Sam Sherpa-Moore: Sherpa actor fights a watermelon, flirts with Doctor Who, shows his d*ck. With Joel Fry's butt and Callum's cock.

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Oliver Atherton: Mennonite, Wannabe, and Boy Next Door, then nothing. With Mennonite and some co-star in law cocks

 

This guy appears in Episode 1.1 of The Way Home,  singing the ridiculously old-fashioned song "Crazy," by Patsy Cline, at a high school talent show.

I'm crazy for feeling so lonely

Crazy for feeling so blue

I knew

You'd love me as long as you wanted

And then some day

You'd leave me for somebody new

When he's finished, he smugly pushes past focus character Alice, who is waiting to go on next.  

She gets stage fright and rushes off,  and he gives her a final zinger: "I knew you were just a one-hit wonder."

Who doesn't feel like punching this guy in the nose?  Or kissing him?

There was considerable fan discussion about the character's name.  The cast list for the episode lists several actors with no photos, playing Jasper, Student 1, Student 2, Teen 1, and so on.  

Turns out he is Wannabe, played by Oliver Atherton.

Researching Oliver presents some problems: An Oliver Atherton has worked as a visual effects supervisor on many movies, and actress Natalie Oliver-Atherton (no relation), crowned Miss Senior America in 2024, has a much stronger internet presence But I found our Oliver's Linkedin.

 He grew up in Etobioke, which sounds very exotic but is actually just a suburb of Toronto, and attended the School of the Arts, a specialized high school where you can concentrate in art, dance, music, or film.  

He has a brother named Vid V__, from Serbia, so maybe he has a Serbian heritage. 

After graduating with a concentration in film in 2018, Oliver enrolled at the University of Toronto.  There he competed in the North American Debating Championship, interned with an English professor (researching 18th century English law, literature, and politics), wrote for the student newspaper, and worked as a bartender at Stackt ("an artsy industrial-chic complex" that offers queer events).

I'm surprised that he had time for auditions.

Maybe he didn't: there are only three acting roles listed on the IMDB.

#1: Murdoch Mysteries Episode 16.6 (2022): A man is brought to the hospital badly injured, and dies before the doctors can find out who he is.  Murdoch and Ogden track him down: Enoch Snider (Oliver), from a Mennonite community.  Turns out that he was murdered because he didn't want to marry the girl he was assigned.  The transcript says that "he didn't fit in with the other boys," and he had a buddy named Mervin (Liam Green), but I couldn't determine if he was gay.

Left: A nude Mennonite man.  

#2: The short Most of the Time We Are Just Waiting (2022), written and directed by Molly Sheers:  Her town is evacuating, so 13-year old Nora and the Boy Next Door go out looking for her older sister, last seen with a boy "with questionable intentions."  There are only two male actors, Oliver and Piers Bijvoet, so which plays which is up for grabs.  

More after the break

"Samuel": French middle school boys are all in love with the same girl. With queerbaiting, drag, Freudian dreams, and some n*de twinks

 

When I was growing up in Rock Island, there were no gay characters in children's media -- and they were vanishingly rare in adult media.  In grade school my friend Bill and I vowed to be "best men" forever, and in junior high I swooned over Dan, who had blond hair and warm hands, but parents, teachers, and peers insisted that we were tepid, inconsequential "buddies."  Soon, very soon, I would "discover" girls, and drop my boy friends, instantly and without hesitation, to devote my life to what really mattered, finding and winning The Girl.

Left: all models are over 18

I scoured through tv shows, comic books, and the books in the Denkmann School library, searching for evidence that same-sex loves could endure for a lifetime: Will and Jack fighting aliens together in The White Mountains, Tony and Doug declaring that "I won't leave without you!" on Time Tunnel, even Rich and Sean smiling at each other in The Secret of Boyne Castle.  

A show about a boy who actually experiences a real, undeniable same-sex romance would have been a godsend.  

The animated Samuel (2026), by French cartoonist Émilie Tronche, just dropped on Netflix.  It features  a ten-year old boy whose diary entries are depicted in line drawings on a minimal canvas, similar to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  The blurb tells us that he's going to face "first loves, complicated friendships, and the start of middle school," with an illustration that undeniably shows him kissing a boy.  Dude is going to come out!

I can't wait to review Samuel.

Episode 1, Scene 1: Samuel writes in his diary that he's in love with a girl.

Say what?  I'm confused.

The boy he is kissing is shown on the blurb for Episode 5, so I'll review that one instead. 

Episode 5: At choir practice, a rumor goes around that Dmitri asked Julie to go out with him.  Everyone laughs and makes fun of the two.  Dmitri is the boy he is shown kissing.

The teacher comes in and asks if everyone has learned the solo part.  Dmitri claims that he has.

The full choir:

Why do people in love always seem to be the same?
They carry, as they walk by, the same look in their eye
One single flame -- they are the happy ones

Dmitri's solo.  Is he going to sing to Samuel?

I barely know you, but to drift away with you, like they do
We could make enough room, you and me
For both of us, with no fuss

You have to let me know it won't be in vain

Whatever the stakes, I want to be a happy man

Suddenly Samuel finds himself in church, about to be married to a boy?  No, to Julie,  but Dmitri rushes in at the last minute, a la The Graduate, and takes her away.  

Later, Samuel sees Julie and Dmitri in the schoolyard, and they confirm that they are in love.  This depresses Samuel, as he is in love with Julie, too.  Say what? When are he and Dmitri going to kiss?

Ok, episodes are only 3-4 minutes long. I'm going through all of them on fast forward, looking for the development of the Samuel-Dmitri romance.

Episode 6: Dmitri does not appear.  Samuel has a best friend, Benjamin.

Episode 7:  On the field trip to the museum, Dmitri and Julie sit together, upsetting Samuel. 

Episode 8: Samuel's friend Benjamin returns from his grandmother's funeral. They discuss his grief, but when he starts crying, Samuel is too macho to hug him.  Instead, he says "Your hair is really greasy."  Jerk!

Episode 9:  Dmitri tells Samuel, "You look pretty," but they're rehearsing a play, and Dmitri is a fox planning to eat crow Samuel, so it might not be his real-life sentiments.

Episode 10: Samuel tells his diary, "Last night something happened.  I don't know how to describe it." Finally, the kiss!   On the way home after the play, they stop at a stop light, and Samuel sees a girl, maybe Julie, in the next car.  She waves at him.  "That's what happened."  A wave?  

Episode 11: During summer vacation, Samuel runs into his enemy Dmitri crying on the sidewalk. He explains that he is sad because school is over, and he's lonely.  Julie must have dumped him. He asks to hang out with Samuel's friend group next fall, when they're in middle school.  So are they going to fall in love over the summer?

Episode 12: Samuel's babysitters, Bryan and Jonah, invite him to a party with adults.  They usually go to clubs; maybe they're a gay couple?  Nope: when the dancing starts, they're mesmerized by two girls who give them "come hither" finger gestures, and ditch Samuel.  Ugh!  "You will abandon your same-sex loves, instantly and without hesitation, to devote your life to the only thing that matters, finding and winning The Girl."

More after the break

Gemstones Season 1 Finale: Judy and Kelvin begin to heal, Scotty joins the family, and we say goodbye with some random dicks

Showrunner Danny McBride has stated that he wants every season of his programs to tell a complete story: no callbacks to previous seasons, and no cliffhangers.  By the finale, every plotline has been resolved and every character development arc has been concluded.  He also hates downbeat endings, so the season finale tells us that "they lived happily ever after"  

In The Righteous Gemstones Season 1, the primary plot featured Gideon betraying the family, first by blackmailing Jesse over the tape of his sex-and-drugs party, then by planning to steal the Easter offerings from the church. He also betrayed Scotty by failing to acknowledge their romantic bond.  Secondary plots involved Eli butting heads with Rev. Seasons over his church expansion, and Kelvin and Judy dealing with obstacles in their relationships.  The finale ties all of the plotlines into a single theme: forgiveness.

Back in Freeman's Gap :  Church. In his sermon, Eli describes his visit to Aimee-Leigh's childhood home, where he interacted with her spirit.  Cut to a flashback of the siblings collecting the money that Baby Billy and Tiffany stole from Scotty's van.

He continues: "We move through this world, crossing paths with friends, family...and I believe that the goal of all that colliding is to make us appreciate one another, to find empathy." Shots of Martin, Mandy (Chad's wife), and Chad, sitting far away from her. 

Rev. Seasons is redeemed: Cut to a flashback of Rev. Seasons  (Dermot Mulroney) working in a hardware store (Baptist churches are autonomous, so if one closes you don't automatically get placed elsewhere). Eli offers him a job as pastor of the satellite church that Baby Billy abandoned. Rev. Seasons was a secondary Big Bad, but Eli stole his flock, so we are not sure who needs forgiveness more.

"If you're not rooting for your enemy's salvation, you are not in line with what the Spirit wants."  Shots of Dot Nancy and her parents, BJ, Keefe (working security again), Martin's wife, a couple I don't recognize, and Jesse's crew (Matthew, Gregory, and Levi).  Notice that BJ and Keefe are linked, structurally presented as the partners of Judy and Kelvin.  They won't begin sitting together until Season 3. 

Scotty is redeemed: "Aimee-Leigh knew this. That's why she wanted to help, no matter what."  Shot of the spirit of Aimee-Leigh sitting in the congregation, glowing in ethereal light, with Scotty beside her. 

He looks more bemused than happy, surprised that he has been forgiven, wondering how he came to be sitting here, after all the pain he caused Gideon and the Gemstone family.  Remember that both BJ and Keefe had to suffer symbolic deaths before they could unite with their partners.  Did Scotty, in death, become Gideon's partner?  

Maybe, in spite of his machinations, posturing, criticism, and threats, in spite of the hints of abuse, this is what Scotty wanted all along.  After all, the goal of the two schemes was to draw Gideon away from his family so they could spend their lives together. Maybe he couldn't admit it to himself, so it came out in random bursts, like calling Gideon "cute," taking him out on dates, and finally admitting, just before his death, that "you broke my heart."  Aimee Leigh helped him understand what he needed, what he wanted, and she has made him a Gemstone.

Baby Billy grifts: "For when you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will forgive you."  Cut to Baby Billy and Tiffany selling their new gimmick, pictures of his trip to heaven. I guess they haven't been redeemed yet. 

Kelvin and Judy start to heal: "How we navigate this life,  and each other, is what defines us, and what leads us on the path to healing."  Cut to Judy and Kelvin in makeup, getting ready to perform, smiling. 

Before this season, the siblings spend their lives crippled by the traumas of their past. Unable to believe that they were worthy of being loved, they sabotaged every potential relationship, Judy by defining herself soley as a sexual being, and Kelvin by denying that he was a sexual being at all.  In this season they found partners who loved them in spite of their spitefulness, selfishness, and general craziness, in spite of Judy's obsession with the phallus and Kelvin's fear of it.  Forgiven, redeemed, they have started on the road to healing.   

The conclusion and cocks after the break