"Black Doves": A very important seedy-looking guy, a deep cover spy, Santa Claus, and a gay hitman. With six bonus butts

 

Netflix thinks that I'm going to "love!" the spy series Black Doves, and I'm too occupied with breakfast to scroll down, so let's have a look.  It will be a reprieve from endless Christmas romcoms, anyhow.

Scene 1: No such luck.  Santa Claus stumbles through a bar, singing "The guys of the NYPD Choir were singing 'Galway Bay'".  Huh?  Heavily intoxicated, he stumbles out into the street, and...um...out of the show. 

A seedy looking guy (Andrew Koji) scopes out the bar -- The Coal House, a famous pub on the Strand in London -- and tries  to call Maggie.  She's out, so he calls a black-haired woman to complain that he's in trouble.  

Left: Andrew Koji's butt

The black haried woman patches him through to Philip. (Thomas Coombes). 

Seedy Looking Guy asks: "Did you talk to anyone?"  Philip says no; then he's strangled to death.  The black-haired woman is stabbed.  

Seedy Looking Guy calls someone else and starts to tell them "I..." -- probably "love you," before he is shot.  Way to kill off all of the introduced characters!  Now who's the focus, Santa Claus?

Scene 2: Rome.  A new seedy-looking guy sits at a bar, smoking. Mrs. Reed calls.  He ignores her, but she keeps calling until he answers. He says "Ok, I understand."  I don't.

Scene 3: Maybe London.  An old lady with a dog...wait, not a focus character. A nuclear family Mom gets her sons and daughter ready for the Christmas pageant. There's a son and a daughter running up the stairs while squealing in delight and another son in the back yard, but when they appear again, there's only two.  Big continuity error, guys, but they turn out to be just props to demonstrate her nuclear family-ness.  

Then she goes into the study, where her husband (Andrew Buchan),the Minister of Defense, is negotiating with the Saudis and worried about the death of the Chinese ambassador.  The coroner says it was a drug overdose, but you never know. I'm not sure what the Saudis have to do with it.

Scene 4: A swanky party.  Mom greets some people, announces that this party is her light when things seem dark outside.  Then an Elderly Woman pulls her aside and announces that Jason Davies, a Justice Department official whom she was having an affair with, was murdered. 

She flashes back to kissing Jason and playing with his lips -- it's the Seedy Looking Guy from the first scene -- then assures the elderly woman that she wasn't working an angle. It was a real romance.  

"Maggie Jones, who worked in a shop,  and tabloid reporter Phillip Bray were also murdered."  What about the black haired woman?  She can't be Maggie, since Seedy Looking Guy told her "I can't reach Maggie."  

Elderly Woman wants to know if he said anything during their last meeting that might have gotten him murdered, or if he was trying to find out Mom's true identity as a Black Dove.  

Back story: Mom -- finally named Helen -- has been doing deep cover for ten years, courting and marrying the Minister of Defense and feeding them government secrets.  She's in too deep to back out now, and besides, the Minister is on the road to Downing Street! 

Elderly Woman tells her to keep quiet, don't call attention to herself, and especially don't investigate your boyfriend's murder.

Scene 5: The Elderly Woman approaches the Second Seedy-Looking Guy, now named Sam (Ben Whishaw)

He's retired; he hasn't had a hitman assignment for seven years; but the Elderly Woman insists: find out if someone is planning to murder Helen due to her association with Seedy-Looking Guy, and if so, kill them.  

Later, Sam is drinking in a bar when a guy approaches him.  They chat, and Sam invites him up to his hotel room.  Say what?  

Cut to Helen disobeying orders and going to the Seedy-Looking Guy's apartment.  She snoops around, cuddles with his coat, destroys a bug, tries to open a secret panel....

Wait -- what about the guy Sam invited to his room?

Screwing 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

The naked press bro on the bus with "The Girls on the Bus"

 

I wasn't planning to watch The Girls on the Bus, on Netflix:  a political satire about lady journalists covering a flawed presidential campaign.  Politics are at the bottom of my list of interests, and four ladies bonding won't leave much time for guys. But then I found a scene in Episode 1.6 where Peter Kendall, playing a "Press Bro," jumps out of a stalled bus naked and runs around, giving us frontal and rear shots. 

I wanted the full story. Is he being chased?  Did he see something he shouldn't have?  Did a jealous boyfriend catch him in the act?

The girls are Sadie, who writes for the New York Times...um, Sentinel; Grace, a seasoned career journalist from a previous generation; Kimberly, who works for the racist Fox...I mean Liberty News Network, even though she's black; and social media influencer Lola.

Scene 1: The scene of the guy running naked from the bus while the voice over tells us about the importance of debating issues: "This country was founded on argument."  Inside the bus, the journalists are drinking, screaming, bouncing into each other, eating sandwiches, squirting whipped cream, and laughing hysterically, like a frat party on crack.  

Scene 2: Six hours earlier. Sadie the print journalist and Grace the veteran are in a hotel room, examining billionaires for scandals that they can use to take them down.  Meanwhile, Lola the social influencer and her girlfriend are smooching and discussing the clothes they will need for the upcoming trip to a candidate debate in Minnesota. Hey, when I searched for gay or lesbian characters in this show, Autostraddle complained that there were none!   

Lola's manager calls to ask why she hasn't posted for six hours: she needs to be pushing the alcoholic whipped cream, or she'll lose her sponsers, and her $5,000 a week spot at the Clubhouse.  Lola tries to explain that she's been networking, as her girlfriend smooches all over her.

How many girls are there on this thing?  IMDB says that there are only four, but I've counted six so far, and no boys.

Scene 3:  Sadie the newspaper journalist is interviewing Benji about how he is going to capitalize on Walker's victory in South Carolina. He answers with vague doublespeak. Malcolm (Brandon Scott), her ex-boyfriend, accuses her of trying to make him look bad by interrogating his boss. 

She explains that their romance was a conflict of interest, so now everything she says about Walker, the presidential candidate, is suspect.  She can't  be seen talking to him, or she'll be fired.

Left: Brandon Scott's backside.

Scene 4: Waiting to board the bus for the Minnesota presidential debate, Kimmy, the racist-news broadcaster, tells her on-air partner how they can get more airtime: show her boobs.  He disagrees. The other girls discuss their romantic entanglements. 

Uh-oh, Malcolm is getting on the bus. There are lots of other ways to get to Minnesota, so his ex Sadie concludes he is there just to mess with her.

More after the break