"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

"A Real Pain": Buddies have wacky adventures or a Dark Night of the Soul in Poland, but I'm off to the Horseman's Club

 

A Real Pain (2024), on Hulu, is advertised as a wacky buddy comedy with Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, touring Poland, with a lot of exteriors.  

No doubt they are both absurdly heterosexual and will meet The Girl of Their Dreams, but it will be fun to see how quickly their heterosexual identity is established. 

 Besides, I'd like to see some of the sights, like the Jewish Museum in Warsaw and the University of Krakow. .

Not to mention Kieran's backside.

Scene 1: Benji (Kieran Culkin) is sitting in the airport waiting for David (Jesse Eisenberg), who is just walking out the door of his Manhattan brownstone.  He keeps calling: heavy traffic...no, it lightened up...Ok, so David is the Stick-in-the-Mud, Benji the Free Spirit.

At the airport, Benji grabs him and makes him twirl so he can see his cousin's butt.  Um...an interested in a guy's butt is a sign of gay identity.

He brought yogurt, and some weed for when they reach Poland: "They're not going to arrest two Jews for a little weed."

He chats up the TSA lady: "Her Dad does security for the Knicks."  This annoys David. Doesn't count as heterosexualizing him.

Priya made some trail mix for them.  Doesn't count: she could be an aunt or a sister.

Scene 2: On the plane, David has to take the middle seat. Bummer.

They discuss their back story: David works in digital ad sales, and Benji is a deadbeat. They haven't seen each other for a while.  They're going on a Heritage Tour of Poland.. wait, they're Jewish...is this a tour of the sites of pograms and concentration camps? 

Naw, who would want to see those?  Poland has 1000 years of Jewish history.

Later, David takes his prescription meds and gazes at a video of his daughter. Heterosexualized at minute 6.30. 

It's actually Jesse Eisenberg's real-life son, Banner.  I was confused by his long blond hair.

Scene 3: At the Warsaw airport -- "Welcome to Warsaw" sign in English.  They meet their driver. Some nice location shots as they drive through the city, but David is still gazing at that video of his son.   Why the heck aren't you looking out the window at this major European capital that you've never been to before?

They check in, retrive a package of weed from the desk clerk, and head up to their room. When David kicks off his shoes, Benji complements him: "You have really nice feet.  Graceful as fuck. Reminds me of Grandma's feet."  Foot fetish? Benji is giving off some gay vibes.

Scene 4: Tour Guide James (Will Sharpe, top photo and left) introduces himself: Not actually Jewish, but a degree in Eastern European Studies from Oxford.

The others in the tour are:

1. Marcia Kramer, recently divorced, from New York.  Her mother survived the camps. One of the cousins is obviously going to fall in love with her, but I'm not sure which.  Maybe David is divorced, and Benji's interest in men's butts and feet is supposed to be wacky, not homoerotic.

2.-3. Diane and Mark (Daniel Oreskes), an elderly couple. 

Daniel Oreskes has 40 acting credits on the IMDB, including The Sopranos, Law & Order, Ray Donovan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Only Murderers in this Building.  He is heterosexual.

4. Eloge, from Rwanda, converted to Judaism.  He's a survivor of the Rwandan genocide.

The Cameroon-born Kurt Egyiawan is a British theatrical actor who has appeared in The Exorcist, House of the Dragon, Bodies, and Kaos.  No intel on whether he's heterosexual or not.

More after the break

"F*cking Adelaide": Queer musician Brendan Maclean returns to his awful home town, shows his backside and a rando's d*ck

 

F*king Adelaide  (2017), now streaming on Amazon Prime, is a comedy-drama about a family drawn back to Adelaide when Mom makes an Earth-shattering announcement.  There are six 15-minute long episodes.  I watched the first, about Eli.

Scene 1: Adelaide, 1999.  A boy in drag is singing to his two sisters as they hide in a sheet-draped-over-chairs tent from their yelling, smashing-things parents.  He stumbles, but his older sister tells him to just keep singing: "One day you'll get out of here, and you'll be a massive star. I know it."

Scene 2: Sydney now.  The adult Eli (Brendan Maclean), wearing a weird headdress, is trying to perform on a broken keyboard.  Cut to him kissing his girlfriend in their apartment.  He's straight?  WTF?

It was a misdirection -- Eli is still trying to perform in a coffee house that looks like an apartment.  He is angry because the couple is kissing instead of paying attention. 

It probably wasn't a misdirection for Australians.  Brendan Maclean is a well-known queer musician, with six EPS, two albums, and a number of songs for tv episodes.    

He became infamous in 2017 with the music video for his song "House of Air," which pretends to be a training video on "homosexual encounters" around 1980.  Strangely, the performers actually engage in the more unusual acts, which may be gross to some viewers, but just simulate the everyday acts.

Brendan was interviewed in Issue 2 of You Otter Know, a queer zine produced by Harry Clayton-Wright during the COVID lockdown in 2020-21. He discusses "lip synching in a jock, hands tied to an over-hanging bar as I'm whipped by a gimp."

He has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, including Klipspringer in The Great Gatsby (2013) and How to Make Gravy (2024), "an adaption of Australian music legend Paul Kelly's classic song."

The song is a monologue: a man calls his friend from prison, saying he won't be home to make the gravy for Christmas dinner, so he's giving him the recipe.  

After a look at Brendan's butt, we can return to the episode.  

As Eli continues trying to perform in the apartment-shaped coffee house, Mom calls: she bought him a ticket home.

"Nope, I'm busy.  I've got gigs and a boyfriend and a life. I can't just go running off to Adelaide." 1350 km, a two-three day drive.

The woman in the snogging couple says she used to know a guy from Adelaide.  Maybe you know him?  That happens when I say I'm from Illinois.  

Scene 3: Eli heads to the pub and asks bartender Nathan (Drew Proffitt) to let him perform.  "Nope, I pay you to tend bar." 

"Ok, then, where are my wages?"

"Oh, I gave them to your boyfriend Peter."

They get into a fight over whether Eli can drink free, and bartender Nathan fires him.

More after the break