"Running Point": Travis has a stage mom, Jackie has a p*enis problem, and Drew's ex is dating a Greek god. With a p*enis

 

 

I don't like sports at all, but I'm still going to review an episode of Running Point (2025), on Netflix, about a basketball franchise (a team in a league that is guaranteed to play regardless of performance).  

Problem: "running point" is meaningless to me, so I keep forgetting the title every time I look away.  Google AI says that it is "a team's offensive style that emphasizes fast-paced, up-tempo play with a lot of transition opportunities."  So basically "play it loud"?   

The Premise: When Cam (Justin Theroux) of the Los Angeles Waves retires to go into rehab, he names his sister Isla (Kate Hudson) franchise president, to the consternation of her brothers Screw-up Ness (Scott MacArthur) and Micromanaging Sandy (Drew Carver).  Both Scott and Drew have played gay characters, and I think they're both bisexual in real life, so there's a good chance we'll see some gay representation.   

To increase the odds, I'll review Episode 1.7, "A Special Place in Hell," where "Jackie and Sandy's messy love lives catch up with them."  

Scene 1: Isla enters the franchise headquarters, narrating that since Coach Marcus (Toby Sandeman) gave Player Dyson(Uche Agade)  the confidence to shoot free-throws granny-style, the team has turned around. They've won three games in a row.  Hey, Isla's friend is Brenda Song from "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody"

In the office, she asks her assistant Jackie (Fabizio Guido) to refill her water jug, but he's not around.  Cut to him in bed with a woman: "This is the best thing that ever happened to me, including finding out that I'm in a family of billionaires."   But he's late for work, so he rushes out (underwear shot).

Back story:  Jackie, who worked concessions at the basketball arena, recently discovered that he was the illegitimate son of the sibling's father, so their half-brother.  They responded by giving him a job as Isla's assistant? 

Scene 2:  Jackie trying to work and look at bikini girls on the internet.  Isla wants to know where he was all morning.  He had to stop and...vote.  "Oh, we have to do that again?"  Probably, but there will just be one person on the ballot. 

The other brothers and the coach call her into the conference room to discuss "an existential crisis":  Important Player Travis' overbearing Mom.  She comes onto the court during games. She calls plays. They can't just send her back to Florida, because players idolize their Moms.  They sacrificed everything to push them out of the hood.  So could Isla tell her to tone it down?

Scene 3: Heading to the restroom, Jackie texts his girl an invitation to the Shake Shack. Inside, he literally bumps into the Very Important Mr. Ramirez (Roberto Sanchez), and praises him for all he has done for the Hispanic community.  Mr. Ramireze then praises Jackie's father: "I never approved of his lifestyle, but seeing you makes me think that some good came from his proclivities."

 It sounds like he's being homophobic, but he means that Jackie's Dad, the deceased franchise president, had lots of heterosexual marital affairs.

When Ramirez leaves, Jackie unzips at the urinal --- and screams!  Well, it's your own fault for not wrapping it.

Scene 4: The team practicing.  Travis' Mom drops by to water him, smooch him all over, and discuss how much she loves him.  Ugh, a smothering mom.   

After he leaves, Isla drops in to try to get Mom to lay off a little.  She's one of those big, flashy, crass women you see on reality tv, maybe a parody of a Kardashian or something. I'll fast-forward over that section.

Scene 5: Finally, we get to Sandy (Drew Tarver, right).  He leaves a voice mail for Charlie, with whom he has had a falling-out. "I know we're not technically speaking, but I found the air pod you were looking for.  I could drop it off anytime.  Love you."  After hanging up, he screams "F*ck!" in horror at how lame he sounded.

 I'd identify him as gay, but I've been fooled before by women with men's names, so let's just wait. 

Meanwhile, Jackie goes to his half-brother Ness's office: "When I pee, it feels like fire coming out."  See a doctor.   "You've got chlyamidia, dog." A common STD that spreads through unprotected oral, anal, or vaginal sex, although with gay men, it appears most often in the rectum. 

Having sex increases a straight man's prestige, since presumably women have to be wooed and won, so.  Ness congratulates and hugs him.  "You'll be fine.  Just go see the team doctor.  STDS are like 80% of what they deal with."

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

Moises Arias: Rico on "Hannah Montana," grows up to play gay characters and show his bum, but is he actually gay? With a hung O'Hearn

 

In 2006, the Disney channel premiered Hannah Montana, about a teenage girl who is secretly a pop star (just go with it).  Hannah was surrounded by a coterie of hunks and hunkoids, including her father Robby (Billy Ray Cyrus), her brother Jackson (Jason Earle), her buddy Oliver (Mitchell Musso), her crush Jake (Cody Linley) -- and Rico Suave (Moises Arias), the billionaire's son, schemer, and prankster who ran Rico's Surf Shop and various other business enterprises.  

Rico's love/hate relationship with Jackson, his employee and classmate, eventually turned to love: they became best friends.  Maybe they were dating in real life, too.  Or maybe Moises was dating Ryan Ochoa, or Jaiden Smith, Will Smith's nonbinary and probably pansexual child.

By the time the series ended in 2011, Moises had become the best and brightest of the Short Guy Brigade: 5'1", muscular, cute, and "obviously" gay.

After Hannah, Moises concentrated on movies and tv shows with gay subtext buddy-bonds or even LGBTQ characters:

In The Kings of Summer (2013), two teenage boys, including Gabriel Basso (left), and their nonbinary, agendered friend Biaggio (Moises) decide to spend the summer together in the wilderness. 

I didn't see Ender's Game (2013), since it was based on a book by homophobic Orson Scott Card, but the plot synopsis suggests a love-hate relationship between far-future space captain Bonzo Madrid (Moises) and Ender (Asa Butterfield).

The Land (2016) features four teenage boys who want to be skateboard champs.

In Ben-Hur (2016), Moises plays Dismas, a Jewish zealot who tries to kill Pontius Pilate from Ben-Hur's balcony.  The guards arrest Ben-Hur, of course, but he loves Dismas too much to betray him.

In Five Feet Apart (2019), he plays a gay disabled guy who lives in a cystic fibrosis ward and facilitates his buddy's heterosexual romance.

He lives in a post-Apocalyptic vault-community and buddy-bonds with a boy in Fallout (2024).

More Moises after the break

"Teacup": Body-jumping aliens, two heterosexual romances, a gay subtext boyfriend betrayal, and Rob's knob

Probably-gay actor Jackson Kelley notes that he had a starring role in the paranormal horror Teacup, on Peacock. I figured he would be playing a gay character, so I checked it out.

The premise: On a farm full of good country folk, animals start behaving strangely, then people start trembling and speaking in riddles.  The power and WIFI go out. 

An invisible "teacup" trap marked by a blue line appears around the property; any person or animal that crosses it dies a horrible death.  A guy in a gas mask keeps patroling and gesturing.  Sound doesn't get through, so he uses a board to say things like: "Stay behind the line" and "Trust no one" 

The people trapped inside the "teacup" are divided into heterosexual nuclear families:

Family #1: James (Scott Speedman, left, from Animal Kingdom), his wife (a veterinarian), sick elderly mother, teenage daughter, and preteen son.

Family #2: Ruben (Chaske Spencer from Twilight), his wife, and his teeange son, trapped there when they brought their horse to see the veterinarian.   

Soap opera plotlines: The wife is secretly having an affair with James, and the son has been in love with James' daughter since he was in second grade, but is trapped in the Friend Zone (but not for long). 

Family #3: Donald Kelley (Boris McGiver. left) and his wife from the farm next door also happen to be there when the teacup is  put up.

The Newcomers: While everyone is dealing with the crisis and soap opera stuff, preteen Arlo (Caleb Dolden) tells his sister and her not-boyfriend that the Assassin is coming to kill them all.  The only way they can escape is with a multicolored liquid from a crashed meteor, so they gather a vial full.

Gas Mask Guy wants the vial, and crosses the blue line to get it, whereupon they stab him.  

Meanwhile, James finds the injured Travis (Jackson) hiding in the basement, worried that he's "one of them" and ready to shoot.  As they have a standoff, Travis tells his story:

Gas Mas Guy at a Bar: Flashback to Travis as the new guy working at the bar, mesmerized by Gas Mask Guy, McNab (Rob Morgan).  Wouldn't you be?

Left: Rob Morgan having coffee n*ude.  But he doesnt' have a lot of tattoos; maybe it's his breakfast companion?

He's telling about the aliens who set force-field "teacup" traps that incinerate any complex organism that tries to get through.  They're non-corporeal, using human bodies as hosts.  They can jump from body to body.  Often the humans aren't even aware of it, so anyone could be hosting an alien.

Bartender Big Al tells Travis to pay attention to the other customers; he'll wait on McNab himself.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Jake Thomas: Lizzie McGuire's bratty brother plays Harry Potter, competes with Cory, kisses Finn.. With Jake's junk and Cory's cock.

Another day, another former teencom star all grown up. Today we're profiling Jake Thomas, who played Matt McGuire, the scamming, pranking little brother of the titular character on the Disney teencom  Lizzie McGuire (2001-2004, plus a 2003 movie).  

Matt is shown here with his best friend Lanny (Christian Copelin, who has retired from acting and now works as a realtor).  

I never actually watched, but the episode guide has him buddy-bonding with several other guys, including Oscar (Sebastian Jude) and Ethan (Clayton Trey Schneider), plus a "girly" interest in cheerleading that causes his father concern.  He could be queer coded. 

Afterwards  Lizzy, Jake moved into drama with a painful episode of Without a Trace (2004): High schooler Eric Miller (Jake) vanishes during a bathroom break.  The agents first assume that it's a kidnapping, but soon discover that he was lured into a humiliation trap.  He's heterosexual, but queer viewers who were bullied in high school still found it a powerfully moving experience.

Then Jake returned to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee to finish high school.   But he still had time for acting projects, like the movie Monster Night (2006), where he fights monsters and gets a girlfriend on Halloween; and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2003-07), where he plays the Harry Potter parody Nigel Planter.

Gay representation: Dean Toadblatt, headmaster of Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, marries his boyfriend in a 2007 episode.  Main characters Nergal and Irwin start dating in the series finale.  No parent complained.

After graeduating from Farragut High School in 2007, Jake returned to Los Angeles to play the snobbish Stickler in Cory in the House (2007-2008). He and Cory (Kyle Massey), son of the White House chef, compete over It-Girl Meena, daughter of the Bahavian Ambassador.  Stickler's dad is the head of the CIA, so he has access to a lot of super-spy equipment to make his wooing easier; but Meena still prefers Corey. 

Although Stickler only appears in 11 of 33 episodes, he was a fan favorite. On April 1,  2022, Jake announced a Cory spin-off, Stickler and Newt in the House, pairing Stickler with newly-elected President Newt (Jason Dolley, left).  It was an April Fool's Day prank, but many fans got excited, thinking that it was real.

Since it's imaginary, we can also imagine that Stickler and Newt are boyfriends.  Maybe the grown-up Cory drops by to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

More Jake after the break