Noah Centineo: The Boyfriend of Your Dreams, with five butts, three bulges, two cocks, and no gay characters
Anton Starkman: I keep forgetting the teencom star's name and show. But he's got a physique, he plays gay-vague characters, and there are dicks
I found this guy on the teen idol website, star of a Nickelodeon show that I'd never heard of. He's got a muscular physique, he is at the beach with a dude, and is that a pride pillow? Certainly worth a profile. So I checked him on IMDB, then got called away -- and forgot his name and the name of the show. Wham or Whomp or something?
The only other shows I recalled were The Magical Mystery of something or other and Grey's Anatomy, his last acting role, in 2025.
So I went through the Grey's Anatomy Season 22 cast list on wikipedia and the IMDB, , and the only male actors who looked like my guy were Niko Terho, who has never appeared in a Nickelodeon show
Todd Denson, ditto.
Left: Google thinks that this is Todd Denson, but I'm not sure.
And Micah McNeill, who was in one episode of ICarly.
Maybe I could find Wham or Whomp or whatever he starred in?
I checked every Nickelodeon show broadcast during the last 20 years, and the only one close to Wham or Whomp was Warped, with 13 episodes airing between January and April 2022.
It was a buddy comedy set in a comic book store, with superego Milo (Anton Starkman) butting heads with unrestrained id Ruby. They both had heterosexual crushes, but not on each other. Their friend Hurley (Christopher Martinez) worked in the pizza place upstairs.
Harrison Xu of Extremely Unique Dynamic appeared in two episodes.
Darn, I forgot the name of the show while looking up the supporting cast.
Anyhow, it appears that Anton Starkman is our guy.
Repeat: Anton Starkman, aka Anton Lee Starkman.
He'd better be worth it.
Anton lists his gender identity and pronouns on the IMDB, but not his sexual orientation. A good sign.
His on-screen experience begins with the short Henry (2011): the "bookworm" boy keeps interfering with Mom's dates. She tries to date four guys, including Jason Beghle, seen here jumping out of a window naked.
In the short Lucy Falls (2013), a 7-year old small-town girl gets a boyfriend. Guess who.
Next Anton played a young vampire in six episodes of American Horror Story (2015-16).
The younger brother of a boy with a dead pal in Shovel Buddies (2016).
The young version of Gideon, son of Beauty and the Beast Belle and Rumpelstiltskin, on two episodes of Once Upon a Time (2017). As far as I can tell, the older version, played by Giles Matthey, doesn't display any heterosexual interest.
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.
Paxton Booth: The "Coop and Cam" brother likes girls' clothes, unicorns, and cock sparring, but does he like guys? With Gavin d*ck
Ethan Wacker: The former teen spy, Bizaardvark manager, and Vanderbilt fratboy looks good in a suit. And out of a suit.
I only knew three things about Ethan Wacker before beginning the research:
A lot of male friends.
Actually, I'm getting tired of posting photos of Ethan and his male friends. Let's check his biography.
His acting credits begin in 2006 (at the age of four!) with a video game called Papa Louie: When Pizza Attacks
More video games and animation followed, plus two episodes of the teencom KC Undercover (2015-18), a Disney Channel teencom about "an outspoken and confident technology whiz and skilled black belt" who becomes a spy. Ethan played the son of the Vice President of the U.S.
Recker Eans: The gaydar boy on "Beyond Waverly Place" drums in gay-friendly videos, but is he gay or an ally? With bandmate dicks
"The Naked Brothers Band," the most heterosexist teencom on Nickelodeon. Plus the grown-up brothers' cocks, butts, and gay-vague characters.
Around 2008, I researched queer codes on children's tv for what turned out to be three scholarly articles. I gave high scores to Drake and Josh, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, The Wizards of Waverly Place, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Phil of the Future, Ed Edd and Eddy, and Zoey 101 got low scores, and the lowest: The Naked Brothers Band.
It was a mockumentary about the misadventures of a fictional band led by preteen brothers, Alex and Nat Wolff. They never explained the embarrassingly salacious name, but I assume that it meant that you would be seeing their real life, uncurated and unmediated.
Of course, it was curated and mediated. Alex and Nat did have a band, and some of their real-life bandmates (like Dan Levi, left) were in the cast, but most of the characters and situations were purely fictional. They were not at all famous. Yet.
In 2004, actress Polly Draper had the idea of making a mockumentary about her sons' band, sort a preteen Spinal Tap or A Hard Day's Night. She got her wealthy (or wealthier) brother to finance The Naked Brothers Band, filmed it in mid-town Manhattan, and entered it the 2005 Hamptons International Film Festival. Nickelodeon bought it, and suggested a teencom spin-off, competition to the upstart Myley Cyrus in Hannah Montana.
Nat Wolff was only twelve years old, and Alex was nine, a little young to handle a teencom by themselves, so Polly added adults to the cast to pull some of the weight. Mostly her relatives: husband Michael Wolff as the boys' widowed dad; niece Jesse as their babysitter; brother Tim as the school principal. Plus a steady stream of celebrity friends, including Ryan Seacrest, Tony Hawk, and Whoopi Goldberg, popped by to play themselves.
The result was three seasons of intense nepotism and aggressive "girls! girls! girls!' hetero-horniness (2007-09).
I only watched one episode for my research project (there were over 30 programs in my dataset), so to be fair, I just watched another: "Three is Enough" (February 8, 2008)
In the teaser, Alex wants to practice putting his arm around his "true love" in the movies. Nat is skeptical -- he has a new "true love" every week. But he agrees to play the girl. Then Alex plays the girl so Nat can practice. The gender-play is a queer code, but it's drowned out by the endless discussion of how many girls they like.
Next: they have writen a new song, "Three is Enough." Babysitter Jesse agrees: three is the perfect amount of everything, from donuts to boys. For instance, she can't choose between the three "adorable Timmerman Brothers" (played by Polly's excessively rich nephews). She implies that she is dating all of them, and perhaps not one at a time. Maybe they are involved in a queer four-way romance.
Then the Handsome Foreigner next door (Michael W. Barry) asks her to the big horror movie. The Timmermans get jealous and decide to spy on them.
At the studio, famous cartoonist Jules Feiffer, playing himself, is drawing cartoons to project over the band's new song. Alex asks to be portrayed as cooler and more teenager-ish, and for the girl he is in love with to look more like his real-life true love.
The main plot: their manager, 12-year old Cooper (Cooper Pillot) accidentally asks a girl for a date. The band suggests various ways to get out of it, but he doesn't want to get out of it. He just wants Nat to come along for moral support. But Nat needs a date, and he can't ask his on-off girlfriend Rosalie while they're "on a break." Can he? This section can't be easily queered; it's boys and girls all the way down.
Verdict: A few gender-bending moments , but no gay subtexts.Blake Michael: The "Dog with a Blog" brother starts a band, stalks a teacher, vanishes into corporate. With Blake and Dano dicks
I haven't been watching Disney Channel programs regularly since the days of Hannah Montana, so all I heard of Dog with a Blog (2012-15) was buzz about how ridiculous the premise was: three kids discover that their dog is sentient, can talk, and actually has a blog where he discusses his experiences and tries to find other dogs. How is that more ridiculous than a pop star pretending to be a regular girl, both daughters of a famous country-western music singer, and no one suspecting for an instant?
But I reviewed an episode, and called it "The Disney Channel's Worst Show" due to the aggressive homophobia. Critics lambasted the show for its "lackluster writing' and absence of any actual blogging. Still, it averaged 3 million viewers in the first season, and was nominated for three Emmies. The main players, other than the dog, were Chloe and Avery, two tween sisters from a blended family. But there was also a teenage brother, Tyler (Blake Michael).
Plus Dad Bennett (Regan Burns, "Big Dick Mitch" on The Righteous Gemstones) and Avery's enemy/crush (L.J. Benet), who now has abs but smiling smugly as girls in bikinis surround him.
He had a starring role in Lemonade Mouth (2011), which I never saw because I thought the term referred to some kind of terminal cancer. It's actually the name of a bad that five high schoolers who start a band -- I guess disgusting names are de rigeur for rock bands. The boys are Charlie (Blake) and Wen (Adam Hicks). Both get girlfriends, and the remaining girl gets a boyfriend, and so on, and so on. Heteronormativity fulfilled.
It's a little tangential, but Adam Hicks is known as one of the Disney Channel's skateboarding dudebros on Zeke and Luther (2009-12). His partner, Hutch Dano, has retired from acting to become a painter.
Drake Bell: A lot has happened since "Drake and Josh," including some gay videos
You may have gone to his first post-Drake movie, College (2008), where he and his three friends head for a "college weekend" (a weekend of fun activities to convince high schoolers to apply). Theirs involves nonstop shenanigans, all intensely heteronormative. At least Drake is taped to a statue of the founder with his backside exposed to the world. I think it's supposed to be humiliating.
You may have watched A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner (2011), to see how Nickelodeon would handle the gay-subtext classic. They flubbed it. Timmy is absurdly heteros*xual.
And then you probably relegated Drake to nostalgic memories, not paying a lot of attention to what he's been doing for the last few years.
I checked. Brace yourself. It's a lot.
More Fairly Oddparents movies.
A lot of stuff with former coster Josh Peck
A lot of voice work, especially Spider-Man in various cartoons, even Phineas and Ferb, and a video game.
An Elf named Snowflake
Ben the Wizard in Bad Students of Crestview Academy
The reality series Splash, where celebrities dive for charity.
The paranormal series Silverwood
Damian in American Satan
A career in music, with six studio albums, eighteen singles, twelve music videos, and sold-out concerts. Some songs in Spanish that top the Mexican charts.
Drake's personal life after the break. Warning: it gets rocky.
Harrison Houde: It's Bowie! Plus gay-adjacent tv, synth-wave music, and a pink Ford. With Diego, Harrison butts, and Nemo d*ck
School Spirits features a high school girl named Maddie Near, who becomes a "ghost" when her spirit is dislocated from her body. In Episode 2.3 (2025), we meet Diego (Zack Calderon), the older brother of Maddie's friend, n the best possible way -- wearing just a towel.
Well, maybe not the absolute best possible way...
And we learn that Maddie's body is now occupied by Janet, the ghost of a high school girl who died in 1958. She goes on the run, bringing a satchel-full of stolen cash. When she stops for supplies, we met Carl (Harrison Houde), a clerk at the superstore. He has long hair and femme multicolored bracelets, pinging my gaydar. And he's 5'5".
Sorry, Zack.
You may remember Harrison Houde from Some Assembly Required (2014-16), the Canadian teencom about a boy (Kolton Stewart) who sues his way into owning a toy company, Harrison plays Bowie, his cute, quirky best bud, who is put in charge of the Jokes and Pranks Division. (He's pictured with Dylan Playfair as the dimwitted hunk.)





















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