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

Noah Centineo: The Boyfriend of Your Dreams, with five butts, three bulges, one penis, and no gay characters

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"That 90s Show" Episode 2.4: We meet Ozzie's boyfriend, sort of. Plus nude photos of 90s teen idol Brian Austin Green

16 years after we said goodbye to the kids smoking pot in the Forman basement on That 70s Show, their own kids have returned in That 90s Show.  The premise: Eric and Donna's daughter Leia spends the summer with her grandparents, and has humorous misadventures with Michael and Jackie's son (Mace Coronel) and some other teens.  Except now it's a more diverse crew: Ozzie, played by Reyn Doi, is Asian and gay.  

The grandparents are still around, the original gang pops in from time to time, and there are guest spots from a lot of iconic teen hunks from the  1990s , such as Seth Green, left, Kevin Smith, Kadeem Hardison, and Brian Austin Green -- bonus dick and butt pics below.

I reviewed Episode 2.4, where we meet Ozzie's Canadian boyfriend, Etienne. Sort of.

Scene 1: In the iconic basement, Ozzie is excited that Etienne is coming to visit.  The Hunk, Mace Coronel, sits with his arm around his girlfriend.  The Dumb One, Maxwell Acee Donovan, has broken up with his girlfriend.  A lot of heterosexual coupling going on.  

The guys offer to give Ozzie a ride to the airport in their van, but Ozzie asked Mrs. Foreman to do it: he doesn't want Etienne to get off the plane and hate America.  What about his parents?  Oh, regular cast only.

Gwen enters and introduces them to her new "not my boyfriend," Cole, played by Niles Fitch. 

Ozzie tells him that he ranks guys on looks, popularity, communiy service, and butt.  He's #1.  Cole: "I know.  I got your letter."  At least this isn't a neutered gay guy.

Everyone razzes Gwen: "Not your boyfriend, right!  No way you're not dating!" 

Scene 2: Red, the father from That 70s Show, is reading the newspaper and drinking coffee.  He asks, "Can you top me off, Honey?"  

"Sure, Babe," but it's not his wife Kitty, it's Ozzie, har har.  He wants to know where Kitty is: she agreed to drive him to the airport, and they have to leave soon. 

Next door neighbor Bob ( Don Stark),  also Leia's other grandfather, wants to show Red his rattlesnake eggs.  "No one will fall for that prank," Red complains.  But Kitty falls for it, and she's so surprised that she topples over the couch!

Scene 3: Kitty has sprained her ankle.  She told the neighborhood ladies about her injury, maybe exaggerating a little, or a lot -- "I may have said I had a collapsed lung" -- so they are bringing over casseroles.  

Neighbor Bob advises against lying about the severity of her injury: once you reach a certain age, the number of available men goes into sharp decline, so if they think that Kitty is dying, they'll latch onto her husband...

Scene 4: Gwen, the one who's not-dating the new guy Cole, yells at the other girl -- about that "boyfriend" stuff.  "Now he wants to have a talk about us! He wants to be my boyfriend!"  

The other girl doesn't understand what's wrong with that.  Isn't it the goal of life? 

"I....um...have never been in a relationship before.  I'm nervous."   

"Just hold his hand and leave your heart open." Ugh.

Scene 5: Since Grandma Kitty can't drive, Ozzie has to allow the guys to drive him to the airport in their van. They agree to "no hot-boxing, no Dutch Ovens, no mooning, and no Jay Leno impressions."

Scene 6:  One of the girls reports back to Kitty about the ladies flirting with Red: Pam is cooking him chicken.  Kitty imagines her as singer Carmen Electra hanging all over him and cooking seductively: "Do you want to shake or bake?"  She forces the girl to piggy-back her downstairs and yells "Get away from him, you slut!", but it turns out to be an elderly lady.

Scene 7: At the airport, Ozzie is nervous. The passengers from Quebec arrive. The Dumb One: "I never realized how much Canadians look like us."  But boyfriend Etienne isn't there!

Meanwhile, Gwen tells Leia that she broke up with "not my boyfriend" Cole. 

"But he could be the love of your life. My parents met in high school."  Eric and Donna?  Aren't they divorced?

Suddenly Cole appears. They have a heart-to-heart: "I'm scared," yada yada yada.  Why does the straight couple get a happy ending, while the gay guy gets left at the airport door?   

More after the break

Shia LaBeouf: From gay-subtext teencom to heterosexual porn. At least he shows us his dick a lot.

Even Stevens (2000-2003) was one of the first, and best, of the Disney Channel teencoms, featuring middle-school boyfriends Louis and Twitty (Shia LaBeouf, A.J. Trauth).  Episode plots emphasize their romance:

Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a girl.

Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a boy.

Louis becomes a celebrity, straining his relationship with Twitty.

 I remember an episode where they were sitting together on the couch, not on opposite ends like most people, but squeezed in with their thighs pressing together.  "They're not even trying to hide it," I thought.  

Add Nick Spano as a hunky older brother and Fred Meyers as older sister's swishy bff, and you have a gay-subtext classic. 

Seasons change, teencoms are cancelled, and the actors move on.  Nick Spano, top photo, majored in English literature at UCLA and now runs the Re/Creation Cafe.  

AJ Trauth, left, lives in Ohio. 

Fred Meyers is a paramedic.

As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual in real life.

And what about Louis Stevens, Shia LaBeouf?

He moved into dark, depressing indies about lost, dying, grieving, and enraged youth:

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: as his friends are killed or kill themselves, Shia believes that he is protected by the saints.

Bobby: The night of Robert Kennedy's assassination

Disturbia. A teen under house arrest "rear-windows" a serial killer.

When he veered into science fiction, as in Transformers, it was always a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.

He shows his penis on screen for the first time in the 2012 music video Sigur Rós: Fjögur píanó, which looks Icelandic but is actually in English.  It's about a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.

More dick and a Catholic priest after the break

School of Rock Episode 1.7: Keefe in drag, a gay stereotype kid, a homophobic kid, and Demi Lovato, sort of.

 

Some 13 years after School of Rock (2003), a teencom version premiered on Nickelodeon: School of Rock (2016-2018), with Tony Cavalero playing Dewey, a failed musician turned middle school teacher with a special interest in winning the "Battle of the Bands."

 In 2016 Nickelodeon was still promoting the "all kids are heterosexual" myth, so I doubt that there is any LGBTQ representation. But I'll review Episode 1.7, where Dewey dresses in drag as a scary Goth lady. .

Scene 1: Four kids and Dewey performing, while the others in the classroom watch -- from behind them?   Dewey explains that rock is about showmanship more than music: strut your stuff!  Freddie (Ricardo Hurtado, top photo) does a guitar zing.  Lawrence (Aidan Miner, below) demonstrates that he can play the keyboard with his butt, so Dewey calls him "Lawrence von Butthoven."  Emphasizing one's butt is a queer code.  Summer (Jade Pettyjohn, who will befriend Kelvin and Keefe in RG Season 1) has her face painted onto her tambourine. Lead singer Tomika is hiding.  

Dewey demonstrates the signature moves of Mick Jagger and  Miley Cyrus (a rock musician?).  Zack (Lance Lim, not the naked guy) asks him not to twerk. It would be too erotic for middle school, anyway, but interesting that the boy emphasizes that he definitely doesn't want to see a man being erotic.  He's apparently got a problem with gay men.

Scene 2: Dewey wants to know why Tomika was hiding during practice: she's embarrassed by the funny faces she makes while performing. He points out that her favorite singer, Demi Lovato, is shy in real life, but when she goes on stage, she becomes a confident rocker (these guys have a different definition of "rock").

To boost her confidence, Dewey claims that he knows Lovato and will call and tell her all about Tomika.  Whoops, he's doesn't even know who Demi Lovato is!  He's in trouble now!

Scene 3: Zack and Freddie ooze with horniness over Tomika's new style.  Lawrence thinks they're talking about him (gay joke, har har): "Thanks.  I went with my Superman underwear today."

"We can't actually see your underwear."  Would things be different if you could see it, guys?

Scene 4:  Dewey teaches science, too.  The textbook says that he was wrong: lightning is not caused by two angels having a fistfight.  I'm sure he was joking. After five seconds of science, they scoot the desks aside and start practicing. The newly confident Tomika wants them to play Demi Lovato's "Heart Attack."  

Lawrence asks if it's cool for dudes to like Lovato (that is, does liking Lovato mean that you're gay?).  They assure him that it's fine (e.g., heterosexual).

Tomika tells the band that Dewey and Lovato are besties, and hang out together all the time.  "Sure, when she's in town," Dewey says, hoping that she's far away.  Of course, she happens to be in town, playing the Texas Memorial.  This show is set in Texas?  Ugh, I spent the worst year of my life in Hell-for-Certain, Texas.  That's enough to get a F grade.

The band pleads with Dewey to get Lovato to listen to them play.  Like, sure, even if they were friends, the big star wouldn't want to spend her time off reviewing a middle school band.  She'd want to see the sights, if there are any in...ugh, Texas.

Scene 5: Dewey at Lovato's hotel, trying to bribe the desk clerk with "a prescription for fungal medicine."  Lawrence happens to be staying there; he's on his way to a couple's massage -- with his Mom.  "Gay men are all in love with their mother." Rather a homophobic queer code, but I'll take it.

Scene 6:  Tomika has turned aggressive and demanding: they've practiced the song 15 times, but it's still not good enough.  Plus their outfits and props look like they belong in a middle school.  Well, to be fair, Lawrence doesn't actually play his keyboard.  He just mashes his hands down on several keys at once.   

They try it with disco ball motorcycle helmets, Tomika emerging from a barrel of ink, and a wind machine that destroys everything.  Instantaneous props!  I'm in a 1950s sitcom.  Tomika screams that they're not worthy of her great song.

More after the jump break