"You're the Worst," Episode 5.6: Is Jimmy hooking up with his buddy? Is Rapper Sam still bi? Is Dax a gay porn star?

 

Recently American comedies have been breaking the longstanding rule that sitcom characters have to be nice, the sort of people you'd want to invite into your home in real life.  Of course, the British have been doing it for years, but in the U.S. it's so uncommon that it still comes as a jolt to see someone who isn't very likeable in a sitcom.

You're the Worst, on Hulu, warns you in advance. Jimmy and Gretchen (Chris Geere, Aya Cash) are horrible, amoral people who dislike each other (well, except in the bedroom) and pursue a five-season long romance culminating in a series-finale wedding.  The B-plots usually involve the marital squabbles of another amoral couple who dislike each other, Edgar and Lindsay (Desmin Borges, Kether Donohue).  

I already reviewed an episode where rapper Sam Dresden  gets cancelled for using the f*-word, but turns out to be ok with gay men -- they're good at sucking.  To see if he is still bisexual or straight-but-open-to-oral interests, I reviewed Episode 5.6,  "This Brief Fermata."  According to the Google AI, "A fermata is a musical symbol indicating that a note should be held longer than its normal duration."

Scene 1: Jimmy and Gretchen are planning the table seating for their wedding reception, but Paul, Allan McLeod, is too boring to be placed.  They deserve a break from the drudgery of planning the wedding.  Jimmy suggests Fuck Week, a week where they can have sex with whoever they want.  He is surprised that Gretchen is so quick to agree.  

Scene 2: Monday.  At her job at the public relations firm, Gretchen checks out the hunk bulges and butts.  Assistant Lindsay notes a problem with Rapper Sam, Brandon Mychal Smith: his new track is bad, "Vietnam bad."  

But Gretchen doesn't care: it's Fuck Week, so she and Lindsay can go "day dicking" like they used to, at the Museum of Tolerance and Barney's Beanery -- wait, the notorious "Fagots keep out" joint?

First she has to sign up the new guy, Nok Nok -- Lou Taylor Pucci, top photo.  She figures he's so spaced-out, he'll be easy to snare, but he wants to hear the full pitch -- "Strategy, targets, concept art."  Uh-oh, she'll have to do work instead of getting dick.

Scene 3: Tuesday: Gretchen and Jimmy eat Chinese food while watching Nok Nok's videos and trying to come up with a pitch.  Jimmy has lipstick on his collar -- he's already successfully gotten laid.  Wait -- Buddy Edgar brings him a drink and gazes lustfully, but Jimmy shakes his head. Did they have sex, or is Edgar offering?

Cut to Wednesday: Gretchen revealing her pitch to Nok Nok.  He doesn't like it: how about a hard-scrabble life?  He was on the street at age 15, and he's a single dad?  

Assistant Lindsay went out dicking yesterday, and she, too successfully got laid. By the way, Rapper Sam is angry because his new, terrible track hasn't seen any radio play yet.  But screw it: Gretchen is going to forget about work and get some dick.

Scene 4: Thursday.  Jimmy comes in with a hickey, having gotten laid again. Another lustful gaze from Buddy Edgar.  Are they going at it?  Gretchen is still working. 

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Adam's Also-Rans: 8 sitcom guest spots, with Andrew Santino, Jason Bateman, and some costar cocks

After Workaholics, The Righteous Gemstones, Bumper in Berlin, House Party, Bad Ideas, and twelve movies, are you getting tired of Adam Devine? 

I didn't think so.

The guy is prolific. Between 2006, when he started filming Mail Order Comedy shorts with his buds Ders and Blake, and 2015, when he was too busy with starring roles, Adam guest-starred on eight tv series, not including animation and sketch comedy.  Let's see if there's any gay subtexts...or even texts.

1. The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, 2007, about two women film producers, appeared on the IFC. 

Left: Giuseppe Andrews as an aspiring writer who steals one of their scripts.

Adam played Toby in the episode "Dykes Like Us," the standard sitcom plot where two straight people pretend to be a gay couple in order to get some of the incredible privileges that gay people enjoy.  Like being called a "freak" at an academic conference?  Get real.

2. The Wife and Times of Teddy Berman, 2008, about a family man "struggling to make sense of a world where his father suddenly has a ponytail and an earring, his best friend is a stay at home dad, and his kids will only speak to him through Skype."  Sounds super old-fashioned.

Adam plays a Teenage Caveman who tells his parents about two problems: a rampaging bison that needs to be hunted, and a baby with a diaper that needs changing.  Thus a gendered division of labor is instituted for all time and eternity.  An anti-Women's Lib series in 2011?

  Peter Dante, left, plays the Caveman Dad.

3. Better Off Ted, 2009, starring Jay Harrington as a research developer at a soulless corporation. In Episode 1.5, "Win Some, Dose Some," a woman getting tested for a new experimental drug goes haywire, and Ted sabotages his daughter's wrapping-paper competition so she won't win and he won't have to go on a man-date with a general who has a man-crush on him.  Gay panic, anyone? 

Adam appears as Josh. The show is not available to stream, so I don't know anything about his character. 

4. Samantha Who?, 2009, stars Christina Applegate as a real estate hotshot who gets amnesia and tries to fix the horrid messes she made in her old life. 

Adam appears in two episodes as temp Tyler Banks.  I purchased Episode 2.19, "The Other Woman": Samantha tries to be nice to the girlfriend of her ex, Winston Funk -- Billy Zane, left -- but ends up sleeping with him.

At the office, Samantha asks Tyler the Temp to call Mr. Funk and tell him that she will have dinner with him tonight, but it's not a date: she's setting him up with his ex.

Tyler is happy with this news, and exclaims "I'm still in the game!"  He must have a crush on Samantha.

The morning after the clandestine sex, the girlfriend complains to Samantha that Winston is not returning her calls.  Just then Tyler brings in flowers that he sent...to Samantha. Uh-oh, her cover is blown.

5. Traffic Light, 2011, a short-lived Fox series, featured three best friends in different stages of the heterosexist trajectory: single, living with a girlfriend, and married. 

In Episode 1.7, "Stealth Bomber," Adam, Ders, and Blake appear as Tobey, Howard, and Tad.  The show is not available for streaming, but I assume they're doing a Mail Order Comedy riff.

More Adam after the break

Braxton Alexander: three heterosexual boyfriends, three serial killers, one saxophone, and five bare butts

Born in 2007, actor and model Braxton Alexander had a busy child star career. Strangely, although of course he had no control over the scripts at age eight or nine, his movies and tv shows seem overwhelmingly heteronormative, if not downright homophobic.

 

Four episodes of Mr. Mercedes (2017) as the young Brady Hartsfield, living through the horrific childhood that would turn him into a homophobic mass murderer with psychic powers.

 

(Left: Harry Treadaway, who plays the adult Brady)

The young Callahan in Tag (2018), about a group of friends who play an elaborate game of tag every year, while not making homophobic jokes and fielding gay panic.  

The young Callahan kisses a girl. So you can have boys and girls sparking at each other from the womb, but heaven forbid depicting a gay kid.

(Left: Jon Hamm, who playes the adult Callahan).

Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square (2020) is intensely heteronormative: the meaning of life is boys and girls gazing at each other forever. Brax plays a singer.

The Black Phone (2021) is about a gay predator who kidnaps young boys (I'm not kidding).  Brax plays a bully, not one of the victims.

In I Want You Back (2022), a dumped boyfriend and girlfriend try to sabotage their exes' new relationships and get them back.  Brax plays a "middle school boyfriend."

Left: Scott Eastwood, who plays one of the targets.

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-4) features two brothers in love with a girl named Belly. Brax plays the young Conrad, falling for Belly at the age of 13.

(Left: Brax)

In Black Bird (2022), not to be confused with Blackbird, Jimmy Keane (Taron Egerton, left) is given the task of befriending a suspected serial killer to get a confession out of him. No gay subtext: the guys both display an incessant interest in ladies. 

Brax plays the teenage Jimmy.

More Braxton after the break

"School Spirits": Ghost girl, her gay bff, and their buds solve the mystery. With bonus pics of el novio desnudo

  

I'm a sucker for teenage ghost stories, as long as they are comedies, so I reviewed the first episode of School Spirits on Netflix:

Maddie (Peyton List) wakes up in the boiler room of her high school.  Her blood is splattered around.  But that's not the worst part: she's dead!  She can't touch or move anything.  She can see and hear the living but they can't see or hear her.  And she can't leave the campus!  

Her self-appointed guide is Charlie (Nick Pugliese, center), a gay kid who died in the school during the 1990s (peanut allergy, not hate crime).  He advises her to not try to remember how she died, since she can't change anything: no communication with the living is possible. But don't ghosts communicate with people all the time?  Maybe in the next episode.  And becoming fixated on the past is dangerous: some band members who died in a bus crash many years ago are obsessively performing the school fight song, over and over.

Charlie introduces Maddie to some other ghosts from various decades, notably Wally (Milo Mannheim, top photo and right), who died on the football field, and wishes that he had managed to shower first;  and the Goth Kirsten, who was murdered by her guidance counselor.  

Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman), a teacher who died in the school, offers regular group therapy, with regular homework ("write your obituary").  This doesn't get boring after 20 years because ghosts don't experience time in the same way that the living do.  He also advises Maddie to resist checking up on her living friends, as they will gradually forget her and move on.

Of course, Maddie doesn't listen.  She tries to recall events leading up to her death: she made plans to with her BFFs, Simon (Kristian Ventura) and Nicole, to see Carrie that night.  

Her boyfriend Xavier (Spencer MacPherson) was skipping class, and texted her to join him for a smooch session in his car.  She talked him into going to the movie.  They met the others after class with the tickets.  And that's it.

Out in the living world, Maddie's body has not been found, so she gets "missing person" posters and "thoughts and prayers" in class.  The BFFs think that this is ridiculous: they should be out looking for her.  Suddenly Xavier's bag flies open: he has Maddie's cell phone!  Why didn't he tell anyone for the last three days?  This makes him the prime suspect in her murder. The sheriff (Ian Tracey, left), who also happens to be his Dad, arrests him.

Beefcake: Charlie's "office" is the shower room in the boy's gym, where he can watch an endless parade of butts and cocks (just butts are shown).  Otherwise none.

Gay Characters: Charlie, and maybe Maddie's living bff, Simon. A future episode shows us Charlie’s  high school boyfriend, Emilio, who is now all grown up, married to another guy, and teaching at the school (played as an adult by Andres Soto).  Yes, that's his dick, not completely covered by the Scream emoji

Heterosexism: Maddie and her boyfriend kiss about 1,000 times. Of course, they won't be able to in future episodes, but Xavier has been seeing another girl on the side, so doubtless Maddie will be seeing some smooching.

The Mystery:  "Who killed Maddie, and why?"  It's obviously not Xavier or one of her bffs, and those are the major living characters introduced to date.  I also hope that we have some subplots involving the other ghosts.

Gemstone Connection: Both Milo Mannheim and Tony Cavalero appeared on The Conners.

My Grade: A-

More Andres after the break.Caution: explicit.

Freshman year at Augustana College: newly out, I ask Jack Kerouac for a date, unaware that.....

Ok, this isn't really Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road.  It's Peter Orlovsky, the lover of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsburg.  

I didn't really have a date with Jack Kerouac, either.  But Jurgen came close.

During my freshman year at Augustana,  I often saw him sitting by himself in the Student Union lounge -- in his twenties, tall, husky, bearded, with wavy brown hair and brown chest hair sneaking up over his lumberjack shirt.  He would smoke a pipe, of all things, drink coffee, and read a book or scribble into a little spiral notebook.  Too old to be a student -- we didn't have any "nontraditional" students at Augie -- but certainly not a professor.  Was he a townie who for some reason liked the ambience of the Student Union at a small Lutheran college?

I had just come out, but I had only told two people: my brother, who was fine with it, and my best friend, who slammed the door in my face and never spoke to me again.  If the college administration found out, I would be expelled.  So I couldn't walk up to him and say "Hi, are you gay?"  I had to use deduction: he's not with a woman, he dresses oddly, must be gay.  

One Tuesday afternoon I got a cup of coffee myself -- even though I hated the stuff -- and sat down in the chair across from him.

"What are you writing?"

He looked up and smiled.  "Just a poem I'm working on.  'Tucumcari Two-Step: Heat in the Year of the Drought.'"

"Cool.  I want to be a writer, too."  Actually, my career goals were up in the air at the moment.  Through high school I planned on becoming a missionary-linguist, translating the Word of God for isolated tribes, but that was impossible now.

Left: Jack Huston, who played Keroauc in Kill Your Darlings

"Who are your favorite authors?" he asked.

"Oh...um...Isaac Asimov, of course. Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton,..."

"Sci fi -- that's for Adam's Bookstore Babies!"  He gestured at the bookstore where my friend Adam sold science fiction and comic books.  "You need a real man's literature.  Hemingway, Kerouac, Henry Miller.  Here -- try Wallace Stevens."

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds

I had no idea what the poem was about, but a muscular guy with a big...um...cigar was far superior to anything we had studied so far in my stupid English class.

Jurgen was a student after all, an English major, 28 years old -- after high school he had "bummed around" Europe for a couple of years, then moved to California, then hitchhiked to Rock Island (where his parents lived) for college.

All gay men moved to California, and in his life history, he didn't mention women. He must be gay!

The next day I had to work, but on Thursday I hung out with Jurgen again  Neither of us came out, or said anything about gay people; it was the Student Union, after all, crowded with students who might overhear us.

But we didn't mention liking girls, either.

More after the break

Kelvin/Keefe Memes: Cooking, testifying, honeymooning, sinking. With Jack from "Will and Grace" and some random nude dudes

I've had nothing but trouble with these memes -- jokes --  featuring Kelvin and Keefe of The Righteous Gemstones and friends.  First the G-rated version got slapped behind a "sensitive content" barrier, and then I accidentally saved the G-rated on the explicit site, and had to reconstruct everything. 

I hope these memes are worth it.

1. I like my coffee hot and black, like my...

Wait, everyone's heard that one. Go back in the bedroom; I'll think of a joke later.

2. BJ and Keefe go to church

BJ: Praise Jesus!  Testify!  I got the Spirit of God in me!

Keefe: When will this be over so Kelvin and I can go home and make out?

3. The Men's Room

Keefe: During my Satanist days, I spent a lot of time in the men's room of that truck stop off Highway17. Want to give it a try?

Kelvin: You always have the best ideas for Date Night.

4. The honeymoon

Kelvin: You want to go sightseeing?  But Keefe, this is only the fifth day of our honeymoon.  The Eiffel Tower can wait.

5. I got your Eiffel Tower right here.

More memes after the break

The bodybuilders behind "The Last Man Down": a dentist, a big brother, a quidditch champ, and a queer actor

The promo for the post-Apocalyptic thriller Last Man Down, on Netflix, was entirely involved with a shirtless, mega-muscular Grizzly Adams-type chopping wood.  What gay man wouldn't click on that? 

 Unfortunately, the story begins with a dead wife -- ugh -- and moves on to Grizzly meeting The Girl, who heals him, yada yada yada.

But I wasn't dissuaded.  The Grizzly Adams-type, producer-writer-star Daniel Stisen,  is so hunky that he must have appeared in something a bit less heterosexist, right? Or even gay-friendly?

Daniel was born in Mandel, a small town in southern Norway, to a bodybuilding father who taught him the tricks of the trade from an early age.  He began competing in powerlifting at age 16, and bodybuilding at age 20.  In 2006, he moved to Oslo to begin a modeling career and start his own bodybuilding website.  

According to his modeling profile, Daniel won't do nude shoots (darn it!).  He does give us a butt shot in Last Man Down, but the scene is ruined by the presence of a naked lady.  

He has a 50" chest, a 33" waist, and size 9 shoes.

Daniel's first role was Bodybuilder in Long Flat Balls 2 (2008) -- a comedy, not a porno.  After that, in Norway, London, and the U.S., he played: Hunk, Bodybuilder, Bodybuilder, Guard, Poker Player, Soldier, Soldier, Fighter, Police Officer, Police Officer, Body Guard, Warrior, Fighter, Bouncer, Body Guard.  Hardly any named roles.  

He's written and produced several short films, which don't have plot synopses on IMDB, but the titles tell all you need to know: Kill-X, Soldaten, Last Survivor, Gain, Retribution. Machismo to the max.

His Instagram and Facebook pages are full of his bodybuilding photos, with few depicting other people, so I can't tell if he has a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or both, or neither.  But a search on "Daniel Stisen" and "gay" revealed nothing but a lot of gay men drooling over his "perfect body."  

Oh, well, I tried.  But nearly every male cast member of Last Man Down seems to be a bodybuilder, so I researched the rest of them.

1. Kamil Lemieszewski,: no gay references, but a photo of him in the shower on Big Brother Poland gives us a glimpse of his penis.

Kamil penis

More after the break