"Shrinking": A bizarre shrink, the male gaze, sentient water, and an invisible gay friend. With Segal and Tanner dick

 

I heard that Tim Baltz, who played BJ on The Righteous Gemstones, starred in a sitcom about an inept Shrink, so when we got Apple Plus, I clicked on Shrinking, Episode 1.

Scene 1: Husband and wife, Liz, in bed.  Hey, that's not Tim Baltz.  It might be Ted McGinley, who I last saw on "Married..with Children."   He tells her it's her turn to handle it.  They argue, but she goes -- not to take care of a new baby, har har, but to yell at the next door neighbor.  

He is fully clothed, wiggling his fingers in a bizarre way while two bikini babes frolick in the pool. Heterosexual male gaze, anyone? 

Liz tells him that it's 3:00 am, and he should turn the music off.  But he and the bikini babes are partying with adderall and opioids.  So why aren't you nekkid in the pool with them?

"What about Alice?"  Must be Bizarre Guy's wife.

Scene 2:  Bizarre Guy gets up, goes to his kitchen - full of booze bottles, with a painting of a bikini babe on the wall (ok, ok, you're straight, I get it), and gets yelled at by his sister or daughter. She turns up a photo of Bizarre Guy hugging two women.

Left: I didn't realize it until I checked the IMDB, but Bizarre Guy is played by Jason Segal, and he's the focus character!  I don't know why they decided to fool viewers into thinking that Liz and her husband were the focus characters.  Malicious editors?

He gets into his car, but it's out of gas, so he rides a bike -- badly.  When bikers zoom past him, he invites them to engage in gay sex as an insult. Bizarre Guy is homophobic. 

He ends up at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, where he has an appointment with his shrink, Tim Baltz.

Wait -- Bizarre Guy is the shrink!  But those bizarre finger movements, like he has some kind of psychotic disorder. The doctor is crazier than his patients!

Scene 3:  Bizarre Guy holds his head under the water faucet, then returns to his patients: 

"I hate my mother"

"The barista made me spell 'Dan'"

"I always go out with superficial girls!"

Left: Jason Segal's butt.

"My boyfriend made me go back to fetch my sunglasses, but they were right on my head the whole time.  Then he called me stupid, but he said I had great tits, so he loves me." Great Tits is displaying them very brazenly for the aesthetic pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.

Bizarre Guy blows up: they've been through this again and again.  If your boyfriend calls you stupid, he doesn't love you.  Besides, he's not that great: "His muscles are too big, and his shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that!"

Forget that gay men exist,  Bizarre Guy?  Or maybe gay men don't exist in this universe, except in slurs.  But obviously Great Tits likes it. 

Left: Big muscles, tight shirt.  Any questions?

"Just leave him!" Bizarre Guy yells.

"Ok."  She goes home to pack her stuff.  That was easy.

Scene 4: Sister/Daughter from Scene 2 is singing a silly song to the water she's pouring (yes, to the water) while old guy Harrison Ford rolls his eyes.  "It's too much water."  She must be volunteering in a nursing home, with Harrison Ford as the cantankerous geezer.  

No, it's the break room at the Cognitive Center.  Sister/Daughter is a fellow shrink, pouring her own water due to her "character quirk" of being health conscious. And thinking that water is sentient.

Bizarre Guy bursts in and confesses that he just told a patient what to do.  They are upset: this is against the rules of shrinking.

"We all know what they should do.  Why not just tell them?"  

"They have to figure it out for themselves."

After they criticize him some more, Bizarre Guy agrees to shrink patients "by the book" from now on.

Scene 5: Bizarre Guy is on his way out, when Sister/Daughter stops to flirt with him.  Ok, not his Sister/Daughter, his Flirtatious Coworker.  But why do the two characters look identical?  .

After flirting, she gives him a referral: young soldier, just back from overseas, keeps assaulting people, and his parents are worried.  What about the victims and the police?  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Harry Jowsey: New Zealand reality star, Boyfriend Dick Podcaster, Onlyfans nude model, "Call me gay."

22-year old New Zealand-based fitness model Harry Jowsey first appeared on screen on Heartbreak Island, and gained international fame on the Netflix reality series Too Hot to Handle (2020). It was based on the Seinfeld episode "The Contest": hetero hunks and babes had to live in close quarters without hooking up.  Proven "Master of his Domain," Harry split the $100,000 prize with the other  winners.  His "smouldering s*xual tension" with some of the ladies spun him into 4 million social media followers.  

And several podcasts. In Boyfriend Material, Harry and his guests give humorous relationship advice based upon his experience of hooking up with about 200 women.

It is notable for the viral term Boyfriend Dick, based upon Harry's description of his penis: No too big, not too small, looks nice, gets the job done.

More reality tv followed: Match Me If You Can, The Amazing Race Australia, Dancing with the Stars, and Perfect Match.  

Plus the upcoming movie The Wrong Paris (2025): a woman joins a reality tv show in "Paris," thinking that she's going to France, but it's the one in Texas. The women outnumber the men in the cast three to one, but there are a few hunks: Pierson Fode, Torrance Coombs, Kaden Connors (left), and William Wilder.

Harry seems to be veering back and forth between ally and homophobe. 

In September 2021, youtuber and trans activist Nikki Dragun included a picture of him in her video "Dick."  Fans got upset: "You hooked up with a dude, man!"  

Harry had assumed that the relationship would be private, but now that it was open, he explained, Nikki Dragun is a woman.  Trans or cisgender, what's the difference.

Sounds like an ally. except in October 2021, on his Tap It podcast, he complained that "some f*ggot" was trying to hook up with him.  He was referring to makeup youtuber James Charles.  Later he apologized, and stated that he supported the LGBT community.

In 2022, Harry demonstrated his support by posting some photos wearing a dress, and fans again became irate: "That's wrong, man." 

Boyfriend dick after the break

Dean Geyer: "Neighbours," "Glee," romcoms, "Single Women," "Little Women"...well, you get the idea. At least he's got a big one

 

I found photos of actor Dean Geyer on a general n*de men website, but the byline said he was an actor, so let's take a look (d*ck after the break).

He grew up in South Africa.  Here he shows off his cache of snacks from the homeland.

At some point he moved to Australia, where he appeared on 244 episodes of the soap Neighbours (2008-09) as Ty Harper,.  Ty drops out of uni to pursue a musical career, and romances a lot of girls.

He rates a cover of New Weekly, with the quote "I once waited for an hour outside a girl's school to give her a Valentine's day present," and a "Perv Poster."  Presumably in Australia the term doesn't have the horrifying connotations that it does in the U.S.

 His American film career starts out quite homophobi, with Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown (2011), about four fighters who band together to save their mentor. One of them, Case (Michael Jai White), has a sleazy gay dad, which causes the others to lambast him with homophobic slurs.  

Then came episodes of Single Ladies (he's straight, we get it), Terra Nova, and Glee (2012-13), the American series about a glee club. His Brody Weston is a junior at the New York Academy for Dramatic Arts, sharing an apartment with Kurt, the gay character, and dating Rachel, but also working as a gigolo. 

Rehearsal (2015) evokes the rehearsal for a Chekhov play going awry due to the incursion of an American screen hunk. Dean's character may be gay: Blaise Remington?  Who has ever named their kid Blaise?  But the director is named Turner Horatio Longfellow.  Really?

No, in the trailer Blaise Remington is surrounded by ladies.

Blaise?  Really?

After some romcoms where his characters go the other way, with the most generic names imaginable, or not imagined at all (Josh, Gabe Hudson, Mark Henderson), Dean appears in Zoey 102, with the gang from the Nickelodeon teencom all grown up, complaining that "no one told you life was gonna be this way," and finding love.  He plays Todd Shupert, an actor that the grown-up Zoey hires to be her date at her friend Logan's wedding.  Todd insists that he's not the Malibu Murderer, but...

More after the break

Daryl Sabara: Juni grows up, fights cannibals, bikers, and Satanists, and shows his dick, but I'm still depressed

Spy K*ds (2001) stars gay actor Antonio Banderas (left) and Carla Gugino as a husband and wife spy team.  Well, actually, their son and daughter, Juni and Carmen (Daryl Sabara, Alexa Vega), who get swept up in an age-appropriate diabolical plot involving tv host Fegan Floop (Alan Cummings, who is bisexual in real life).   

Although everyone is ostensibly heterosexual, some reviews call the film a queer classic due to the extremely hot Dad -- and Mom, apparently, which led to the "queer awakening" of an entire generation of lesbians; the shy, bullied, gay-coded Juni; the kick-ass Carmen; and the gay-coded villain who turns out to be not all that villainous.

The Banderas dick is just to draw your attention.  This profile features the shy, bullied, gay-coded Daryl Sabara.

There were 3 sequels:

The Island of Lost Dreams (2002) strands Juni and Carmen on a Jules Verne/Dr. Moreau "mysterious island," where they run afoul of a mad scientist creating animal hybrids.  Carmen gets a boyfriend, but Juni remains gay-coded.

I didn't see Game Over (2003) where Juni must venture into a video game to save his sister, but the queer coding ends with him meeting The Girl.  He also meets two guys, video game teammates Ryan Pinkston and Bobby Edner.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

The 2011 All the Time in the World minimized Juni and Carmen in favor of a new sibling team.  The brother is played by Mason Cook, who would go on to Speechless.

During the Spy franchise, Daryl Sabara appeared in the usual one-shot tv spots: Will and Grace, Fatherhood, House, American Dragon: Jake Long, and so on.

He has a starring role in the animated lion-drama Father of the Pride (2004-05) as Hunter, a shy, anxiety-ridden Lord of the Rings nerd. That is, basically Juni as a lion.  In one episode, his grandfather Sarmoti thinks that he is gay, or as the fan wiki says, "homosexual; but this is absolutely not true."  Rather homophobic, aren't you, fan wiki?

Then things start to go downhill.  In a 2006 episode of Criminal Minds,  Daryl plays a teenager who charges men to watch him do bondage videos.  So he has an OnlyFans site?  The agents convince him that what he is doing constitutes prostitution, and will put him in danger from internet predators.  It is all presented as extremely sleazy, and one can't help but conclude that being gay is always seedy and sordid.  

Normal Adolescent Behavior (2007) is an anti-hookup cautionary tale,with no gay content: three girls and three guys in a friendship group pair off randomly.  Daryl appears as Nathan, who crushes on the mother of one of the girls. Ugh.

Raviv Ullman, formerly Phil of the Future, plays one of the guys in the friendship group.

Next Daryl played Tim Scottson in 7 episodes of Weeds (2005-12), about suburban marijuana growers. He shot his stepmother Nancy Botwin because he assumed that she was responsible for his father's death, but she recovered and hired him as her assistant.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (2011) has Daryl planning the perfect prom for his girlfriend, but when her two friends tag along, things go crazy, with a car crash, armed thugs, Satanists, and an amorous lady biker.

In The Green Inferno (2013), some student activists go to the Peruvian jungle for ecological stuff, and are captured by a cannibal tribe.  

A cannibal tribe?  I thought the "spear-throwing savages" trope went out with Johnny Quest. But at least the guy dragging Daryl toward the cooking pot has nice abs and a basket.

Daryl gets a girlfriend and displays his dick before being eaten.

More Daryl dick after the break

"Howl" for Ricky Schroder, with Ricky's d*ck

 

I saw the cutest guy of my generation destroyed by madness, ranting hysterical naked...

Who played a "poor little rich boy" on Silver Spoons (1982-87) on my dream Saturday night, immersed in the buddy-bonding of Bosom Buddies, Jennifer Slept Here, and Mama's Family.

Whose boyfriend, Alfonso Ribeiro, went on to display his muscles and bulge on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Who became a teen idol without taking off his shirt, who made gay boys sigh just with his dreamy eyes and smile

Who graduated to play a young soldier (Too Young The Hero, 1988), a cowboy (Lonesome Dove, 1989), and the juvenile brother of Brad Pitt (Across the Tracks, 1990), all men who knew the manly love of comrades

 Who hooked up with Mark Patton the Scream Queen but then threw himself into the closet of wives and sons and locker room homophobia

Who buddy-bonded with Dermont Mulroney in There Goes My Baby (1994), before they were both shipped off to Vietnam, one to die and the other to open a surf shop and cry over his lost love

Who forgot the endless summers of our youth

Seeing, touching, and tasting c ocks and endless balls.

Who crashed into movies and tv shows that no one saw, harsh, gritty, repellant, "make America great again" vehicles.

Who played a detective on NYPD Blue (1998-2001), with a woman's body below his gyrating backside

A nurse named Flower on Scrubs (2002-3) , who was queer coded but in love with Elliot

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 4.5: The dirt on Vance, Big Dick Mitch, Lori, and Teen Jesus. With Gossip GIrl's Dad and a Queen's cock

 

Previous: Gemstones Episode 4.4: Keefe in drag, Pontius with three dicks, Jasper with one, and Casper the Friendly Ghost

Title: "You Shall Remember," from Deuteronomy 8.18: "You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant."  The Gemstones have forgotten that God made them rich so they can help people.  Tonight they'll get their comeuppance.  

The Dirt on Vance: Vance Simkins (Stephen Dorff) examines his burnt-out church, fuming, and glares at the Gemstone satellite church across the street.  Cut to a Simpkins Commercial with him and his siblings, Craig and Shay, saying: "Grace.. .Praise... Rejoice..  Salvation."

Vance calls his siblings to his office, but Shay won't come ("she wants nothing to do with you") and Craig (Gogo Lomo David) is just there for his money: their parents' estate put Vance in charge, so he has to depend on hand-outs.  Vance gives him $10,000, and tells him to make it last.

Craig criticizes Vance for running the church into the ground,destroying their parents' legacy.  He keeps trying to open new churches when they're broke, just to compete with the Gemstones: "You can't admit you're beat, can you?"  

Vance protests that he's going to win the Top Christ Following Man Award. 

"You're a straight white man," Craig digs. "Your kind don't get awards anymore. Wait -- are you straight?  Never had a girlfriend, sweetie-pie."  Enraged by the implication, Vance slaps Craig and throws him onto the desk.

Uh-oh, a church deacon saw the attack.  Vance is violent, like Uncle Peter in Season 3 and Lyle Lissons in Season 2....he's the Big Bad of the season!

Vance had some queer codes back in Season 3, when he swished around with that tiny dog.  It would make sense for him to be gay and closeted.

Baby Billy and Kelvin in Decline:  Baby Billy finishes his screenplay about a teenage Jesus and his friends, changes the title from "Teen Jesus" to "Teenjus," and snorts some cocaine.  That's the Belly of the Beast in the Gemstone universe, buddy.

Cut to Kelvin and Keefe rushing through the crowd of queer well-wishers to a party to celebrate his Top Christ Following Man nomination.  Jesse, Amber, and Judy look angry; Eli, Lori, and Gideon look happy.  Abraham looks intrigued; Pontius sneers.  Another of Jesse's kids comes out

They begin partying.  Kelvin joins his siblings to gloat at the big turnout.  Judy sneers: "You're their little gay avatar."  Jesse: "You need to stop smelling your farts."  Translation: He's getting way too conceited about this award thing.

Lori drops by.  They criticize her for having sex with their father.  She promises to lock the door next time, and asks if they can start over and be friends again.  She's known them all their lives.  Nope, "We reject this union."  

Lori: "All y'all little cocksuckers better put on your big boy pants and get the fuck over it."  Hey, that's homophobic, and at a LGBTQ event!  My estimation of Lori dropped 20 points. 

She continues: "I wanted to be y'all's friend, but if you want a wicked stepmother, I can do that, too."  

The siblings interpret "stepmother" to mean that Lori and Eli got married.  They are disgusted. 

Baby Billy is Doomed. Cut to Baby Billy and Tiffany cuddling in a swing, while the Nanny cleans the pool.  He describes their life as idyllic, but it's going to get better.  They'll make a fortune with his new project, Teenjus.

The Nanny notes that she likes teen dramas like Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl.  She would watch it. Baby Billy yells at her.

Left: Matthew Settle, who plays the dad on "Gossip Girl."

 Here he shows his dick.  At least you know it's not a prosthetic

And his backside

Tiffany suggests that Baby Billy retire so he will be around for their children growing up, but he refuses. He's got to seize this opportunity.  "I got to provide for you.  I don't know how much time I got."  Another precursor of doom.

BJ's Injury. BJ tries to make it from the toilet to his wheelchair, but fails and falls into the bathtub. Judy rushes in to help.  He complains that he can't even pee on his own. "I'm broken. I'm half a man."

Judy points out that the doctors say he will have a full recovery, but he won't believe it. When she tries to help him out of the bathtub, he angrily yells at her to go.  

Amber arrives to see how they are doing -- they're both miserable -- and to give Judy service monkey named Dr. Watson.  She works with a charity that trains service monkeys for disabled veterans.

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

Modern Family Episode 5.13: Jay acts girly, Mitch and Cam butt in, and Phil wants Keefe's lips on his mouth. Who doesn't?

I've been so busy checking Modern Family for homophobic subtexts with Adam Devine that I missed a gay subtext in Episode 5.13, "Three Dinners": 

Modern Family has a very large cast: closet-making tycoon Jay Pritchett; his new wife Gloria and her son;  daughter Claire and her husband and three children; and son Mitchell and his partner, eventually husband.  Episodes usually send smaller groups out on separate adventures, so I'll cover the three dinners separately.

Dinner 1: Jay and Gloria are dining with their close friends, Shorty (Chazz Palminteri, who has appeared in four previous episodes) and his wife.  They've been taking Spanish classes, because they're moving to Costa Rica!    They expect Jay and Gloria to be happy for them, but Jay immediately becomes critical: "You hate humidity! They have mosquitos the size of your fist!"

Cut to Shorty and Jay playing pool, Jay still complaining about the move: "It's a terrible idea.  You get into things without thinking, and then you need me to come and rescue you!" They argue about a lot of things from their never-mentioned-before shared history, and finally break up.

Gloria and her son Manny advise Jay that he always pushes his friends away, so when they leave him, it doesn't hurt as much. Aww, you can't open yourself up to love, unless it involves sex.

"You're the greatest generation," Manny says, "But you can't feel."

Jay lashes out with a facetious accusation that Manny and Gloria are lovers, an incest joke playing into the homophobic slur that all gay men are in love with their mothers.  He keeps playing on it until the viewers are cringing: "Why don't you two go cuddle!"

Later, we see Jake sitting in the kitchen, getting drunk and thinking about how much Shorty means to him.  Finally he decides to drive over and apologize -- dude, you're drunk -- but Shorty beats him to it.  They hug and cry.  Gloria, eavesdropping, snits: "This is a little girlier than I thought."  Wait, first you criticize him for not displaying emotion, and now you criticize him for displaying emotion.  Make up your mind, lady!

More dinners after the break

"Da Vinci's Demons": An absurdly heterosexual Da Vinci, a bi guy who only likes ladies, two monstrous gay predators, and a lot of penises

 

Last night Da Vinci's Demons, appeared on our Peacock recommendations.  We didn't realize that it was from 2013: Peacock keeps the date of tv series secret.

Of course it would turn gay artist and inventor Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) straight: every historical figure from Shakespeare to Cole Porter gets straightened in contemporary media.  But when I was studying comparative literature, one of my fields was Renaissance Italy.  Plus there were hints of the paranormal, secret societies and such.  So why not?

Big mistake.  It was disgusting.  I can't even bring myself to do a scene-by-scene, but I'll post some of the nude photos.

1. They straightened Da Vinci (Tom Riley) in the most offensive, slap-in-the-face way possible.  He starts out painting a naked woman of "exceptional beauty," then discuss the incredible beauty of the Woman of His Dreams, Lucrezia Donati, over and over and over.  Finally he manages to have sex with her for ten minutes of her boobs.  .  

2. His apprentice Nico (Eros Vlastos), who grows up to be Niccolo Machiavelli, gazes longingly at the bare boobs, too.  It is absolutely imperative to demonstrate that every man on Earth is heterosexual.  

At least Machiavelli was straight in real life.

3. DaVinci's buddy Zoroaster (Greg Chillan) mentions that he's been with men in an offhand comment, then goes into detail about the exceptional beauty of the hundreds of women he's had sex with.  He likes ugly women, too, because they're better in bed.  

4. There are two gay guys.  I know, every man on Earth longs for women's boobs, but these people are not men, they are odious, slimy monsters who have nonconsensual sex with teenage boys.  The first, the Duke of Milan (Hugh Bonneville), is killed immediately after he kicks the boy (Matthew David) out of his bed.  Serves him right for being gay.

More homophobia and some penises after the break

Reacher, Episode 2.6: Is Reacher homophobic? With a Ritchson p enis, a Bertchtold butt, and my new favorite catchphrase

In Season 3 of Reacher, the iterant do-gooder (Alan Ritchson, below) mentors shy, troubled college student Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold).  Richard has a lot of queer codes, such as lack of expressed heterosexual interest and a preference for lavender.  When he stands in Reacher's bedroom doorway after a crisis and asks "Are you ok?", I expected them to hug...or maybe kiss.

I wanted to know if he is canonically gay, so I did a Google search.

Nothing came up about Richard, but some Reddit discussion board posts complained that Reacher was homophobic because he roughed up a gay guy during Season 2.  

Reacher often expresses a disdain for actions, interests, and behaviors that fail to meet alpha-male hegemonic masculinity ("Help you with your flower arrangement?  Nope, nope, I'm teaching you to box"), so I could see him being homophobic.  Let's check out the scene.

It's Episode 2.6, "New York's Finest."

The Story So Far:  A member of Reacher's former military investigation team is murdered, and the whole team may be in danger, so the Man-Mountain and his buddies investigate, from Atlantic City to New York to Denver and back, as the players become more and more powerful.  There are corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, enemies that turn out to be friends, and friends who turn out to be enemies. 

When two hitmen target Reacher and his buds, they kill one and interrogate the other.  He was hired by Swan (Shannon Kook, left), assistant head of security at the defense company New Age (dumb name, innit?).  

They go to the New Age company to ask about Swan.  Director of Operations Marlo arranges a meeting at a warehouse, but when they arrive, it explodes!  She set them up! 

I don't know who plays the hitman, but it could be Kyle Mac, seen here tied up next to Craig Henderson on Hemlock Grove (2013)

In Episode 2.6, the team will look for Marlo, who has gone into hiding.

Opening Ad: Why you should join the army, har har.

Scene 1:  Reacher's team consists ofL

1. Francis Neaghley, his former partner (a woman)

2. The Hacker, a young woman.

3. David O'Donnell (Sean Sipos, below), below, a lawyer and heterosexual "family man."

They find Marlo and her teenage daughter on the security cam of a convenience store run by a sleazy, hetero-horny clerk.  Noting that the daughter is a gamer, the Hacker suggests tracking her down through her gamer tag.  First they have to wait until she begins playing. 

Scene 2: While they are waiting, Reacher has sex with team member Francis.

More after the break.

Shane Harper: the "Good Luck Charlie" and "God's Not Dead" guy shows his dick surprisingly often

 I wanted to research Shane Harper, the extremely well-hung drug dealer  Junior on Hightown (2020-21).  He's distraught over his girlfriend's death, so he makes some homophobic comments to two leather daddies, hoping that they will kill him.  They just beat him up; he dies of a drug overdose later.

Shane only has six photos on his Instagram, and two on his X, including this one: he getting a spray-on tan,  with the caption: "this is probably the only nude photo I'll ever post."

Don't believe him.  He posts a lot of nude photos.

So who is this guy?

According to the IMDB, he was born in San Diego, and began dancing, singing, and acting in community productions at the age of nine.   He played dancers in Re-Animated, High School Musical 2, Dance Revolution, and Dancing on Sunset.

Then he bounced arund the Disney Channel for a few years, guest starring in Zoey 101 and  Wizards of Waverly Place, and starring in Good Luck, Charlie as Teddy's boyfriend (Teddy is a girl; so is Charlie)

He released an album in 2011,  so I check out the heterosexism: the number of songs that shout "girl! girl! girl!," thus proclaiming that every relationship is heterosexual and invalidating the desires and relationships of LGBT fans.

Not much heterosexism.   But then look what happens:

God's Not Dead, 2014, starrs right-wing nutjob Kevin Sorbo as an evil college professor who forces his students to submit signed statements affirming that "God is dead."  This is utterly ridiculous. College professors don't force students to accept any point of view. They aren't allowed to.

Besides, The Death of God  (1961) was a book complaining that modern society had lost its sense of transcendence, the magical in everyday life.  The author didn't mean that the actual Supreme Being was dead.  And it was 50 years ago.  Why are fundamentalists still upset about it?

Shane plays the student who bravely challenges the evil prof and ends up proving that God is, in fact, still alive.

He returns in God's Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness (2018), in which a Christian pastor is tormented, and his church burned down, by an army of atheists and liberals.  No philosophy professors?  

OMG, that is jaw-droppingly idiotic. 

In a 2011 interview, Shane states that he only takes "wholesome" and "uplifting" roles. For instance, he would be ok with playing a gay guy, as long as the movie establishes that being gay is wrong, and has him give up the lifestyle.  

That was over a decade ago. Let's see what Shane has been up to lately.

Besides posting nude photos, I mean.

More after the break.