The Mick, Episode 1.12: Strong gay subtext and ample beefcake in this gloomfest. Dick and butt shots do not help.

 

The Mick (2017-2019) was a Fox sitcom (and you know what that means: raunch) starring Kaitlyn Olson of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (and you know what that means: raunch).A low-life grifter, she becomes the guardian of her upscale sister's kids after the parents flee the country to avoid a federal prosecution.  It doesn't sound like my cup of tea, but Episode 1.2, "The Wolf," features both Scotty McArthur and Andy Favreau, who are definitely my cup of tea, so let's review. 

Scene 1: Mick: "You've never sucked anything before."  Her boyfriend Jimmy (Scotty McArthur): "I'm sucking as hard as I can, ok?" Mick: "It's not coming!  Suck harder!" Actually, guys, a successful blow job is more about the lip and tongue act...psych!   He's not giving a blow job, he's sucking gas out of a car in a show room, so they can steal a different car.   Meanwhile, hetero-horny teen Chip (Thomas Babusca) impresses a lollipop-sucking girl by bragging about all the cool cars he'll drive when he gets his license.

Horny Teen brags to Mick and Jimmy about the girl he met on an online dating site; he's sending her money fo air fare so she can fly over from Russia for a visit.  Scam!  The grown-ups laugh at him.  "You know nothing about the real world."

Scene 2: Mick, her young adult niece Sabrina, and another lady  drinking beer in the kitchen. Niece tells them that her boyfriend Kai, introduced in an earlier episode, is back from studying furniture design in Scandinavia, and taking her out to dinner.  And here he comes, in a muscle shirt!  But he ordered Chinese delivery instead of going out, which makes Niece angry. And he didn't actually go to furniture school, because the application wasn't in English. "Loser!" Mick exclaims.

Mick's boyfriend Jimmy comes in and starts eating the kung pao chicken with his hands.  Mick notes that he used to be hot, but he let himself go, "grew breasts," and became into a slob.  And now Kai is on the same path.  Niece doesn't believe it.

Scene 3: Horny Teen at the luggage carousel at the airport, holding a bouquet of flowers, while Mick films him for humiliation.  There's only one bag left: a long-haired blond picks it up.  Horny Teen rushes to hug...a guy!  Gender misidentification joke, yuck. Mick is jubilant: "Watching you being destroyed was so good!"  Hey, you're the guardian.  How about comforting the kid?

She explains.  The world is full of wolves and sheep. Mick and the Russian girlfriend are wolves, taking advantage of people.  Horny Teen is a sheep, getting taken advantage of.  But he could change, learn to be a wolf. "Sure, what the hell."

Scene 4:  In a grocery story for the first lesson: a wolf takes what it needs.  Mick orders Horny Teen to steal a bag of chips.  He hides a bag under his shirt, and immediately is caught by the security guard.  

Out in the parking lot, Mick is eating the fried chicken that she stole.  She was using Horny Teen as a distraction!  Lesson 2: Never trust another wolf.

Scene 5: Kai and Jimmy bonding in a sauna.  Jimmy: "Turns out he was Mormon all along."  You discussing an old boyfriend, dude?  Niece enters and wonders what they are up to.  "We got a friendship cooking."  Tell me more....

She asks Kai about his goals for the future. "Nothing, just hanging out with Jimmy...and you, of course."  "Well, get some goals, or people will think you're a loser."

Scene 6: Off-track betting joint. Next lesson: how to spot a sheep.  Horny Teen suggests the guy waving money around like a jackass. The scam: you get mussed up, slip your wallet into the guy's pocket, and claim that he mugged you for your winning ticket.  The haul is $38 -- but they also ruined a $1,000 suit and sent a guy to jail!

Left: Andy's dick

Scene 7: Back home, Horny Teen is done -- this is totally immoral! Besides -- his online girlfriend is here!  She was detained by ICE, and she didn't have a cell phone to call on.  Horny Teen gives her some money for a cell phone and asks the maid to make up the guest room for her. Don't you, like, want to have sex with her?  Mick isn't buying it: she's a wolf.  The scam is continuing.

Scene 8: Kai in a towel, getting ready for a meeting.  "Oh boy," Niece thinks, "He's looking for a job!"  Nope, his meeting is with Jimmy -- also in a towel -- about their new business.  Women like hot guys, and they can't fix anything around the house, so Stud Nailers, shirtless household repair.  Hey, that's sexist and heteronormative!  Lots of ladies can fix things, and lots of guys like hot guys.  

They hug: "Having a business partner who's also a friend takes off a lot of the pressure." Aww, why don't you kiss him?  Oh, right, your girlfriend is there. "Now let's go hit that sauna."  Butt grab.  Gay subtext just turned into text.

Scene 9: Dinner: pizza. Jimmy and Kai found a van for the Stud Nailers business. Good idea.  Photos of shirtless guys with big..um...hammers.  The Horny Teen's Girlfriend suggests a web show.  Also a good idea: Actually, that show already exists: "Flip the Strip."  

Niece tries to discourage them.  What's her problem? Does she think that the guys are actually having sex?

Next: Mick asks the Girlfriend about her intentions.  What does a wolf like her want with a sheep like Horny Teen?  Reveal: She likes him because he is a sheep, kind and gentle.  "He will neve hurt me."Aww. She's had to do a lot of things to survive.  

Jimmy: "We've all had to do things to survive."  Tell us about your hustler days, dude. 

There are two more nude photos after the break.  Plus the most disgusting concluding scene in television history.

Sylvester Stallone: Nude photos of Rocky, Rambo, Estelle Getty's son, Kurt Russel's boyfriend, and the Italian Stallion

 As Rocky and Rambo, Sylvester Stallone defined the gung-ho cowboy 1980s, singlehandedly defeating the Russian army and winning the Vietnam War.  

His grunting, snarling man-mountains didn't have a lot of sex scenes, but they did manage to get stripped out of their clothes by various cops, prison guards, and torturers.  Here Rambo is fumigated in prison in First Blood (1982).

Tortured in a loincloth in Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985)

During the 1990s and 2000s, Stallone often got naked while playing grunting man-mountains or parodies of them, as in the cop buddy gay-subtext Tango and Cash (1989).  The guy on the left is his gay-subtext buddy, Kurt Russell.

Or Stop, or My Mom will Shoot (1992), with Estelle Getty as the Mom.  Imagine, Rambo and Dorothy of The Golden Girls as siblings.

But to see the Full Monte, we have to go back to 1970.  

Stallone dick after the break. Warning: it gets explicit.

Gemstones Episode 2.1 Continued: Keefe's kiss, Kelvin's boner, and a thug with broken thumbs. With Jonah Hauer-King and a "proper erection" bonus

Previous: Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

In the last scene, Keefe is excluded from Sunday dinner with the family.  Now we see what he missed:

Judy and BJ accused of betraying the family because they got married at Disney World (by Prince Eric, the "hottest guy in the Disney catalog").

There's also a jab at Kelvin's muscle obsession. But it’s not just homoerotic desire.  Heterosexual desire is also incompatible with the family: when Jesse disses Judy for not having kids, she argues that she's trying to keep her body "foine" to incite BJ's desire.  Nope, they need to make babies. Well, how are they going to make babies if BJ isn't into Judy? Desire and family can't be polar opposites.

Left and below: Jonah Hauer-King, who played Prince Eric in the Litle Mermaid movie.

More Disruptions: We cut to Eli playing croquet, gazing at girl butts, and flirting with a lady.  Suddenly Junior, his friend from his wrestling days, appears amid sinister music!   Eli ignores him and drives away.  A homoerotic disruption of Eli's heterosexual dalliance, parallel to the God Squad disrupting the nuclear family procession earlier. 

Next, the Jesse-Amber plot, a new Christian-themed resort, Zion's Landing, proposed by their megachurch pastor chums, Lyle and Lindy Lissons.  Jesse doesn't have any money of his own, so he'll have to convince Eli to invest.  He's got a job at the church; he should get a salary.  Daddy Eli is super over-controlling, like his daddy was, and like Kelvin will be with his homoerotic Band of Brothers.

My Mans:  The family flies to Florida to inspect the site of the Lyssons' proposed resort.   When they return, Keefe and the God Squad meet them at their private airfield.  The family is shocked: didn't they know about the God Squad? 

"Uh-oh, my mans!" Kelvin exclaims, rushing forward to tell Keefe "You are looking great!"  In Southern Coastal grammar, "mans" is singular, "mens" plural.  He means Keefe.

Keefe tries to move in for a kiss, but Kelvin blocks him with an awkward hug.  He tries again, and Kelvin blocks him again. Finally he makes a blatant "enough!" gesture and backs off.  Judy finds this little dance hilarious.   It reflects the couple's conflict this season: Keefe wants to join the family as Kelvin's partner, the equivalent of BJ, sitting at the dinner table being criticized, while Kelvin isn't sure that same-sex romance is even possible.  His muscle cult is about desire: no love allowed. 

We cut to Eli in his office, watching a tv news show: Thaniel Block being interviewed about the "salacious scandal" story that took down Pastor Butterfield.  How famous was this guy?  I thought he was just the anonymous pastor of a satellite church.  They preach "sex only between married heterosexual partners, or you're going to hell," but privately they do everything under the sun.  Who will he target next?   Maybe Kelvin-- "Secretly gay youth minister holds wild sex orgies with his stable of muscle boys."  Ulp.   

Damn, we got old: Later, Eli is standing at the docks, worrying, when Junior approaches him and grabs him from behind, another homoerotic intrusion into his heteronormative life.  Junior complains that Eli forgot that he existed. 

Then: "We got old.  I look like a piece of shit, but damn!  You look sturdy!  Still got that mass going on!"  He grabs Eli's butt to check. Sort of presumptuous, dude, thinking that your ex will still be into you after fifty years. 

Eli thinks that Junior plans to blackmail him over revealing their days as loan enforcers (and lovers?), but he claims that he's just there for nostalgia, looking up an old friend.  "Why you all nervous, Eli?  Why are you bein' all weird?"  In this series, "weird" usually refers to sexual frustration.

Junior tries to hug him again, but Eli pushes him away.  On a scale of 1 to 100, how certain are you that these guys spent the psychedelic 1970s enjoying free love?  

As Eli walks away, Junior guilts him into a dinner invitation.

Sticky Stephens:  Nuclear families are  eating at Sticky Stephens, a parody of the Sticky Fingers Restaurant in Charleston that closed down in 2020.  Both sound dirty. The 1972 Rolling Stones album of that name  depicted a pair of jeans with an enormous bulge, leaving no question about why the fingers are sticky.

Junior points out a kissing couple: "Damn, look at that piece of tail he's with!" Ok, so he's bi.  Everybody watches as the man, Randall (Rene Rivera), lifts his girl onto the counter so they can have sex right in the restaurant!  Why doesn't someone on staff intervene? Eli yells at him to "tone down romance," and Randall yells "Suck my dick, Grandpa." But the couple leaves.

Over dinner, Junior reveals that he's now a wrestling promoter: "I got a stable full of fellas I keep working."  Tell me more, tell me more.  What do they do besides wrestling? Stripping?  Sex work?

"I wonder what my Daddy would think about you and me being reunited," Junior says.  Eli answers: "He put us together, so he would think he did a pretty good job."  Except they were separated for a lifetime.  That's not a great job of matchmaking.

Junior says that his Daddy just disappeared one day, setting up a major mystery of the Season: Did Eli murder Glendon Marsh?

Proper erections after the break.  Warning: explicit