Raising Dion Episode 2.2: Gay kid with superpowers and his scoobies fight monsters, deal with a helicopter Mom

There are lots of movie and tv shows about teenagers discovering that they have superpowers, but not many about eigh-year olds. In Raising Dion, single mom Nicole must deal with her own problems and her son's superpowers, which draw the attention of the usual medical specialists, dark-government agencies, and monstrous supervillains.  Gavin Munn plays Dion's best bud.  To see if they have a gay-subtext relationship,  I reviewed Episode 2.2, about a new boy in school, figuring that this was the episode where Gavin first appears.

Prelude: Mom and Dion off a giant smokey monster in naked human form.  So far, so good.  The monster leaves, and a guy named Pat (Jason Ritter, left) is left (fully clothed).  He explains: "It took a whole day for my body to completely reform, and another to walk to the nearest town, where I decided to start a new life."

Scene 1: Zoom out: he's being interrogated, claiming that he did unspeakable things because the Crooked Man was controlling him.  And now it is controlling someone else!  Big Boss Suzanne doesn't believe him.

Scene 2: Guys in Hazmat suits investigating a giant crater.  There are footprints down there -- maybe the security guard. They call him to check, but he's at home with a disgusting pustulating growth on his neck.  They block off the crater so no school kids fall in.

At that moment, Mom and Dion (Ja'siah Young) drive past. Dion, now ten years old, is troubled, but Mom tells him that there is nothing to worry about.  He praises his superpower trainer, Tevin (Rome Flynn, top photo). Mom says "I'm glad you like him."  Next subject of conversation: the upcoming musical, which Esperanza is counting on him for.  Does Dion have a girlfriend?  TV writers are hesitant about portraying gay pre-teens or even teenagers, but they'll happily have toddlers expressing heterosexual desire.

Scene 3: At school, Dion is drawing in the abs on a muscular superhero.  Questioned by his friend Jonathan (Gavin Munn, already a regular), he claims that they are power stabilizers to help him go faster.  "Um...ok," Gavin says, rather obviously pretending not to know that Dion is gay.  I'd better take another peek at Dion's interest in his superpower trianer.

Their third friend Esperanza (Sammi Haney), who has a unique body type and uses a wheelchair, wants to know when they're going to investigate the mysterious crater. How about today after school?  Next, she has picked out the songs they're going to use for their auditions for the school musical.  BFF Jonathan says there's no need: he has his song picked out, and it's going to be awesome!

During class, the new kid Brayden (Griffin Robert Faulkner) keeps glaring at Dion. 

Scene 4: B Plot with Mom and her sister Kat discussing where their lives went wrong. 

Cut to school: after class, New Kid Brayden reads the minds of the kids around him, mostly criticizing him for being strange.  Dion and his buds friend-up to him: "I know how hard it is being the new kid."  They ask him to audition for the school musical.

Scene 5: Out in the hall, Crooked Man tells Brayden to "get him alone!", so he asks Dion for a tour of the school. BFF Jonathan wants to come, too, but Brayden mind controls him into agreeing that it should just be the two of them. 

They walk down a deserted hallway.  Dion asks Brayden why he moved to Atlanta.  "To find you."  I don't think he means "we were meant to be together."  

Crooked Man smokes out of Brayden and tries to grab Dion, but fails.

Scene 6:  After school.  Mom arrives to pick up Dion, but Esperanza stalls her, and at the crater, BFF Jonathan stalls the hazmat guy, so Dion can zap down and investigate. It's got glowing purple flowers with undulating stamens that reach out for him -- ulp, time to zap away! 

Scene 7:  At the Bio Institute, while Dion is changing into his superhero-workout clothes, his trainer Tevin asks Mom out.  I'll skip the Mom and Patrick plots.  Actually, they take a while.  I guess child stars can't work a lot of hours.

Scene 8: Brayden at home -- he lives by himself -- eating pizza.  He criticizes the Crooked Man smoke-monster for trying to attack Dion, when he wasn't strong enough.  "Well, he was just so close, and I couldn't help it."   Crooked Man is not quite as scary when he whines to a little kid.  

Next criticism: "Why are you using the weird flowers to build an army? Why can't you kill Dion all by  yourself, you wimp?"  Crooked Man doesn't answer; he just complements Brayden: "You're making me stronger.  Soon I will be ready." 

Next: when the job is done, will Crooked Man abandon Brayden?  "No, I'll keep you with me."  Ten to one he's lying.

Scene 8:  Dion in his room, reading comic books.  Why is there a map of Scandinavia on his wall?   Suddenly Brayden appears!  He explains: "I'm not actually in your room, I'm in your head.  I have powers, too."  While Dion stares, he says "I think we're going to be best friends."  Uh-oh, that sounds sinister.  The end.

The Dion plot is a little thin, so lI'll add a scene from the next episode:

The Musical Auditions:   Dion's main friends and Brayden compete for Dion's attention.  Brayden uses his superpowers to zap the two of them into a field (a boring field?  How about Disney World?). But Dion still chooses his main friends.  Brayden roils with jealousy.

The femme diector, Mr. Kwame (J. Harrison Ghee, who won a Tony for his role in Some Like It Hot ), uses the opening of Fame: "you got big dreams?  You want fame?  Well, fame costs, and here's where you start paying -- in sweat!" This is a fourth grade musical review, not Broadway!  

Ulp, all of the kids sing "Oh, Susannah!"  Badly!  "Fosse, forgive me!" Mr. Kwame cries. Then Esperanza does a mesmerizing performance of  "Beautiful Dreamer." 

Jonathan doesn't audition; he uses pyrotechnics and confetti cannons to push for the job of stage manager.  The end.

Beefcake: None, but I included the butts of Jason Ritter and Rome Flynn after the break.

Heterosexism: Just among the adults.  I researched the series, and none of the kids is involved in a heterosexual romance.

Gay Characters: One scene implying that Dion is gay.  There are probably hints in other episodes, too, but I doubt they go beyond.  

According to AfterEllen, Mom's sister Kat gets a "surprise! she's a lesbian" moment that is never referenced again.  There are rainbow posters around the school, but I can't read what they say.

Gay Subtext: Dion and Brayden have a kid version of a toxic romantic relationship, complete with gaslight, blaming, and abuse.  Nothing with Dion and Jonathan in this episode. 

My Grade:  Esperanza steals every scene, and Jonathan is amazing as a pre-teen operator.  Dion is the morose, troubled Peter Parker type.  Mom is definitely over protective.  Kid plotline: A-.

Overall, this seems to be Mom's story, about the problems of raising a "special needs" kid and dealing with the season's Big Bad.  Grown-up plotline: C+.

Butts after the break.  Guess which belongs to whom:

Andreas Alvarez: Righteous Gemstones stunt skater has lots of man friends and a potential p*enis. With skater dude dicks

 

Although he's not in the cast list, Andreas Alvarez performed all of Pontius' skateboarding in Righteous Gemstones Season 4, and maybe Gideon's.

He has tats of his own, so Pontius always skateboarded in a long-sleeved shirt.

Of course, one of the perks of being a stunt performer is meeting the cast.

I wanted to research Andreas, but he doesn't seem to have any other stunt listing on the IMDB.  He was apparently cast because he has a similar body build to Kelton Dumont.

Not a lot of biographical information available. His facebook says that he was born in 1999.  He grew up in Compton, Virginia, an unincorporated small town in the Shenandoah Mountains.  Now he lives in North Springfield,Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC.

Google searches are stymied by the much more famous Andreas Alvarez, baseball player.

All we have from our Andreas are skateboarding stats: overall global rank 326th, street 196th, park 984th, earned $2,184, with sponsors:Fairfax surf, Llama spit brand, Saiber (SABER), fly paper grip, OC Ramps

Over 100 competitions beginning iin 2016 with The Boarder Am Qualifiers (where he placed #52).

His most recent competition was the Jackalope Mens Street Semi Finals, where he placed #16 of #24.

I found a potential n*de photo, but it would have come before he most of his tats (the arms are visible).

More after the break

"Department Q": Cold cases in Edinburgh, with the "Brideshead Revisited" guy, Magic Mike, and a gay dude with a tree trunk

  

A poster on a gay movie site recommended the Netflix tv series Dept Q: "an unlikely team of misfits solves cold cases."  As you probably know by now, I prefer comedies and science fiction, but there are bound to be gay characters, so let's go, Episode 1.

Scene 1: October 17, 2024. D.I Hardy, Police Officer Anderson, his Acerbic Mentor (Matthew Goode, left), and another cop go into a room where an old man has been murdered. The Acerbic Mentor makes fun of Anderson for being new and throwing up due to the smell, and being too idiotic to check for broken windows.  Suddenly a gunman rushes out of hiding and shoots them all. 

I figured Anderson would be a main character.  He was cute, darn it.

Anderson played by Angus Yellowlees, left, with Patrick McNamee in Touching the Void

Scene 2: A woman named Merritt is listening to a phone message from a maniac: "You think you're a righteous person, but you're not.  You're as evil as the rest of us." He plans to kill her soon.  

She walks through the rainy town, past Edinburgh landmarks like the City Chambers Building, and into the court, where she's a barrister, prosecuting a guy accused of pushing his wife down the stairs to her death. "You were upset because she was planning to leave you, you argued, and you flew off the handle."

He claims that he found her at the bottom of the stairs: "I didn't kill her! loved her!"  The jury is swayed, and finds him not guilty.

Later, Merritt runs into Liam (Patrick Kennedy), who points out that Defense didn't object to her line of questioning.  Why not?  Because she was digging herself into a hole.  And the Boss, who agrees: "you went too far."

Left: A Patrick Kennedy.  Probably not the right one.

Scene 3: The miraculously alive Acerbic Mentor, Carl Mock...um, I mean Morlock...er, Mork from Ork...ok, Morck -- walks past St. Mary's Cathedral to a waiting room.  Har har, he's about ready to leave, but when he sees that the psychiatrist is hot, he high-tails it into her office. 

Shrink wants him to work through the trauma of being shot, but he insists that there is no trauma: he doesn't experience emotion, except for contempt for people dumber than him, which is everyone. 

Shrink: "So, are you depressed?"  

Acerbic Mentor: "Just the usual.  Wouldn't you be depressed if you were surrounded by incompetent idjits all the time?"  Why don't you just ask her out?  She's obviously turned on by superiority complexes, and I can't take a full season of sultry looks and double entendres.

Scene 4: I guess we're going to have a full season of sultry looks and double entendres.  Acerbic Mentor leaves without a date, and walks past more Edinburgh landmarks into the police station.  Everyone stares -- they figured that after being shot, he'd be out for several months, and they'd be spared his constant insults.  

I like the bloke dressed like a 1960s Flower Child.  I wonder if he's a background player or a named character.

More after the break

Harry Jowsey: New Zealand reality star, Boyfriend Dick Podcaster, Onlyfans nude model, "Call me gay."

22-year old New Zealand-based fitness model Harry Jowsey first appeared on screen on Heartbreak Island, and gained international fame on the Netflix reality series Too Hot to Handle (2020). It was based on the Seinfeld episode "The Contest": hetero hunks and babes had to live in close quarters without hooking up.  Proven "Master of his Domain," Harry split the $100,000 prize with the other  winners.  His "smouldering s*xual tension" with some of the ladies spun him into 4 million social media followers.  

And several podcasts. In Boyfriend Material, Harry and his guests give humorous relationship advice based upon his experience of hooking up with about 200 women.

It is notable for the viral term Boyfriend Dick, based upon Harry's description of his penis: No too big, not too small, looks nice, gets the job done.

More reality tv followed: Match Me If You Can, The Amazing Race Australia, Dancing with the Stars, and Perfect Match.  

Plus the upcoming movie The Wrong Paris (2025): a woman joins a reality tv show in "Paris," thinking that she's going to France, but it's the one in Texas. The women outnumber the men in the cast three to one, but there are a few hunks: Pierson Fode, Torrance Coombs, Kaden Connors (left), and William Wilder.

Harry seems to be veering back and forth between ally and homophobe. 

In September 2021, youtuber and trans activist Nikki Dragun included a picture of him in her video "Dick."  Fans got upset: "You hooked up with a dude, man!"  

Harry had assumed that the relationship would be private, but now that it was open, he explained, Nikki Dragun is a woman.  Trans or cisgender, what's the difference.

Sounds like an ally. except in October 2021, on his Tap It podcast, he complained that "some f*ggot" was trying to hook up with him.  He was referring to makeup youtuber James Charles.  Later he apologized, and stated that he supported the LGBT community.

In 2022, Harry demonstrated his support by posting some photos wearing a dress, and fans again became irate: "That's wrong, man." 

Boyfriend dick after the break