaylord's Force."  They are able to lift the cross. Then they kiss!  Everyone in the congregation is shocked and storms out, but the guys rush onto the stage to congratulate them.  

Scene 10: At the house, some gay guys are waiting for the Gaylords Force show.  But Ram and Samson aren't coming: they're moving to Vermont to start a new life.Vermont legalized same-sex marriage in 2009.  The guys have to perform themselves.  

Adam notes that he's had sex with over five women, but he can still channel Gay Strength.  He pretends to break some pre-broken bricks and beans himself with a board, but then tears a real phone book in half.  The crowd applauds.  "I will sign your dicks!" he exclaims. The end.

Beefcake: Adam is constantly on display, plus some chest and pixilated dick shots of the muscle men.

Heterosexism: Excellent depiction of heteronormativity: "whatever Ram and Samson do must be what straight guys do, because gay people do not exist."

Homophobia: Again, the guys are gay allies, but the depiction of Ram and Samson is problematic.  Gay men are hypersexual, doing it constantly, and utterly unreliable,  selling out their friends twice.

My Grade: B

Bonus:  Cock shot of Kali Muscle, bodybuilder, actor, and best-selling author.

See also: Gemstones Episode 2.6: Torsten gets it up, Keefe holds Kelvin's dick, and Sky is skyclad

Join Kelvin's God Squad: Recruitment video gives us the dirt on the God Squad

The top photo, of Adam groping Ders, is an outtake from Workaholics 1.9: Adam kisses a cougar, gets frisky with Ders, and raps as a bodybuilding fairy wizard