"The Sandman": Season 2: What happened to the beefcake and gay romance? After watching, you'll need to see some cocks

 

We're watching Season 2 of The Sandman on Netflix, based on the 75-issue Neil Gaiman comic book series.  The Sandman, aka Morpheus and the Dream of the Endless, negotiates crises with humans, various magical beings, and his siblings, whose names all begin with D (Death, Destruction, Desire) and end with "of the Endless."  

1. In Season 1, the Sandman is an otherworldly creature, dark and mysterious, who rarely intrudes upon the human realm.  He spends 50 years naked in a bottle, staring at the humans as if they are a bizarre alien species.  In Season 2, he is a jaded aristocrat who hangs out in the human realm all the time, taking cabs and paying for things.

Or look at Lucifer: in Season 1, a seductive, dangerous being with motives and desires that are impossible for humans to comprehend.   In Season 2, an elderly British aristocrat who wants to sit on the beach with a cup of tea.

2. In Season 1, the Endless are responsible for the working of the human realm.  When Dream is captured, the world falls into chaos: millions of people fall asleep and can't wake up, and others can't fall asleep at all.  In Season 2, the Endless mostly engage in partying and pranks.  The only one we see doing any actual work is Death, who escorts people to the afterlife. 

3. Season 1 has high stakes. A nightmare is running rampant in the human realm, plus an unstable guy has acquired Dream's ruby of infinite power, and changes the world, with disastrous results.  In Season 2, there's some rumbling about a prophecy, but mostly it's episodic stories, like deciding who to give the keys to Hell to after Lucifer retires, or trying to track down Dream's ex-girlfriend from 10,000 years ago (who is not interested in getting back together).

4. In Season 1, there are many gay characters.  A gay couple in the first episode.  A lesbian couple in the second.  In Episode 6, two same-sex couples emerge among the six people stuck in a diner, when they are forced to tell the truth of their situation. Plus a heterosexual liason involving job applicant Mark (Laurie Brewer, left) and the lady in charge of the company.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

Isaac Ordonez: A sweet, sensitive, queer-coded Pugsley Addams. WIth Chris Pine, Skyler, and some nude Hispanic dudes

 

The Pugsleys, the younger brother of the Addams Family mythos, usually get poor plotlines and poorer treatment.  They are bullied, tortured, ignored, used as playthings.  In Season 1 of Wednesday, Isaac Ordonez's Pugsley was not much different.

But during the hiatus between Season 1 and Season 2, Isaac grew up, becoming taller, huskier, bringing a dark nervous energy to the newly teenage Pugsley.  He has stepped out of the shadow of his sister to become his own person, with independent interests and goals -- a sweet, sensitive, traumatized soul trying to find emotional connection.  Friends.  A boyfriend.

Born in 2009, Isaac began acting in 2016 as the preternaturally smart Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time, the adaption of the Madeleine L'Engel fantasy.

Chris Pine played his "captured-by-the-darkness" father.

Left: since Isaac is 16 as of this writing, I'm not looking for any nude photos, but he works mostly in media aimed at the Hispanic community, so here's a  guy from Puebla, Mexico

Next came some shorts: 

Dia de los Carpas (Day of the Tents): A group of boys help an undocumented girl get to the beach, where she has a magical secret. 

Psycho Sally:  No synopsis online, but there's no one named Sally in the character list.

Dispara y Mata (Shoot and Kill): A father tries to get his son (Isaac) to eat by telling him a story of survival in the Colombian jungle. 

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Jacob Tremblay: Gay sea monster, gay-subtext Miracle, heterosexist Good Boy, Boyfriend. With Brady Noon and n*de dudes

 

You probably saw Luca (2021), the Disney/Pixar animated movie about the friendship between the closeted sea monster boy (Jacob Tremblay) and a human boy named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer). And you were probably upset when director Enrico Casarosa vehemently denied the possibility of a gay reading of the couple.  "They're kids!  They're much too young to be gay!"   

Got it, Enrico. All boys are born heterosexual, Gay is something that happens in adulthood, after you've tried heterosexual stuff and decided that it is not right for you. Gay is who you invite to your bed,, heterosexual is the Eternal Feminine that draws us to the City of God. 

Yeah, I was unhappy, too.  

But it wasn't the fault of the actors.  I heard that Jack Dylan Grazer and Jason Maybaum (general voices) are gay.  Let's see if Luca himself, Jacob Tremblay, is involve din any gay-friendly projects.

He has 43 acting credits on the IMDB, most long before Luca.  I've never heard of most of them, but there seem to be some interesting gay subtexts here and there:

Gord's Brother (2015): The human Gord and his monster brother (Jack Irvine, Raphael Alejandro) searach for the legendary City of Monsters.  Jacob plays the Young Gord.

Wonder (2017): "The incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story" of a boy with facial differences who goes to school.  How to come up with a title that gives you absolutely no clue to what the movie is about.  

There's a girl -- there's always a girl -- but he makes a male friend (Noah Jupe), too.  

Good Boys (2019): Three six-grade boys skip school to go on an "epic adventure" involving two of them (Jacob, Brady Noon, center, recent photo) trying to win the Girls of Their Dreams (of course).  The third (Keith L. Williams) is a bullying victim who doesn't try to win a girl.  Hey, in a raunchy "coming of age" comedy, I'll take any gay hints I can get.  

Will Forte plays one of the dads.

Left: As of this writing, Brady Noon is 19.  Maybe I'll profile him next.

More Jacob after the break

"Not Dead Yet": A struggling journalist, a gay ghost, a bi boss, a cartoon villain, and a lot of n*de dudes

The second season of Not Dead Yet has just dropped on Hulu.  It's a sitcom about a journalist stuck with a low-prestige job writing obituaries.  The gimmic: the ghosts of the deceased haunt her until she's done writing, and get involved in her personal life.  Obituaries aren't very long, and the family furnishes all of the biographical details, so no research is necessary -- wouldn't you be done in like 30 minutes?

Every episode is stylized as "Not...yet": "Not Friends Yet"; "Not Well Yet," "Not Feeling it Yet."  Episode 2.1 is "Not Owning It Yet." 

Scene 1: Nell is writing the obituary for Teddy Thompson, Pasadena's Number One real estate agent, whose catchphrase is "Don't dream it..."

The ghost pops up. "Own it!"  Darn, I thought it was going to be "Don't dream it -- be it," the line from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" that inspired a generation of gay men to come out. 

He hangs to brag about his 10-million dollar deals, and criticize her condo as "depreciating."

Teddy Thompson is played by Nico Santos of Superstore, who was named one of the Out 100 in 2018.  He is married to Zeke Smith, who sits on the board of directors of GLAAD.  Zeke's marriage proposal made the New York Times list of the top 10 proposals of 2023.  Talk about A-Gays.

Back to Nell: Roommate Edward pops in to complain about the refrigerator stinking.  "Oh, I'm out of money, so I'm eating last week's leftover soup."  Don't journalists get paid?

Scene 2: At work Nell asks Sam (a girl), "Am I depreciating?"  She's been there a year, and still doesn't get any major stories. Boss Lexi and her lackey Mason drop in to tell them that the Big Boss coming today, so clean their cubicles: no personal items.  He hates that!

Dennis (Josh Banday) and his partner Ben are fostering, so he has a lot of pictures of the kids in his cubicle; he wants to hide them from the Big Boss in Lexi's office. 

Josh Banday is married to a woman, but identifies as bisexual (his "Happy Pride" tagline is "bisexual and married").  

I checked to see if Ben is actually a guy, or a girl with a guy's name as a queer tease.  He's a guy, played by Rory O'Malley, who appears in two episodes.

Rory's Instagram tagline reads "Dad, husband, actor," which usually is meant to identify the guy as heterosexual, but in this case he has a husband, Gerold Schroeder.

You may recall Rory (not pictured) as Brian Dooley, who starts a relationship with Juan Andres on "American Princess."  I use their kiss as an illustration in one of the indexes.

 Back to Nell: The Ghost pops in to suggest that this would be a good time for an upgrade: ask for more responsibility.  But Boss Lexi says no, it's the wrong time: "The Big Boss needs to see the best of our newspaper, and you're the worst."

Scene 3: The Big Boss, who happens to be Boss Lexi's cartoon-villain father: "You're looking more and more gruff every day!"  They air-hug.   After seeing Boss Lexi lambast Nell, he asks who she is: "An insignificant nobody who I hate; I gave her the worst job I could think of, obituary writer."

"Great!  I'm getting older, and need someone to write my obituary, so I can screen the content in advance. I'll have Nell do it."

"But Nell is awful at everything.  Her obituaries are terrible.  Surely you'd prefer someone more competent?" 

"Nope, Nell it is."

More after the break