North of North: Inuit lady, her gay bestie, some paranormal, some Inuk culture, and a lot of Inuk hunks. With Jay's junk and a bonus n*de dude

North of North (2025) appeared without warning on my Netflix list: a woman feels stifled in her tiny village in the Artic.  I can relate to that, so let's go.

Scene 1: While showering (only shoulders visible), a young woman  named Siaja explains that she's from as far north as you've ever been.  I think that's Calgary in the Western Hemisphere, and maybe Oslo in Europe.  Then much farther north than that: Ice Cove, Nunavut.  

A quirky Canadian small town and Inuit culture?  I'm there. 

Siaja has achieved the Canadian Dream, with a husband and child.  Only now husband Ting (Kelly William, top photo) is the Golden Boy of the town, and she's only known as his wife.

First up: he gets to drive the car to the Spring Festival, while she has to haul the supplies on a lame Ski-Doo (snowmobile).

Scene 2: She drops in at Mom's very nice house -- lots of windows -- and announces that because it's a new year, she's going to apply for a job.  Mom dispproves: you're a wife and mother.

Mom opens the store next door, which sells artisanal soap and miscellaneous stuff.  Suddenly her hookup from last night walks in, shirtless.  Siaja asks where he was in 1998 -- he could be her father!  He scrams.  

Mom criticizes her for scaring all of her hookups away.  How many hookups could she get in a town of about 2,000 with no tourist trade and the nearest neighbor 300 miles away?

Left: I think the Handsome Man is played by Jeff Roup. who shows his d*ck or a prosthetic here. 

Scene 3: Siaja leaves her child for Mom to babysit and heads for the town headquarters, which has a restaurant, some offices, and the radio station: DJ announces the seal hunt this afternoon and the naming of the festival king and queen this evening.

A blond woman named Helen, apparently the town mayor, comes in complaining about the 14-hour days that supervising the festival takes, while other town business just sits there.  Siaja butters her up with coffee and suggests other cultural activities spread through the year.  Didn't you just hear her?  And she wants to be hired as a full-time cultural manager. 

"Nope.  You have zero work experience and no leadership skills."

"But I see life and beauty in everything!"  At that moment, a guy walks in, wanting to know where to put the fish heads.

Scene 4: While Radio Announcer Colin (Bailey Poching) and a purple-haired woman are discussing how much partying to do tonight, Siaja comes into their office and screams.  Helen didn't even look at her job proposal.

Left: Bailey Poching is gay in real life.

"Why do you want a job anyway?"

"To make our community a better place...ok, I want something of my own."  

"But Inuit culture is all about community.  Your own needs are irrelevant."

When Helen comes in to order the others to get back to work, Siaja asks for a chance.  Couldn't you get a job, like, somewhere else?   Ok, a petition to prove that the town wants a cultural director.  500 signatures -- but that's a quarter of the town! -- by tonight!

More after the break

"The Bondsman": Kevin Bacon fights demons, sings country-western music, trunks Tater. With Bacon's d*ck and Will Robinson's muscle

A bail bond service will pay your bail, so you can stay out of jail while awaiting your trial.  If you don't show up, the service loses that money, so they hire a bail bondsman to track you down.  Regulations differ from state to state, but generally bail bondsmen cannot carry guns, enter property without permission, or use force to arrest the bail jumper.

But not this Bondsman, played by Kevin Bacon in the new paranormal drama on Amazon Prime.

Left: Kevin  bulging in 1980

Scene 1: Night.  A pick-up truck drives down a desolate highway in rural Georgia and stops at the Holiday Hotel -- the kind where the rooms open right onto the parking spots, where you used to stay before the Holiday Inns took over. 

The Bondsman looks at a photo of his target, - wraps his gun belt around his waist (nice crotch shot) -- and bangs on the hotel room door.  

Left: Kevin's cock in 2005. 

The guy inside yells for him to "F*ck off," so he he puts a hornet's nest in the air conditioning duct, and when the guy rushes out, nabs him.  

But he's not the target, he's Billy Earle (Daniel Norris), who's supposed to be in prison. 

The tip was a fake, to lure him to the hotel!  Billy's brother appears out of nowhere and shoots the Bondsman across the parking lot, then slits his throat.  He dies a very bloody death.  Wait -- if it was a set up, why did Billy hide out inside the hotel room?  Shouldn't he be waiting to ambush the Bondsman the moment he gets out of his car?

Left: Kevin's buns.

Scene 2: The extremely dead Bondsman comes back to life, interred behind the dry wall in a hotel room.  He pushes through and examines the gaping hole in his neck.   Better start wearing ascots, buddy.

Tater (Mike Kaye) comes in, talking on the phone about how hardcore the Earle Brothers are, and his parents are starting to charge him rent.  He screams; the Bondsman knocks him to the ground.

He explains that the Earle Brothers hired him to burn down the hotel for the insurance money, but he didn't know there was an undead body inside.  

The Bondsman handcuffs him, shoves him in the trunk of his car, covers his neck hole with duct tape, and drives away.

Scene 3: The Bondsman driving recklessly down a two-lane highway.  I guess if you're dead, it doesn't matter.   He arrives at Halloran Bail Bonds, located in a gas station in Landry, "a fictional town brimming with cases of demonic possession"

Phone message: He' s joined the Pot o'Gold Corporate Family.  Pot o'Gold is the title of the episode, so it must be important.

Leaving the whimpering Tater in the trunk, the Bondsman goes to the bathroom and checks his neck hole -- it's healed.  

Scene 3: He rushes over to the house across the street and tells his Mama that he needs to find the Earle Brothers right away -- "Ugh, what's he doing here?" It's Pastor Ron (Dave Macomber), who kicked Mama out of the church.  She can come back, if the Bondsman stops detaining skips during the services.  Are there a lot of bail jumpers who go to Sunday services in Landry?

Mama: The Earle Brothers got out of jail; their bail was posted by Lucky Callahan, who is dating the Bondsman's ex-wife.  Mama hates the "damn Yankee"; she won't have her grandson raised by a Boston Red Socks fan!   So Lucky posted the Earle Brothers' bail and hired them to kill the Bondsman just so he wouldn't get back together with his ex?  That's a big grudge.

Scene 4: Dang it, let Tater out of that trunk!    The Bondsman forges Lucky's name on an arrest warrant.  Another robocall from Pot o"Gold!  He unplugs his phone, but they are calling all of his cell phones, too.

Next the Bondsman puts some murder and body-disposal tools in the trunk with Tater and drives to a nightclub, The Boxcar ("Hog Roast Hoe Down Next Week!").   Lucky's car is outside: "Boston Red Sox Fans."  

The joint is huge on the inside.  Ex-Wife Maryanne (Jennifer Nettles) is singing "When Will I Be Loved," by Linda Ronstadt:

I've been cheated, been mistreated.  When will I be loved?

I've been put down, I've been pushed 'round. When will I be loved?

She sings the entire song -- the high point of the episode.

Suddenly Hub spots Red Sox Fan Lucky, and follows him through the kitchen, past the line cook (Brandon Alston, left) into the back:

More after the break

"Teacup": Body-jumping aliens, two heterosexual romances, a gay subtext boyfriend betrayal, and Rob's knob

Probably-gay actor Jackson Kelley notes that he had a starring role in the paranormal horror Teacup, on Peacock. I figured he would be playing a gay character, so I checked it out.

The premise: On a farm full of good country folk, animals start behaving strangely, then people start trembling and speaking in riddles.  The power and WIFI go out. 

An invisible "teacup" trap marked by a blue line appears around the property; any person or animal that crosses it dies a horrible death.  A guy in a gas mask keeps patroling and gesturing.  Sound doesn't get through, so he uses a board to say things like: "Stay behind the line" and "Trust no one" 

The people trapped inside the "teacup" are divided into heterosexual nuclear families:

Family #1: James (Scott Speedman, left, from Animal Kingdom), his wife (a veterinarian), sick elderly mother, teenage daughter, and preteen son.

Family #2: Ruben (Chaske Spencer from Twilight), his wife, and his teeange son, trapped there when they brought their horse to see the veterinarian.   

Soap opera plotlines: The wife is secretly having an affair with James, and the son has been in love with James' daughter since he was in second grade, but is trapped in the Friend Zone (but not for long). 

Family #3: Donald Kelley (Boris McGiver. left) and his wife from the farm next door also happen to be there when the teacup is  put up.

The Newcomers: While everyone is dealing with the crisis and soap opera stuff, preteen Arlo (Caleb Dolden) tells his sister and her not-boyfriend that the Assassin is coming to kill them all.  The only way they can escape is with a multicolored liquid from a crashed meteor, so they gather a vial full.

Gas Mask Guy wants the vial, and crosses the blue line to get it, whereupon they stab him.  

Meanwhile, James finds the injured Travis (Jackson) hiding in the basement, worried that he's "one of them" and ready to shoot.  As they have a standoff, Travis tells his story:

Gas Mas Guy at a Bar: Flashback to Travis as the new guy working at the bar, mesmerized by Gas Mask Guy, McNab (Rob Morgan).  Wouldn't you be?

Left: Rob Morgan having coffee n*ude.  But he doesnt' have a lot of tattoos; maybe it's his breakfast companion?

He's telling about the aliens who set force-field "teacup" traps that incinerate any complex organism that tries to get through.  They're non-corporeal, using human bodies as hosts.  They can jump from body to body.  Often the humans aren't even aware of it, so anyone could be hosting an alien.

Bartender Big Al tells Travis to pay attention to the other customers; he'll wait on McNab himself.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"Twin Peaks: The Return": Paranormal weirdness, 25 years later. See if you can figure it out. With Beymer butt and James' junk

  

We've been watching the 1990s cult classic Twin Peaks, about paranormal, cryptic, and just weird events befalling FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLaughlan) as he investigates the murder of high schooler Laura Palmer, who had "lots of secrets."  And now we're on Twin Peaks: The Return (2017-18), a continuation of the original story.  

Some problems:

1. People stare for lengthy periods before speaking, and then speak slo-www-ly.  If conversations occurred at a normal pace, each episode would be ten minutes long.

2. About half of every episode consists of a naked woman talking to a fully-clothed man.  Granted, some of the men are attractive, but there's no way to look at them without seeing a lot of lady parts.

3. The story makes no friggin* sense.

See if you can figure out what's going in the first 2 episodes, plus a scene.

Red Room:  The original series ended with many unresolved plotlines, notably Agent Cooper (left) losing his (second) True Love and being possessed by the malevolent spirit Bob.    

In 2016, we discover that Agent Cooper was split into three parts.  The Doppleganger, controlled by the evil Bob, was loosed upon the world.  His body, now named Dougie, moved to Las Vegas, got a job in insurance, had a wife and a kid, and now consorts with naked prostitutes who stare at him for a lo...ong time.  Agent Cooper's spirit was trapped in the Red Room, where the other spirits make cryptic remarks, talk backwards, and stare at him for a lo...ong time. 

Still trapped, Agent Cooper's spirit is talking to the Giant Alien, who told him that "the owls are not what they seem," one of the big unresolved mysteries of the original.  Now Giant Alien tells him to listen to the sounds on an old Victrola. 

Twin Peaks: The psychiatrist who counseled and had sex with Laura Palmer, now batshit crazy, is in his survivalist cabin, waiting for delivery of a bunch of shovels. 

New York: A young man (James Croak) has a job sitting in an empty room, staring at a large round window, to see if anything happens.  A girl from the coffee shop drops by, hoping to have sex with him, but he can't because the security guard is watching, and he's not allowed visitors.  No one should know what's going on.  Doing a good job!

Twin Peaks: Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer of West Side Story, top photo), owner of the Great Northern Hotel and the One Eyed Jacks casino and brothel, who had sex with Laura Palmer before she died, was last seen going batshit crazy and thinking that he was a Civil War General. In 2016, he is telling a newly hired lady about the hotel rules.   His younger brother comes in, lambasts him for hiring someone else to have sex with, and talks about his new business, marijuana.

Meanwhile, at the sheriff's office, Lucy the Receptionist turns away a salesman who wants to see "the sheriff," because he doesn't know which he wants: there are three of them, two named Truman, and one is sick.  The other is Robert Forster (left), the brother of the Sheriff Harry Truman who buddy-bonded with Agent Cooper 25 years ago.

Unknown Location: The Agent Cooper Doppelganger gets out of his car  and bangs on the door of an isolated house.  After disabling the guard, he goes inside and stares for a lo...ong time at several people who will never appear again. He criticizes one for having inadequate guards, but she explains that "it's a world of truck drivers."  

She fetches a man (George Griffith) and a woman, and they hug everyone else in the house -- I forget how many people -- and leave with the Doppelganger.

New York: The coffee shop girl visits the young man who has a job staring at a window, with more coffee.  This time the security guard is out, so he invites her in.  They begin sex: she is naked, her backside bouncing, her breasts heaving, while we get a glimpse of his chest. Pay careful attention, as that's the only beefcake you'll be seeing amid the endless heaving breasts.  Then a wraith comes through the window and slashes them to death.  

Buckhorn, South Dakota.  An apartment has a weird smell coming out of it, so a resident calls the police.  There's a long, involved bit about who is in charge and who has the key, with a lot of characters who never appear again, until the lady realize that she has the key.  Oy vey.  Inside the apartment is the school librarian's head on the decapitated body of an older, chubby man.  We never find out who he is, or why the killer arranged them like that.

Twin Peaks: Sheriff Hawk receives a phone call from the batshit-crazy Log Lady, whose pet log has psychic powers.  It has a cryptic message explaining that the disappearance of Agent Cooper 25 years ago was related to Sheriff Hawk's Native American heritage and "something missing."

Buckhorn, South Dakota: The Forensics Lab has a match on the fingerprints in the decapitated librarian's apartment: they belong to the high school principal. (Matthew Lillard). So two agents and two cops, including the principal's best friend George, arrest him.  "It's all a mistake," he yells. 

Twin Peaks: To discover "what's missing," Sheriff Hawk pulls all of the files on Agent Cooper, and he and Receptionist Lucy go through them.  She ate a chocolate rabbit from some Easter evidence, but that's not it: his heritage has nothing to do with Easter bunnies.

Buckhorn, South Dakota: The Principal is interrogated about the decapitated people.  He was not having an affair with the librarian, and he was never in her apartment.  He can account for all of his activities on Thursday, except for about 15 minutes.  They lock him up, then get a warrant to go search his car.  There's either a human tongue or a piece of fish in the trunk.

The wife visits the Principal in prison to tell him that she framed him so she can pursue a romance with his best friend, George (Neil Dickson).  As she leaves, we see another cell occupied by a guy in an old-fashioned Davy Crocket outfit, covered with soot.  He vanishes.

At home, the Doppelganger tells the wife that she did a good job pretending to be a human being, and shoots her.

More non sequiters after the break

"Surreal Estate," Episode 1.1: Realtor and his scoobies investigate haunted houses, with gay characters and a lot of n*de Matt Whites

  

Surreal Estate (2021-23), on Hulu, appeared on Reddit about shows with "normalized" LGBT characters, not struggling to come out or fighting homophobia.  None of the episode synopses suggest gay characters, and the icon shows a man and a woman, but here goes, Episode 1.1

Scene 1: Night. A man in a 1940s detective costume walks through a thunderstorm to a creepy house. The sign says "For Sale by Owner." 

Inside, it's too dark to see much, but a woman in a bathrobe seems to be reading an antique book on human anatomy.   She gets scared when the surgeon in a photograph seems to be grinning evilly at her.  Suddenly the room catches on fire (at least we can see something now).  She runs outside, but runs into the Old Fashioned Man.  

Psych!  He's not the ghost of a 1940s detective, he just dresses like one: Luke Roman (Tim Rozon of Schitt's Creek), interested in the house.  So call in advance?  

She hugs him: "The house wants to kill me!"  That's every home owner's complaint, girl.

He can help with that.  They gaze into each other's eyes.  I'll be they start dating, and she joins the paranormal real estate team.

Scene 2: At Shirley's Diner, still too dark to see much, Homeowner Megan, says that her fiancé is coming to pick her up.  Don't you hate it when they mention a boyfriend halfway through the date?

Luke shows her a video about his company, SMEP, Specialists in Metaphysically-Engaged Properties, those with a market value depreciation due a tragedy occuring there.  Sometimes they are haunted, sometimes not, but the rumor makes it lose 37% of its market value and takes 317% longer to sell. 

Megan's swishy boyfriend Brock (Matt White) flounces in with a teeth-click, a flamboyant wave of his umbrella, and a "What up, Girlfriend?"  Shouldn't be too hard to convince him to be true to himself, so you can have Megan for yourself.  

Matt White has nine acting credits on IMDB, including six shorts,and three walk-ons.  This may not be the right one, but there are lots of other Matt Whites to choose from: a baseball player, a football player, an artist,  a musician, a comedian, and a billionaire.

Left: Matt White d*ck

Scene 3: At the agency, Luke tells his scoobies, two men and a woman, about the case.  Homeowner Megan is a medical student who inherited the haunted house from her grandfather.  Swishy boyfriend lives with her (in his own room, I assume).  

On to otheir other case, a house with a poltergeist. It came out clean: no entities.  But Rita, the Evil Realtor who hired them, insists that things were flying around.  Nobody wants to confront her because she's so evil, so they get the New Girl to do it: a ringer who got $10 million in sales at her last agency.  

Introductions:

Father Phil (Adam Korson, right), a defrocked priest with nice biceps, does the background checks and due diligence.

More after the break

"Population 11": Ben Feldman in an outback town with aliens, meat pies, secrets, lies, and dicks, doesn't get the Girl

Population 11, on Amazon Prime, stars Ben Feldman as a guy searching for his father in a paranormal-ridden Australian outback.  He teams up with The Girl, of course -- not once in a series like this does the guy team up with a guy.  But hey, Feldman is cute, it's Australian and there's paranormal.

Prologue: An old guy walks through the dark by a gigantic baobab and into a circle of giant termite mounds.  Suddenly he is illuminated by light -- from above!  He runs, stumbles, falls, screams.  Abducted by aliens?  I'll bet it's just a tease.

Scene 1: Andy (Ben) drives through the outback on the wrong side of the road, almost hitting a cop car!  The lady cop makes it very, very clear that she wants to have sex with him.  Her innuendos are extremely vulgar: "Breathe into my mouth, hot stuff...harder...harder..."  Not The Girl: slightly overweight.

After she gives him her phone number and answers the question "Can I go now?" with that annoying "I don't know, can you?", he continues on his way through the desert to Bilgudgee, population 12.  It has a park, a Chinese restaurant, and a pub in what looks like an old garage. A community board advertises trivia night and "Outback UFO Tours," hosted by the guy who was abducted by aliens earlier: "guaranteed sightings!"  

It's Andy's dad with a new scam!

A race car zooms in, almost hitting him.  Resident #1 is the lady who runs the pub/hotel.  Not the Girl: middle-aged.

She wants to know why Jimmy (Tony Briggs), Resident #2, isn't tending the bar.  A Catholic priest, he's trying to take confession behind a curtain.  20% of Australians are Catholic, but of course on tv it's almost everybody. 

Resident #3, a German-speaking guy named Cedric, doesn't mind: he has nothing to confess.

Andy claims that he came to town for the UFO tour, run by Hugo...not mentioning that Hugo is his dad.

They haven't seen him in a few weeks, but they take Andy to his house -- horribly run-down, with a lot of alien memorabilia.  Nobody home. Why not just say you're his son?  Then you could go inside and investigate.

Scene 2: The Sundew Caravan and Campground.  A caravan is a trailer in the U.S.  Usually you bring your own to the campground, but sometimes you can rent them.  

Andy goes to the office-trailer and asks Residents #4 and #5, a lesbian couple or mother-daughter, if they've seen Hugo. No, they don't speak with him, because "Mom's a drama queen." 

Next Resident #6, a bearded guy with a neck brace (Rick Donald), wonders if he's an FBI agent.  Andy says no, but the guy doesn't believe him, thinks he's a suspect, and starts yelling "I won't go down for this!"   Um...Australia is rather out of their jurisdiction. Maybe he's with the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, ASIO.

Left: Rick Donald's backside

Residents #7 and #8, an older guy with muscles (Steve Le Marquand), and his young wife or daughter, tell him that Hugo is a pain in the arse, but that's part of his charm.

Left: Steve Le Marquand frontal

So when is Andy going to meet the Girl of His Dreams?  He hasn't even been identified as heterosexual yet; that usually happens by Minute 2. Could he be....no way. I absolutely am not going to get my hopes up.

More after the break

"Goosebumps: The Vanishing": Ross from "Friends" as a crazy botanist, some gay teens, a monster, and Sam McCarthy's....

 

Goosebumps: The Vanishing has dropped on Hulu, the second season of the Goosebumps series, based on the popular children's books.  I can't tell if it is episodic or not at this point, so I just clicked on Episode 1, which stars David Schwimmer, Ross from Friends; and teen idol Sam McCarthy.

Scene 1: Brooklyn, 1994. Bill Clinton is in the White House, I'm in West Hollywood, Mariah Carey is topping the charts, and Friends premieres on CBS: 

So no one told you life was gonna be this way

Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A

 Four teens (Sameer, Matty, and two girls) descend into eerie catacombs, until they come to the room where "they conducted medical experiments."  They're doing a "truth or dare" thing where they have to spend the night.

Sameer: "I'm not scared.  I just like to sleep naked, and it could get a little awkward."  

Uh-oh, Matty's younger brother Anthony followed them!  Mom's going to be furious.  Matty forces him to leave.

Suddenly a machine switches on, gas squirts out, and Matty's face dissolves.   A gruesome image.

Scene 2: Brooklyn, 2024.  Teen twins Devin and Cece (Sam McCarthy, Jaden Bartels) exit the subway and complain about having to leave their friends in Manhattan to live with Dad, the grown-up Anthony (a craggy, dissolute-looking David Schwimmer). He picks them up in a car.  Are you sure this is Brooklyn?

At home, Dad Anthony yells at neighbor Trey, also called James Junior, for blocking his driveway. "But your mom always let me park there."

"She didn't have a car."

Inside, the living room is crowded with boxes.  Back story: Dad has moved into this house after his mother went into assisted living with dementia, and he's going through her stuff.

In other news, "I've really been looking forward to your aunt's brain surgery."  WTF?  Who looks forward to that?  He means because then they can come live with him.  

Wait -- the twins are living with their aunt, not their father?  What's wrong with him?

The micromanager passes out his extensive list of rules, but emphasizes that the main rule is: "Stay out of the basement." He gives them a tour: he's a botanist, working on a lot of plant types that will revolutionalize the botany world.  Shouldn't you be working in a lab somewhere?   But stay out!

Scene 3: Dinner at Gwendolyn's restaurant.  Gay couples at the tables behind and in front of them. Back story: Cece is starting debate camp tomorrow. She hates it, but you need "a thing" to get into college. 

Next up, Devin: He claims to be ok, given "everything that happened," but he was suspended for getting into a fight.  Nope, not gay.  

CJ drives up on his motorcycle.  Dad introduces him to the twins. Back story: he's working here, at his parents' restaurant, for the summer.  Dad suggests that maybe Devin would like to work there, too.  Playing matchmaker, buddy?  I don't have any hope that he'll be gay, but there may be a gay-subtext buddy-bond between him and Devin.

He has to make a delivery, but the guys are all meeting at the park later. "Y'all should come."  Maybe specify which park, and what time?

Scene 4:  On the way home, Dad sends the twins inside so he can chat with a crying woman in a car. She notes that the father of Trey/JJ, the neighbor who Dad argued with, stopped by the police station to file a harassment complaint. According to the Google AI, harassment consists of repeaed acts that cause the victim to "fear for their safety,"  Telling someone to not block your driveway certainly doesn't count.

The woman promised to talk to Trey/JJ's Dad, but "be careful.  He's big on conspiracy theories." 

In other news, she managed to pull some strings and retrieve his brother's things from the night he and his friends dissolved.  . Moldy clothes with dissolved Matty all over them, from 30 years ago? 

The woman has been thinking a lot about that night, but Dad doesn't want to hear it.  He cuts her off and heads inside.

Scene 5: The twins come downstairs while Dad is arguing with his ex wife on the telephone. Wait -- they were living with their aunt, but she's having brain surgery, so they moved in with Dad.  Why weren't they living with their mother?

Dad assures them that although they hate each other, they both love the twins.  He made burnt waffles, which they reject.  It's the next morning. What happened to meeting the guys in the park later?

Left: This show is a little beefcake-light, so here's a photo of Sameer, one of the melted teens (played by the 28 year old Arjun Athalye).

More Sameer after the break

Michael Seater: The "Life with Derek" guy grows up, gets a boyfriend, and displays a Derek dick

 

Born in Toronto in 1987, Michael Seater first appeared on screen in Night of the Living (1997), a short about a guy whose father turns into a zombie.  Two years of minor roles followed, and then Michael hit YTV/Nickelodeon gold with The Zack Files (2000-2002)

What gay teenager  didn't rush home from school to watch yhe dreamy Zack(Robert Clark), and his buds Cam and Spencer (Jake Epstein, Michael) face bizarre paranormal events?  Like shoes that make it impossible to stop running, a cereal that makes him age rapidly, or an overdue library book that turns him into Alice in Wonderland. 

He went on to play paranormal investigator Lucas in Strange Days at Blake Holsey High (2002-2006). Noah Reid, later Patrick's boyfriend/husband on Schitt's Creek, played his best buddy Marshall, and he also had a love/hate relationship with school bully Vaughn (Robert Clark again).  They are sucked into a wormhole, turn invisible, repeat the same day over and over.  In my favorite episode, a chemistry accident sends Marshall through the periodic table: he becomes hydrogen, oxygen, neon, and so on.  Meanwhile, his older brother Grant arrives at the school and turns into sodium.  Marshall has changed into chlorine, so they stabilize as salt. Just go with it.

Left: Robert Clark's brother Daniel.

Next Michael moved into the more traditional teencom Life with Derek (2005-2009): He has a sibling rivalry with his adopted sister Casey (Ashley Leggat) and, in the first season, an intense, passionate, joined-at-the-hip best buddy, Sam (Kit Weyman).  Then it's girls, girls, girls every second of every day.

In Regenesis (2006-2007), Michael plays homeless teenager Owen, who moves in with paranormal investigator David (Peter Outerbridge, left), but ends up mentally damaged after an experimental treatment to cure his drug addiction 

Michael's adult roles have involved fewer subtexts:

18 to Life (2010-2011): newlywed 18-year olds move in with their parents.

The "virgin getting laid" comedy Sin Bin (2012).  

The "virgin getting laid before the world ends comedy" Sadie's Last Days on Earth (2016).

In 10 episodes of Bomb Girls, 2013, set during World War II, Michael's bomb engineer Ivan dates closeted lesbian Betty, then Betty's crush Kate, then Nazi spy Helen.  Then he dies in a bomb factory explosion.  No gay male characters.

In The Wedding Planners, which aired for seven episodes in March-May 2020, Michael and his sisters plan weddings.  It doesn't look like any of them featured same-sex couples.

Most recently Michael played a gay-coded villain on The Murdoch Mysteries.  In 2009, gay student James Gillies and his boyfriend murder a professor in a reflection of the Leopold and Loeb case.  In 2023, he returns to torment Murdoch, kidnap The Girl, and survive various lethal stunts.  The show features a gay couple, so it's not just queer villains, but still, one doesn't expect such a blatant stereotype in 2023. 

And in Life with Luca, 2023, he returns to Derek as a grown-up.  He and Casey each have children who replicate the sibling-rivalry of their youth -- Luca is Casey's son.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

"The Resort": Skyler Gisondo disappears on Christmas Day at a creepy Mayan resort

The Resort, on Peacock, s a murder-mystery tv series set on the Mayan Riviera, where rich people go sunbathing and ignore the Mayan ruins. It stars Skyler Gisondo, and it features a gay couple, both named Ted, so I'm in.  I reviewed Episode 1, "The Disappointment of Time."

Scene 1: The airport shuttle stops at Akumal, a tropical resort. Wait -- did it knock over a vase?  Noah (William Jackson Harper) and his wife Emma exit.  Manager Luna gives them bracelets that will "get you everything you need "Even heroin?"  I didn't know that this was a comedy; the previews make it look like a murder mystery.

It's their tenth anniversary,  but they don't seem particularly lovey-dovey.  They don't even sit together in the golf cart.

Scene 2: In their room, they bump fists and then collapse onto separate beds.  No smooching?  Ok, one kiss, but Noah complains that Emma's breath stinks. 

Scene 3: Time for dinner, but Noah is asleep -- jet lag, he says, although it's only a three hour time difference.  Emma watches tv, then examines a mysterious scar on her belly (this will become important later) and hits the pool.  She checks an online quiz to see if she should dump Noah. He's not cheating, so no....

Scene 4: Emma snoozing and hungover on a tour bus while Noah talks to an older gay couple, Ted and Ted (Parvesh Chena, Michael Hitchcock). They are obviously hot for each other, although they've been together for decades.  

Left: Luis Guzman appears in two episodes

Their secret: every seven years they visit somewhere they've never been before (Laos, Memphis, and now Mexico) to see if they want to stay together.  Maybe they've changed.  Maybe they no longer make each other happy.  So far, so good, 21 years. 

They arrive, and ride go-karts through the jungle. Darn, I thought they were going to Chichen Itza.   Emma lags behind.  Whoops, she crashes and tumbles down into a ravine. While down there, she finds an antiquated cell phone.  She hides it before the others come to rescue her.

Scene 5:  That night, in a bar.  Emma the Alcoholic wants a drink, but Noah insists that she can't have any alcohol due to the pain meds from her injuries.   The Teds arrive and ask how she's feeling.  She excuses herself and goes out to the pool to check on the fossilized cell phone.  Why so mysterious?  I'd be showing it to the others right away.

Later, as Noah snores, she sneaks out to an all-night cell phone store and buys a phone like the fossilized one she found.  She transfers the SIM, charges, and voila, it works!  Pictures of Sam (Skyler Gisondo)  being licked by a dog, watching fireworks, meeting a girl in a UCLA sweater, drawing cartoons, and at the Oceana Vista Resort!

Messages from 12/26/07, the day after Christmas 15 years ago. "Call me," from Mom. "Where are you?" from Dad.  "I am so sorry," from Hanna.  

Scene 6: A cabbie takes Emma to the Oceana Vista Resort.  It's deserted, locked up, overrun with vegetation.  He could have just said that.   "People died in there," he explains. 

Scene 7: Back in the hotel room, Emma googles "Oceana Vista"  It was destroyed by a "rogue holiday hurricane" on December 27, 2007, the day after Sam went missing.

Actually, two tourists went missing, Sam and Violet.  They were apparently unacquainted.  "Nothing about what happened made any sense," the detective said, "But I suspect foul play."

Scene 8: Flashback to December 24, 2007.  On an airplane, Sam (Skyler) is working on a cartoon about women with large breasts and butts unloading stuff from the overhead bins.  Heterosexual identity established within five seconds. 

He shows his art to his UCLA-sweatshirt girlfriend. She wants to know what it means.  "Nothing.  Not everything has to have a deeper meaning."  Is that a challenge, Sam?  

She thinks it's a commentary on the American tourist industry exploiting local cultures. Maybe this couple will visit some Mayan ruins instead of playing on go-karts.

While they are discussing how much they love each other, the guy across the aisle, Carl (Dylan Baker),  asks his wife if Sam might be gay.  "He has a girlfriend!", she protests.  

"A lot of my gay friends used to have girlfriends."  

She doesn't believe that her husband has any gay friends.  He appears in four episodes, so he must be important.

Scene 9: They'll be in Cancun in two hours.  Uh-oh, girlfriend's phone is buzzing, and she's asleep!  

Sam checks: A text from her professor, asking her to text him when she lands.  Hmm -- a little teacher-student nookie going on?  

Then: "Had fun tonight!" A photo of some male-female legs intertwined. "Anal sex tonight?"  A dick pic!  Hanna says that she's falling in love with him in a post dated December 18th,  six days ago!  

Carl from across the aisle notices the dick pic, and cries out in horror.  Sam slams the phone shut.  Homophobic, aren't you?

More butts after the break

Jamie McGuire: The Smiley Creature from "From," with Halifax hunks and a nude Dylan Sprouse

 

From, on MGM+, is set in the ruins of a small town, with a diner, a police station, a hotel, a farm, and some houses, where stranded travelers from various parts of the U.S. get stuck.  Every night humanoid creatures appear, dressed in 1950s costumes -- mechanic, nurse, librarian, tv cowboy.  They try to lure you outside, or trick you into letting them in, whereupon they turn into monsters and kill you.  

The Creatures are the main threat, and one of the biggest mysteries, in From. They are impervious to most weapons, but they don't have paranormal powers.  Their physiology is human, but dessicated, as if they've been mummified.  They were once regular humans: a creature named Jasmine says "I didn't ask to be this way."  My theory is that some sort of dark magic went wrong during the 1950s, zapping the town into a pocket universe and transforming some of the townsfolk into Creatures.

Jamie McGuire's Smiley Creature has become a fan favorite, due to his especially huge, creepy grin and his quirky personality: he  seems delighted to be part of the world again.  He feels furniture, picks up objects.  He climbs aboard a stalled bus and plays at driving it.  

He was killed in Season 2, but Creatures never really die, so chances are he'll be back in Season 3.

Without the creepy grin, Jamie is quite handsome, so I wanted to know more about him.  

He's been interviewed a dozen times, but mostly about the Smiley Creature -- and he doesn't know any more than we do.  He just puts on a creepy grin and follows the director's instructions.

Jamie McGuire turns out to be very diffcult to research.  A Google search yields 3,000 entries about a romance novelist named Jamie McGuire, mostly reviewing two of her books that have been made into movies, Beautiful Disaster and Beautiful Wedding.    Dylan Sprouse, top photo and left, stars as an inked bad boy boxer.

Dylan's butt for the road

More Jamie after the break

"It's a Wonderful Knife": A "Wonderful Life" psycho-slasher homage with six queer characters and Depner dicks

It's a Wonderful Knife, appeared on my Hulu feed with an interesting premise: A year after Winnie saves the town from a psycho-killer, she wishes she had never been born, and gets her wish.  So she never existed, and the town is still saddled with the psycho-killer.  She must team up with "town misfit" Bernie to defeat him.

Sounds heteronormative, as usual, but call-backs to It's a Wonderful Life might be fun.  Besides, it stars Justin Long, one of my 1990s crushes.

Scene 1:  Establishing shot of the town of  Angel Falls -- Wonderful Life was in Bedford Falls, har har -- , with Mayor Henry (Justin) extolling the benefits of his new housing development.  Switch to a Christmas festival, with Henry making a speech.  Check out the creepy masked nun-angel atop the Christmas tree -- it will be important later. 

As Main Girl Winnie and her dad and brother walk home, Mayor Henry and his Adult Brother Buck  (Sean Depner, left) grab them to ask what they thought of his speech.  Brother Jimmy notes that Buck has started an OnlyFans page -- where you subscribe to see videos of a guy beating off.

He asks "Buck, do you remember me?  You were my PeeWee Football coach!"

Buck ignores him.  Disappointed, Jimmy says "Please shoot me." A very subtle queer moment, but better than nothing: Jimmy is gay.

Sean Depner, who is gay in real life, actually does have a MyFans account, or at least some nude photos online.

In other news, Mayor Henry needs an Old Guy to sign over his house so he can build his housing development.  He drags Dad off to  help talk him into it, even though it's Christmas Eve.

Scene 2:  The Old Guy refuses to sign, because his family has lived there for generations, and it goes to his granddaughter after he's gone.   Henry: "You're the past.  I'm the future.  Get with the program, Boomer." Actually, he looks more like the Greatest Generation

Granddaughter Cara comes downstairs, tells Grandpa how much she loves him, and notes that they're both invited to dinner at Main Girl Willa's house tomorrow . Mayor Henry creepily says "You be safe, now," and she's off to the big Christmas Eve party.

Scene 3: At home, Mom gives a rainbow ornament to "my gay son."  Ok, Jimmy is outed.  Aunt comes in with her wife, annoyed because her in-laws won't believe that they are married, not roommates.  Ok, she is outed in her first sentence. That's three gay characters, plus two LGBT cast members -- Willa is played by nonbinary actor Jane Widdop.  This is turning into quite a queer-friendly movie.

Winnie runs out to go to the party with Best Friend Cara -- the only thing standing between Mayor Henry and the housing development plan, remember?   Their boyfriends, Eddie and Robbie, will meet them there. 

Back at the ancestral house, Grandpa is staring morosely at the fire, when there's a knock on the door.  It's a psycho-killer dressed like the creepy masked nun-angel!  Why not just steal his heart medication?

Scene 4: At the big party, Winnie wants to make friends with the Town Outcast, but a Mean Girl pulls her away  -- guess what?  Outcast Bernie is a girl.  I bet she was a boy in the first draft, but they changed her gender so...wait...Boyfriend Robbie and Brother Jimmy arrive and brag about their scores at the big football game.  Then Jimmy goes off to cruise a "brooding, artistic type,"  Best Friend Cara and the Mean Girl go off with their boyfriends, and Winnie is left alone.

Scene 5: Cut to Jimmy and the Brooding, Artistic Guy smooching in the woods. Uh-oh, a twig snaps.  It's the Nun-Angel, leaving them alone.  Not a homophobe, anyhow.

Jimmy is played by Aidan Howard, who is gay in real life.  Three queer cast members.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit