"Cavendish": Brothers face paranormal peril in a quirky PEI town. With Sandiford bulge and Canadian cocks
"Shrinking": A bizarre shrink, the male gaze, sentient water, and an invisible gay friend. With Segal and Tanner dick
I heard that Tim Baltz, who played BJ on The Righteous Gemstones, starred in a sitcom about an inept Shrink, so when we got Apple Plus, I clicked on Shrinking, Episode 1.
Scene 1: Husband and wife, Liz, in bed. Hey, that's not Tim Baltz. It might be Ted McGinley, who I last saw on "Married..with Children." He tells her it's her turn to handle it. They argue, but she goes -- not to take care of a new baby, har har, but to yell at the next door neighbor.
He is fully clothed, wiggling his fingers in a bizarre way while two bikini babes frolick in the pool. Heterosexual male gaze, anyone?
Liz tells him that it's 3:00 am, and he should turn the music off. But he and the bikini babes are partying with adderall and opioids. So why aren't you nekkid in the pool with them?
"What about Alice?" Must be Bizarre Guy's wife.
Scene 2: Bizarre Guy gets up, goes to his kitchen - full of booze bottles, with a painting of a bikini babe on the wall (ok, ok, you're straight, I get it), and gets yelled at by his sister or daughter. She turns up a photo of Bizarre Guy hugging two women.
Left: I didn't realize it until I checked the IMDB, but Bizarre Guy is played by Jason Segal, and he's the focus character! I don't know why they decided to fool viewers into thinking that Liz and her husband were the focus characters. Malicious editors?
He gets into his car, but it's out of gas, so he rides a bike -- badly. When bikers zoom past him, he invites them to engage in gay sex as an insult. Bizarre Guy is homophobic.
He ends up at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, where he has an appointment with his shrink, Tim Baltz.
Wait -- Bizarre Guy is the shrink! But those bizarre finger movements, like he has some kind of psychotic disorder. The doctor is crazier than his patients!
Scene 3: Bizarre Guy holds his head under the water faucet, then returns to his patients:
"I hate my mother"
"The barista made me spell 'Dan'"
"I always go out with superficial girls!"
Left: Jason Segal's butt.
"My boyfriend made me go back to fetch my sunglasses, but they were right on my head the whole time. Then he called me stupid, but he said I had great tits, so he loves me." Great Tits is displaying them very brazenly for the aesthetic pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.
Bizarre Guy blows up: they've been through this again and again. If your boyfriend calls you stupid, he doesn't love you. Besides, he's not that great: "His muscles are too big, and his shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that!"
Forget that gay men exist, Bizarre Guy? Or maybe gay men don't exist in this universe, except in slurs. But obviously Great Tits likes it.
Left: Big muscles, tight shirt. Any questions?
"Just leave him!" Bizarre Guy yells.
"Ok." She goes home to pack her stuff. That was easy.
Scene 4: Sister/Daughter from Scene 2 is singing a silly song to the water she's pouring (yes, to the water) while old guy Harrison Ford rolls his eyes. "It's too much water." She must be volunteering in a nursing home, with Harrison Ford as the cantankerous geezer.
No, it's the break room at the Cognitive Center. Sister/Daughter is a fellow shrink, pouring her own water due to her "character quirk" of being health conscious. And thinking that water is sentient.
Bizarre Guy bursts in and confesses that he just told a patient what to do. They are upset: this is against the rules of shrinking.
"We all know what they should do. Why not just tell them?"
"They have to figure it out for themselves."
After they criticize him some more, Bizarre Guy agrees to shrink patients "by the book" from now on.
Scene 5: Bizarre Guy is on his way out, when Sister/Daughter stops to flirt with him. Ok, not his Sister/Daughter, his Flirtatious Coworker. But why do the two characters look identical? .
After flirting, she gives him a referral: young soldier, just back from overseas, keeps assaulting people, and his parents are worried. What about the victims and the police?
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.
Noah Beck: Shirtless Soccer Player, Too Soon Steve, and Jowsey's boyfriend's ex shows his d*ck to 33 million TikTok followers
N*de photos of Noah Beck have been sitting in my "to profile" folder for two months. It's hard to get enthusiastic about profiling someone when you've never seen him in anything, and aren't even sure if he's an actor. All I know is:
Instagram: Noah's taglines are "Do what makes you happy" and "sideline the QB and me," so maybe he's a football player. Or is dating a football player.
Posts show him boating, going to Disneyland, cooking, jumping on the bed, modeling a pink shirt, and telling us what he ate today (several times).
No pictures of men or women, at least not in the first two hundred posts. That's usually a sign of gay identity, but we already know that he's gay from being Harry Jowsey's boyfriend's ex, so his Instagram is useful only for its beefcake images.
Wikipedia: Noah was born in 2001 in Peoria, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, about 13 miles from downtown. He graduate from the Real Salt Lake Academy, which trains professional soccer players (presumably you take academic subjects, too); then he attended University of Portland for a year before dropping out due to COVID isolaiton.
He is a content creator, specializing in dances and humorous skits, with 33 million TikTok followers.
He also owns a gender-neutral underwear brand called Iphis (top photo). In Greek mythology, Iphis is born female but raised as a man so she can take the throne. When she falls in love with a woman, she is horrified by the "monstrous" lesbian desire, and asks the gods to make her a "real man." They do. Transgender affirmation, or a paeon to universal heterosexual desire?
The IMDB: Eight acting roles.
A guy who dumps his girlfriend on an episode of Side Hustle (2021).
A shirtless soccer player who flirts with a girl on an episode of Doogie Kamealoha MD (2023).
A more substantial role on an episode of Doctor Odyssey (2025): Steve (Noah) looks uncomfortable when his buddy invites three bikini babes into their hot tub. Just when you conclude that he's gay, it turns out that he suffers from a disorder that makes him...um...finish at the slightest stimulus: a big problem on a date or even when trying to meet a girl.
I've been with thousands of men, again and again. They promise the moon.
They're always coming and going, and going and coming,
And always too soon -- Madeleine Kahn in Blazing Saddles
Fortunately, it's an easy fix with medication that the doctor prescribes.
These are all heterosexual roles, Noah. I'm starting to wonder if you're gay after all.
The trailer shows her getting advice from a standard romcom gay best friend played by Drew Ray Tanner, bisexual Fangs Fogarty on Riverdale. Plus gay actor Jake Foy is in the cast list. So maybe there's a same-sex romance on the side.
More after the break
"Best Foot Forward": Boy negotiates middle school with a prosthetic leg, a hung dad, a bodybuilder brother, a gay buddy, and no annoying girl-craziness
We just dumped Peacock in favor of Apple Plus, so now we can watch Best Foot Forward (2022), based on childhood experiences of "Paralympian, comedian, author, disability advocate, and Halloween enthusiast" Joshua Sundquist.
Focus character Josh has been home schooled since he lost his left leg at age nine, but he finally convinces his parents to allow him to start seventh grade in public school. He faces the standard junior high problems of friends, math tests, soccer practice, movie night, and school dances.
Josh is played by Logan Marmino, fifteen years old in 2025 and thinking about college. Maybe Johns Hopkins?
He's an accomplished athlete, competing in Paralympics track and high school basketball and baseball. Plus surfing and skateboarding.
When showrunner Joshua Sundquist invited him to audition for Best Foot Forward, he had no acting experience, not even a school play. And he doesn't really seem interested in an acting career -- he hasn't appeared in anything since. Sports and disability activism keep him busy.
While Josh is experiencing the joys and hassles of junior high, Dad and Mom (Stephen Schneider, left, Joy Suprano) have B plots of their own, like when they tried to order two pizzas, and accidentally ordered twenty. "Sometimes older people can't see the order screen very well," the delivery guy explains, to Mom's consternation.
Josh's younger brother Matt (Roger Dale Floyd) mostly tries to help, or feels left out when Josh gets all of the attention.
Roger Dale Floyd, 13 years old in 2025, has appeared in The Walking Dead, Doctor Sleep, Greenland, and Stranger Things. He is a junior bodybuilder, interested in promoting fitness among teens and tweens.
In Greenland (2020), Roger and his Mom and Dad (Gerard Butler, left) must flee cross-country to safety after a comet-Apocalypse. Whoops, they forgot to bring his insulin.
Josh makes two friends, Kyle (Peyton Jackson, left) and Gabriella (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss).