"Dashing in December": Campy Christmas romcom with gay guys and a ranch that needs saving. Plus Neil Patrick Harris's butt

I was recommended Dashing in December, a Christmas romcom advertised on Amazon Prime as a tv series, for some reason.  The blurb gives the standard plotline: Big City careers are stupid, go home for Christmas and find love.  The twist: Big City is a guy!  It will take about 10 minutes of screen time for the big reveal: he's gay!

Scene 1: Establishing shot of NYC.  Big, Important Financial Planner Wyatt (Peter Porte) is at an office Christmas party, miserable amid the talk of husbands and wives.  He and Lindsey broke up in October, so he'll be alone!  At Christmas! Hey, I thought Wyatt was gay.  Has he not figured it out yet, or is Lindsey a made-up girlfriend? 

"What went wrong?" the Big Boss wants to know. "I thought you and Lindsey were perfect for each other."  So they've met?  Maybe Lindsey is a beard? Or maybe he's bi?

 "The nonstop trips to the Cape, the five-star restaurants every night. I want someone with simple, down-home tases."  Should have thought of that before you moved to the Big City, Dude. 

More plot: this is the first Christmas since Dad passed away, so Mom is depressed, so he's going back to the ranch in Colorado.  10,000 to one he finds love there.

Hey, the hot bartender (Eric Meroño, left) grins at Wyatt!  If you came in cold, this would be your first clue that Wyatt might not be straight, but I'll bet not one viewer in 100 catches it

Scene 2: Establishing shot of a beautiful ranch in Colorado. Wyatt's Mom brings tea to her workers: a girl and Heath (Juan Pablo de Pace, below).  She announces that Wyatt is coming home for Christmas, for the first time in five years.  Heath has only been working there for three years, so they've never met, but the girl is his High School Girlfriend. Whoa, Wyatt really racks up the babes.  

"Won't your husband, who is out of the country working for Doctors Without Borders, be jealous of your ex-boyfriend visiting?" Heath asks. 

High School Girlfriend, grinning: "I...don't...think so."  Her certainty is another clue.

Heath leaves, and High School Girlfriend interrogates Mom: "Heath doesn't know about Wyatt?" 

 "Well, I couldn't just tell him, could I?"  Tell him what, Mom?  What about your son is such a problem that you're afraid to tell your employee about it?

"Well, does Wyatt know about Heath?"  

"What could I say: you guys are both gay?"  The big reveal!   Why all the circumlocution and misdirection?  Probably the same rationale as not revealing that a tv character is gay until Season 2: you want the viewers to become invested in the story first, so they won't run away in homophobic horror. 

Wait -- Ranch Hand Heath is gay, too?  So what's the problem? This will be a very short romcom. Wyatt's plane lands, sparks fly, mistletoe, the end.

Scene 3:  Heath giving two moms and two kids (a lesbian couple?) a tour of Santa's Workshop. By horse-drawn carriage, not sleigh: there's no snow on the ground. 

Meanwhile, Wyatt arrives. pulls out his luggage, and grimaces. Yuck, back at the place I found so oppressive as growing up!   Mom hugs him and immediately envisions him having kids. Geez, Lady, wait until he's in the house before pressuring him to get married and have kids. 

Wait -- if Wyatt is gay, what's up with the ex-girlfriend Lindsey?  Mom references them with he/him pronouns -- yep, he was a guy with a girl's name, a misdirection to fool us before the big reveal.  Or Wyatt has a thing for gender-bending names: his High School Girlfriend is named Blake.   

Mom points out Heath: "He keeps the place going."  Wyat notices the lack of customers for Santa's Village, and criticizes him for not doing his job.  Yeah, Heath, get busy and make with the snowfall!

Scene 4: Heath and High School Girlfriend are heading to dinner, and to meet Wyatt.  Heath worries that he will be homophobic, but she reassures him: that won't be a problem.  So the guy who escaped Colorado, with its long history of homophobic legislation, for the freedom of a gay mecca, is homophobic?  

At dinner, Wyatt snipes at Heath (left), misnames him Hank, criticizes the terrible wine he brought, and ignores him to chat up High School Girlfriend. This isn't going well, but then neither of the guys knows that the other is gay.  

More misdirection after the break

Gemstones Episode 1.6 : Kelvin sees Keefe's cock, and gets a big head. Sounds like a fun evening.

 Just putting the reviews back into their proper sequence.

Previous: Episode 1.5: Eli and Baby Billy fight over Aimee-Leigh. Plus water sports and donkey dicks.

Episode 1.5 is a  flashback to 1989, when Aimee-Leigh is pregnant with Kelvin.  She's over 40, so she calls him her "miracle baby." Episode 1.6 shows us that "miracle baby" as a grown-up gay man interacting with his boyfriend or soon-to-be boyfriend Keefe.

Title: "Now the sons of Eli were worthless men." From 1 Samuel 2:12.  Eli was a high priest during the era of the Judges. His two sons did not perform the sacrifices properly, and had illicit sexual relations, so the Lord punished Eli by killing them. Uh-oh, Jesse and Kelvin are doomed.

Keefe's Mushroom Head:  After their Friday night encounter with the blackmailers, Jesse has their van towed to Kelvin's garage, talks to Kelvin, then fetches Judy. Jesse is wearing the same clothes, but Kelvin has changed out of his Faith Factory t-shirt. 

As they are talking, Keefe comes out of the house, wearing only a shirt and socks, eating cheese.  "What's going on?" he asks.

Jesse: "Sickening!"; Judy: "Cool mushroom tip"; Kelvin: "That shirt's not as long as you think, Bud.  Just go back inside."  We see his dick peeking out from below his shirt, and then his butt as he turns around.

Structurally, this seems to be a joke on Keefe being drug-addled, combined with a view of his cock and butt that leads us to ask "are they or aren't they." But in- universe, it becomes much more significant. 

First, notice that just a few episodes ago, Kelvin was terrified by the sight of Keefe's testicle.  Now he is embarrassed but not alarmed.  He is used to seeing Keefe naked.

Second, why is Keefe wearing only a shirt and socks?  Was he in bed?  No -- when you get dressed, you put on your pants first. Getting ready for bed?  No, when you get undressed, you take off your shirt first. 

"Go suck your Satanic boyfriend Keefe."

A likely scenario: After the Club Sinister rescue, the guys drop Dot off, then go home and change clothes.  Some time later, Keefe decides to move forward with the relationship that Kelvin has been suggesting,  Since he rejected a bj offer earlier, it makes sense that he would want to start with a bj.  He takes his pants off, and his shoes have to come off, too.  Kelvin is so overcome by passion that he doesn't have time to take his clothes off -- he just drops to his knees.  

As they are getting busy, there's a knock on the door.  Keefe waits for Kelvin to return, gets bored, goes to the kitchen, gets some cheese.  Then he hears everyone talking and, assuming that his shirt is long enough to cover his dick, investigates.

It makes structural sense: Keefe looks for love in Episode 1.4, rejects the Satanists to follow Kelvin, and ends up in Kelvin's bed.  If Kelvin's "celibacy promise" was real, tonight he broke it, thus making his later despair more realistic.  And it would lead into the isolation tank rescue.

And it gives the siblings definitive proof that their brother and Keefe are boyfriends.  Notice that the gay implications immediately cease.

Saturday or Sunday: Rev. Seasons announces that his church is closing due to losing members to the Baby Billy's Locust Grove church.  We cut to Eli, Baby Billy/Tiffany, and BJ/Judy playing golf.  Wait -- shouldn't they be in church?  Or is this Sunday afternoon?

Personal note:  When I was growing up, our Nazarene church was across the street from a golf course.  The preacher ofter called down the wrath of God on those sinners who played golf on Sunday morning instead of worshipping Him.

Baby Billy gets BJ's name wrong, and then offers Judy a job singing with him. Since he was unsuccesful in drawing Aimee-Leigh from Eli, he's going to try it with Eli's daughter?

"This isn't normal":  Meanwhile, at Jesse and Amber's house,  Gideon comes down to breakfast with a black eye.  His parents are upset, but they don't make the connection to the car chase last night.  So it's Saturday morning?  Was the Rev. Season scene a flashback?

These timeline inconsistencies are annoying.  Let's just think about Keefe's cock again.  A nice view after the break. Warning: explicit.

"Wellmania" Episode 1.5: Gaz cheats on his boyfriend, Chad shows his dick, and Liv has yet another meltdown

The 8-episode comedy/drama Wellmania, 2023, stars Celeste Barber as Liv Healy, a New York Times food writer who returns to her home town of Sydney to cover a food event and discovers that her dangerously high cholesterol level prevents her from getting a green card to return to the U.S.  She must lower it to continue her career.  

The premise and episode descriptions on Netflix give you no hint of gay representation, but according to Wikipedia, Liv's brother Gaz (Lachlan Buchanan) is gay, and appears with his fiancé Dalbert Tan  (Remy Hii) in every episode. 

Left: Remy Hii.

Episode 1.2 says that Liv iefuses to attend the wedding.  I checked the scene: it has nothing to do with homophobia.  She just doesn't like the family thinking of her as a joke.  I reviewed Episode 1.5, "Hall of Mirrors."

Scene 1: Mom is retiring, so Liv gives a depressed speech: "You can have your colon cleansed and do your 450,000 steps a day, but it doesn't matter, because we're all going to die."  Gaz and Dalbert tell her to shut up and stop ruining Mom's day.

So she takes a bite out of the cake before it's cut and asks for more booze.

Mom's dining companion has heard that Gaz is getting married, and asks who the "lucky lady" is.  Mom doesn't divulge much, does she.  "Me, because we're homosexuals."  "So are my favorite patients!  They have such fascinating sexual injuries." Jerk

Uh-oh, Gaz gets a text from someone named Sebastian, lies that he has a lot of clients to see, leaves.  Cheating on the boyfriend?  

Liz runs into the bathroom to throw up.  Mom wants to know why she keeps doing such unhealthy things.  "You can't have two perfect children."  Gaz is perfect?  Just wait...

Editor Valerie call.  Everyone loves her Camille article. "It was gutsy!  It was real!" She wants Liv in New York to "be the third judge in the show," but Liv is trapped in Australia. 

From here there are three plotlines.  I'll review each separately.

Liv's Story: Liv accosts Chad, Guy Edmonds,  the American counsul, while he's in the men's room. She needs a new doctor to bribe to say her cholesterol level is ok, so she can get her green card back and return to New York -- she sort of attacked the old one, Dr. Singh. Couldn't you go on a tourist visa if you just want to be the judge on the show?

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Haven't you ever had a dream?"  While she is begging, she accidentally scatters paper towels, and gets on her knees to pick them up just as another man comes in.  "It's not what it looks like."  "No, it's worse," Chad retorts.

Chad's penis after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Jamie McGuire: The Smiley Creature from "From," with Halifax hunks and a nude Dylan Sprouse

 

From, on MGM+, is set in the ruins of a small town, with a diner, a police station, a hotel, a farm, and some houses, where stranded travelers from various parts of the U.S. get stuck.  Every night humanoid creatures appear, dressed in 1950s costumes -- mechanic, nurse, librarian, tv cowboy.  They try to lure you outside, or trick you into letting them in, whereupon they turn into monsters and kill you.  

The Creatures are the main threat, and one of the biggest mysteries, in From. They are impervious to most weapons, but they don't have paranormal powers.  Their physiology is human, but dessicated, as if they've been mummified.  They were once regular humans: a creature named Jasmine says "I didn't ask to be this way."  My theory is that some sort of dark magic went wrong during the 1950s, zapping the town into a pocket universe and transforming some of the townsfolk into Creatures.

Jamie McGuire's Smiley Creature has become a fan favorite, due to his especially huge, creepy grin and his quirky personality: he  seems delighted to be part of the world again.  He feels furniture, picks up objects.  He climbs aboard a stalled bus and plays at driving it.  

He was killed in Season 2, but Creatures never really die, so chances are he'll be back in Season 3.

Without the creepy grin, Jamie is quite handsome, so I wanted to know more about him.  

He's been interviewed a dozen times, but mostly about the Smiley Creature -- and he doesn't know any more than we do.  He just puts on a creepy grin and follows the director's instructions.

Jamie McGuire turns out to be very diffcult to research.  A Google search yields 3,000 entries about a romance novelist named Jamie McGuire, mostly reviewing two of her books that have been made into movies, Beautiful Disaster and Beautiful Wedding.    Dylan Sprouse, top photo and left, stars as an inked bad boy boxer.

Dylan's butt for the road

More Jamie after the break

The top 15 hunks of "The Twilight Saga," with some nude vampires and werewolves

Twilight, a series of four young adult paranormal fantasy novels by Stephanie Meyer, was published between between 2005 and 2008, with sequels in 2015 and 2020. They have been translated into 49 languages, with worldwide sales of 140 million.  The movie series, which appeared between 2008 and 2012, grossed $3.36 billion worldwide.

The premise: teenager Bella moves to Forks, Washington with her parents, and falls in love with the vampire Edward.  When he leaves town, she falls in love with the werewolf Jacob.  Eventually she has to choose between them: she chooses Edward, and they get married and have a daughter. 

There were lots of sexy, tortured vampires before, on Dark Shadows and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the novels of Anne Rice, but never whole tribes of them.  And uber-muscular, macho vampires, not sophisticates and androgynes.  Perfect for erasing the gay symbolism from the vampire mythos and producing a totally gay-free world.

And it is.  There are dozens of vampire, werewolf, and human characters, but not a single gay one, in the books or any of the movies.

Are you really surprised?  The series is aimed at an audience of teens, who are never allowed to know that gay people exist.  It's fantasy, and gay people appear almost exclusively in comedies set in the real world.   Kristen Stewart, the actress who played Bella, claimed that the series had a "gay inclination...it's all about oppression."  

Big deal.  This was in 2012, not 1965.

But that doesn't mean that gay teens must be content to watch actors looking sullen with their shirts off.  There are always subtexts, either intentional or accidental, especially among the gay or gay-friendly members of the cast: 

The Vampires:

1. Robert Pattinson, left, as head vampire Edward.

2. Peter Facinelli as Carlisle, his Dad.

3. Kellan Lutz, left, as Emmett, his brother.

4. Jackson Rathbone, left, as Jasper, his younger brother.

5-6. Christopher Heyerdale and Cameron Bright as Marcus, leader of the Volturi vampires, who have lived in Italy since Etruscan times.

7. Xavier Samuel, left, as Riley, companion of the evil vampire Victoria, who is trying to kill Bella.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Gemstones Episode 1.5: Baby Billy and Eli compete for Aimee-Leigh. Plus water sports and donkey dicks

Previous: Episode 1.4, Continued: Dot drives Kelvin crazy, Keefe refuses a bj, and Gideon and Scotty date.  With a Daedalus dick bonus

Title: "Interlude."  The interludes, set halfway through each season, are designed to clarify the conflicts and back stories, and to keep you in suspense after a major crisis. Here we flash back to 1989. when Eli and Aimee-Leigh were rich but not mega-rich, Baby Billy was hoping for a come-back, and young Jesse was jealous of his soon-to-be-born brother Kelvin. 

A Hot Piece of Tail:  This is the golden age of televangelism, with Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Jerry Falwell eating up the airwaves -- and blaming homa-sekshuls for everything from teen pregnancy to hurricanes/  They were especially eager to proclaim that homa-sekshuls were trying to destroy society by infecting straight people with AIDS.  In 1989, the number of new cases peaked at 80,000. 

Before the broadcast,  Aimee-Leigh walks around, being friendly to the crew.  Very diverse crew: -- old and young, black and white, women in jobs traditionally held by men, probably gay people.  She compliments Eli as "a hot piece of tail," and he agrees: "I'm sizzling hot."This seems a little gender-transgressive.  Men aren't typically referred to in this way.  Just before the curtain rises, Aimee-Leigh tells Eli, "I'm pregnant."  How playful, and borderline mean!

Family Dinner:  Lots of gross closeups of 1980s food.  When Aimee-Leigh says that she has news to share, Jesse guesses that Judy has been put up for adoption, and she guesses that he has AIDS. In 1989 evangelicals -- and most of the general public -- thought that only gay men contracted AIDS, so she is "accusing" him of being gay. 

No, Aimee-Leigh says without disciplining them, she is actually having a baby. Jesse wishes that she has a miscarriage, again without discipline, then backtracks: : "I will never like them.  They will never be my friend."  This is a call-back to the Episode 1.1 scene where Jesse is upset with Kelvin because "we used to be friends."  

Judy hopes that it's a boy, so she can teach him how to pee standing up.  Is she accusing Jesse of being a woman?

The Misbehavin' Tour: At the office, Baby Billy tells the Gemstones about his idea for a Misbehavin' Comeback Tour this spring.  But she can't do it: she is pregnant, due in July (in Season 2, Kelvin says that his birthday is near Christmas, but never mind).

Baby Billy insists that they go on the tour anyway, but she insists that she can't.  How about waiting until after the birth?  Nope.

Billy blames Eli for ruining his come-back: "You're the one who splashed all that sperm all over her."  This is a very odd way of describing heterosexual intercourse, more accurate for guys beat ing off.  Billy seems very jealous; does he wish that Eli had splashed sperm all over him?

The screenshot shows Baby Billy in pain, behind window slats that look like bars. He is trapped, unable to move beyond his days of performing with Aimee-Leigh, blaming Eli for ruining his life. In Season 3, Eli's other brother-in-law will blame him too, with more violent results.  

The Birthday Party:  After scenes where Jesse is caught arranging little-kid fights and complains that his parents are never around, a we cut to Judy's birthday party.  Guests eating food in disgusting ways (a regular trope in this episode); riding a slip-and-slide; riding ponies.  

What Jesse is looking at after the break. Warning: Explicit.

Dakare Chatman: Ballroom dancer, Christ-follower, conservative spokesperson, LGBT ally. With nude dude bonus

 

Charleston, South Carolina resident Dakare Chatman has four acting credits on the IMDB:

1. Two episodes as an unnamed high school student on the serial-killer drama Mr. Mercedes, 2019.

2. "Youth Group Teen" in Righteous Gemstones Season 1.  He is especially noticeable in Episode 1.9, where Kelvin tells the youth group that he has transformed himself into "something dark."

3. "Kook," uncredited, on an episode of Outer Banks, 2020.

4. In Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.8, 2022, he returns as "Mr. Dukare," who buys Junior's defunct video arcade games.   

More about Dakare: he's a singer, ballroom dancer, Christ-follower, traveler, and optimist, active in the AME Church.  He was on the National Youth Advisory Board of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank, and won their Constituting America Contest twice. This got him an interview on the conservative news show Fox and Friends

Dakare is now the artistic director of Practice to Perform, a semi-pro ballroom dancer, and still active in politics.  In 2024, he was the manager of the re-election campaign for Sheriff Kristin Graziano of Charleston, the first lesbian sheriff in South Carolina history. 

Wait -- Kristin Graziano is a Democrat.  Has Dakare changed parties?

Conservative think tank, AME church, Christ-follower, and gay-positive. A very unusual combination.

This photo from Christmas is rousing my gaydar.  Dakare's Instagram contains no photos of him with any ladies except some friends and dance partners.

Gay or not, I'm sure he won't mind fans appreciating his cuteness.  And that cool, campy cutlery on his kitchen wall.

More after the break