"Crew Girl": Private school girl on the rowing team must choose between two boyfriends. With a gay character, crew bulges, and a nude Josh

Crew Girl is the #1 tv show on Netflix.  I'm not really into sports, but maybe it will have some beefcake and bulges.

Scene 1: Teagan Tao introduces her parents, Dad David, who owns boutique hotels, and Mom Ella, who is deeply in love with him.  During her rowing competition, Dad gets a phone call.  "I have to take this." But before he leaves, he and Mom mention how deeply in love they are, and kiss. Do they do this every time they part? "I have to go to the bathroom.  I'm deeply in love with you. Back in a minute."

She wins the competition!  But Dad isn't there.  He texts "I'm sorry." Sorry for missing the competition, or... 

Turns out that Dad defrauded his investors out of millions, and scrammed before he could be grabbed by the FBI.  Teagan and Mom, newly impoverished, have to leave L.A. to move back to her home town in Massachusetts.

Scene 2: Establishing shot of the small town of Eagles Cove, established 1791.   Mom points out the Fudge Store ("nobody actually likes fudge"), the Crab Shack where she got her first job, and finally their new house, which actuallly belonged to Nanny and Grandpa.  Her grandmother was named Nanny?

Fortunately, Dad left an education trust, so Teagan can go to the ritzyEaston Prep.  "But their team isn't even on a Top Ten list. Coaches from Stanford were scouting me.  Who's going to see me out here?"  Everywhere in Massachusetts is less than two hours from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. 

While Mom is unpacking, Teagan grabs a bike and heads into town.  She's so busy gawking at the rubes that she hits a pickup truck and plunges into the bed.  The owner is a cute teen boy, Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark)  I'm guessing that this is a meet-cute with her Love Interest.  After a few minutes of yelling and some Boy-of-My-Dreams gawking, he offers to fix her bike.

Scene 3: Off to school.  It's a  huge Tudor-style castle (actually filmed at Hatley Castle, a 1906 Tudor Revival mansion in Victoria, British Columbia).  "Can a school have a British accent?" Teagan asks.

The student body president and dance committee chair introduce themselves. "I'm glad the school isn't all horse girls," Teagan says.

"Um...I'm captain of the equestrian team. What school doesn't have horses?"

A long haired person wearing a tie and sportscoat draws her aside. "I've never seen anyone unalive their social status so quickly."  I turn the sound on to determine their gender. It's a girl, her "first day buddy."  

Founded in 1798, Easton Prep is the "Harvard of high schools," mostly boarders, but some townies commute by helicopter. "Looks like a Skarsgaard convention," Teagan muses. "Who's the hunk?"

The guy in the blazer is Arrogant Josh (Samuel Braun), sixth generation Easton Prep, Prom King when he was freshman.  His buddy is Ryder, who has made out with half the girls in the school.  Heterosexual identity established immediately.  

"They only started admitting girls two years ago.  Great if you're straight, less cheer if you're queer." Sounds like the androgynous girl has come out to her new friend.

Next we meet the equally arrogant Leon.  "Stay away from him.  He's arrogant!"

"I noticed, sigh." So, will it be Josh, Ryder, Leon, or the guy with the truck?

Scene 4: Mom sees a "help wanted" notice on the door of a store that sells glasses and pillows.  The manager, Heather,  recognizes her from high school, and from "that photo of you lying by the pool" in New York Magazine.  So you thought she was hot?

Now she can't admit that she wants a job, so she pretends that she came in to shop.

Cut to English class, discussion of Byron's "She Walks In Beauty." The blackboard has "rebellious," "charisma," "melancholy," but not that he was bi.   Arrogant Josh comes in late and disrespects the teacher, Mr. Wu (not in the imdb or end of episode cast list).

Mr. Wu makes Josh read it aloud, and Teagan falls in love with him.

"What do you think it means?" Mr. Wu asks.

"It means Byron was trying to smash."

Mr. Wu doesn't like this answer -- "Just because you're the famous star of the rowing team" -- but it's completely accurate. Wait -- rowing team?

More after the break

The Leneave Brothers: Three Catholic swimsuit models with gay-positive ads, contradictory biographies, and model dicks

 

When Chris Leneave, aka Chris Luquin, appeared on my Instagram recommendations, I figured that he was French.  But he appears to be an American model, one of these three.  I'm not sure which yet -- all of his posts show duos or trios.

An ad from 2021. Chris (or his Mom) says that this advertises "environmentally friendly luxury swimwear" with his brother and MZ.   I still don't know which brother is Chris.

I looked for MZ, but can't find a model with that name.

Google AI thinks he might mean the Model Zone, MZ agency, based in Mexico City but with branches in Florida.  I checked the six male actors on their website, and found a nude photo, but no one who looks like the dad above.

"The perfect shorts do exist. Community and family values etched into every line."  Family values usually means homophobia, but this looks very much like two dads and their sons frolicking on the beach.

Again, he doesn't tell us who the grown-up models are, but at least he identifies himself: Chris is the older brother.

I had even less to work with in an attempt to track down the adult models.  The closest I could come was "black male model Florida."

More after the break

Stephen Geoffreys: The quirky queer teen from "Fright Night" and "976-Evil" bulks up and becomes a gay porn star

If you've seen Heaven Help Us (1985), about boys in a Catholic boarding school (on HBO Max) or found screenshots online, then you've seen Stephen Geoffreys' d*ck and backside.  He's the short guy standing just to the right of the priest.

Also in the line up: Andrew McCarthy, Kevin Dillon, and Patrick Dempsey.

Stephen was born in Cincinnati in 1964, attended a performing arts high school and New York University, and made his mark as a theatrical actor.  In 1984, he was nominated for a Tony for his performance in The Human Comedy, based on the William Saroyan novel.  

Then he humped...I mean jumped into movies:

After Heaven Help Us, Fraternity Vacation (1985): Two frat brothers (Tim Robbins, Cameron Dye) take their nerdy pledge Wendell (Stephen) to Palm Springs, where they compete over a bikini babe.  It got lousy reviews, even for a teen sex comedy, but at least Stephen showed us his bulge.

Fright Night (1985): Evil Eddie (Stephen), sidekick to high schooler Charlie (William Ragsdale), is heavily queer-coded; as heavily as you could be in 1985.  The Vampire (Chris Sarandon) seduces him like a potential boyfriend. Then eats him.

Queer-coded guys in horror movies!  Stephen had found his niche!  

During the next few years, he played queer-coded guys in episodes of Amazing Stories and The Twilight Zone, and in 976-EVIL (1988), his second most famous movie.  

Unfortunately, in the 1980s, queer-coded usually meant evil.  He found himself playing a nasty prison inmate in The Chair (1988), a nasty drug dealer in Moon 44 (1990), where he didn't even get to kiss Brian Thompson, and a nasty rent boy in Wild Blade (1991), reviewed as "a painfully awful piece of sludge."  

But he had performed Shakespeare and William Saroyan!  At this point Stephen gave up.  

On Hollywood, that is.  

He had developed a muscular physique, so why not find his new niche in gay porn? First as Larry Bert, then as Sam Ritter, Stephen appeared in 29 pornos over the next decade.  

More after the break. Caution: Extremely explicit

Benjamin Ainsworth is possessed, kidnaps Dream, dances with a drag queen, rides a dragon. Plus his nose grows. With Champion and Elf cocks.

 

Benjamin Ainsworth (the one with the handbag) was born  in  Nottingham in 2008, and later moved to Lund, near Hull in Yorkshire.  He scored his first professional acting job in 2016, in the musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on the Norwegian Epic Cruise Line, six weeks in the Mediterranean and then six more in the Caribbean.  He played Benjy, son of the drag queen Tick. who sings "Say a Little Prayer/Always on My Mind."  

The same year he was cast as "a cheeky schoolboy" in an episode of the soap Emmerdale.

His next major role was the troubled boy Miles in The Haunting of Bly Manor, loosely based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, with the two troubled children and ghosts bedeviling the nanny.  I stopped watching in the first episode after a particularly nasty trigger (hint: "does the dog die?"), but according to a review there's a lesbian romance "drowned in sad and tired tropes" like Bury Your Gays. Yuck.

Left: Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Peter Quint, who is possessing Miles and forcing him to do bad things.

In  the first season of The Sandman (2022), Roderick Burgess captures the Dream of the Endless and imprisons him naked in a glass jar.  His son Alex (Ben as a boy, Laurie Kyaston as a young adult) has many opportunities to free him, but refuses, worrying that Dream will harm him or his boyfreind (Christopher Colquehon).  

So far one gay and two gay-adjacent roles.  Good job, buddy. 

There have been dozens of movies based on Pinocchio, the 1883 novel by Carlo Colladi. The 2022 version, with Ben as the puppet boy, Tom Hanks as Gepetto, and Joseph Gordon Levitt (left) as Jiminy Crickett, is supposedly a live-action remake of the classic 1940 animated movie, with a lot of queer codes.  But in some versions Pinoke gets a girlfriend, so I wouldn't be surprised if he is changed into a real boy through a glimpse of the Girl of His Dreams.  

The IMDB description of Son of a Critch (2022-26) tells us that "Mark is 11 going on 70," and "tries to make connections with the small group of people in his limited world."  Sounds like he's got that syndrome where you grow old as a child, or maybe he's aging backward, but it's a misdirection: Mark (Benji Boy) is just smart, and his "limited world" is Newfoundland in the 1980s.  He's heterosexual; no gay people are mentioned in the series.   

Ben is posing here with the real-life Mark Critch, who plays his dad, and Colto Gobbo, who plays his older brother.

Everything is Going to Be Great (2025) covers a year in the life of the Smart Family, as they negotiate "over-sized dreams, identity, ghosts, and regional theater."  Trigger alert: this is advertised as a comedy, but Dad (Bryan Cranston of Malcolm in the Middle) dies halfway through.  

He leaves two sons, the athletic Derrick (Jack Champion), who has a girlfriend, and Lester (Ben), who wears flashy outfits, aspires to a career in musical theater, and has conversations with the ghost of gay playwright Noel Coward. Those are sizeable queer codes.  Google AI says that he's "openly gay," but according to the plot synopsis, he gets a girlfriend. 

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.