I've never seen The Breakfast Club (1985), the Brat Pack classic about five mismatched high schoolers who bond during a Saturday detention.  We didn't watch any Brat Pack movies in the 1980s -- too homophobic.  I rented it sometime in the 2000s, but the opening scene sows a close-up of Judd Nelson's locker, with the phrase "Keep out, fag!"  So I kept out.  

Saturday School (2020) on Amazon Prime sounded like a scene-by-scene remake, but in 2020 there would probably be less homophobia, so I decided to watch, to see what all the fuss was about 

Prologue:  Friday 1:30 pm, a ritzy ultra-modern high school in Australia.  Goofball and Hunk discuss the nice ass on passing Dumb Girl.  Hunk rushes over and bullies a passing Nerd.  Activists approaches and berates them for bullying.  Hunk flirts with her, but she finds him "arrogant" (movie code for "sexy, but I don't want to admit it).

Week 1: Goofball, Hunk, Nerd, Dumb Girl, and Feminist standing outside the school.  A little girl ridicules them for being stupid enough to require "Saturday School."  

Whooops, she just looks 12.  She's actually the teacher in charge of their punishmnet.  Activist calls her out for her abuse -- not appropriate for a teacher talking to students! -- so she redoubles her scorn of the "shitheads."  If she had her way, they'd be slowly turtured to death instead of just getting work assignments.  

Geez, did they blow up the World Trade Center?  No, they were in the vicinity of a purse that got stolen.

Literally trembling with rage, Psycho Teacher passes out the ice breaker game: you have to decide which of three statements about her is true: "I'm sober right now, I marrie dmy cousin, I love my job."  Must be marrying the cousin.

Break time: Activist flirts with Hunk, Dumb Girl flirts with Goofball, Psycho Teacher, now too drunk to be enraged, flirts with Nerd.  He says he doesn't like girls.  She doesn't understand; she's never heard of gay people before.   "What are you going to do when it's time to have kids?"  "I don't think they'd fit out of my arsehole, Psycho Teacher."

The others return.  Psycho Teacher tries to humiliate Nerd by outing him, but they aren't homophobic (the bullying before wasn't about that).  Then she sends them home.

Wait -- they had five minutes of ridicule, then a break.  What happened to the work assignments?

I'm rooting for these kids.  Six weeks of abuse by Psycho Teacher!

Week 2: They're writing essays explaining why they should be found not guilty of the heinous crime. Psycho Teacher has passed out drunk (Thank God!), so they sneak off to play "Truth or Dare": "Take off an article of clothing": "Kiss Hunk."  Three kids, including Nerd, get that one, but they all refuse to kiss him.

Week 3: Psycho Teacher has a new game: a mock trial, with everyone in drag to humiliate them. But the boys aren't humiliated by dresses and wigs.  They play up the sexual double standards: girls get called "sluts" for doing it, and boys get called "lames" for not doing it.

Hunk gets upset and runs off.  He confesses to to Activist that he lives with his aunt, who is obviously guilty of child neglect, if not abuse.  Sometimes he has to scrounge in dumpsters for food.

Later, they are taking a test.  Goofball wants to know why Nerd is still in drag.  Psycho Teacher explains: "The boy likes rainbows."  Homophobe!  

Next Psycho Teacher makes them run laps.  Nerd rebels because "Black people don't run."  Huh?.  Then he calls out Hunk for his bullying: "You beat me up to make yourself look good!"

Yerba Buena High School?  Is there really a Yerba Buena in Australia?

Next: a water-balloon fight and argument over which boy should hook up with which girl.  Turns out to be Goofball-Dumb Girl and Hunk-Activist.  Nerd is running laps by himself (We're not homophobic, but you're the only gay guy in Australia, so....)

Week 4:  An improv game. (At least Psycho Teacher is more mellow when she's drunk). Nerd plays a guy who discovers that his wife is pregnant, but he don't want no kids.  Especially boys.  He starts crying -- abusive Dad issues coming out.  Hunk leads him off for a heart-to-heart.

Week 5: Writing poetry.  Psycho Teacher reads Nerd's aloud to the group: "Dear Love, I see you, but you don't see me.  I bang on an invisible wall. but I am silent to you."   Goofball and Hunk get upset and storm off.   I don't know why.  

Psycho Teacher flirts with him: "If you asked her, you might find that she likes you, too."  He protests that he doesn't like girls, but she dismisses him.  There is no such thing as being gay; every boy likes girls.  How else are they going to have kids?  Nerd just has to be "true to himself."  Wow, coming out as straight!  That's a switch!  An intensely homophobic one, but a switch.

Meanwhile, Hunk and Activist are also arguing about "being true to yourself.," and Goofball steals a page from Activist's diary.

Next, another "Revealing Secrets" game.  Geez, they keep promising to reveal secrets, but never do.  

Week 6: They have an "Australian Idol" singing contest.

Week 7: Wait, I thought there were just six weeks.  Psycho Teacher gets back to the "who stole the purse" bit.   Goofball accuses Hunk.  They fight.  Then, big reveal: Nerd filmed Activist taking it.  Then why go through all of this nonsense?  Activist starts to cry.

Week 8: This is lasting longer than it should, with unclear motives, secrets that don't get revealed, and advice to "be true to yourself" without any pay-off.  Still 18 minutes to go.  

No one is speaking to each other.  Hunk runs off.  Nerd follows. To advise him to be true to himself?

Hunk goes into the school (nice mural, but why the American Civil Rights leaders in Australia?).

Nerd has a date with Dumb Girl, and suggests that they double.  Hunk could invite Activist.

I'm out.  I don't even want to stick around to look for beefcake photos for illustrations. Here are some cute kittens.

This is the most homophobic movie I've ever seen.

Truth Seekers first.  It won't let me get to the first episode, so I'm watching the fourth, "The Incident at CovColCosCon." 

Scene 1: Peter Toynbee (Peter Rugman) and a crazy professor are doing an experiment to see if they can use nanobots to control a lab rat.  But they have an old-fashioned radio.  I'm already lost -- what year is this?

The nanobots are triggered by a Latin incantation.  Say what?  Which draws the rat's soul into the radio.  Say what?

  Cantankerous Dad Richard (Malcolm McDonald, whom I always assumed was gay)  tells Gus to delete a video of him prancing around in a rabbit suit, but he refuses: it's driving a lot of viewers to their podcast.

They are off to the Coventry Collectors and Cosplay Convention to hear Toynbee.  Dad is not a fan, but is going along for the ride.

Scene 3:  Sounds of people having sex.  Fooled you! Astrid (Emma D'Arcy) and Elton John (Samson Kayo) -- his name is really Elton John?  -- are moving a chair.  Elton's sister Helen (Susan Wokoma) yells at them for damaging her cosplay costume (it's definitely a chair).. 

Scene 4:  Gus and Richard are tloading their equipment into a blue van.  They call Helen and ask when she will get there.  They all drive down the highway, discussing the social media platforms that will get them the most pageviews., and finally arrive at the convention. 

Helen won't go in.  She needs time to be alone, to process things.  

Apparently they have been coming to this convention for five years, but she always waits in the van.  She is suffering from agoraphobia.

Astrid and Elton start taking photographs for the podcast. A crazy guy rushes up and yells "They're coming!"  Astrid recognizes the scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  He is actually advertising an interactive paranormal experience.  If it gets too scary, just yell out "Fire!"

Scene 5:  Gus and a complaining Richard wait in line to hear Dr. Toynbee's speech.  Richard gets in, but Gus does not.  Meanwhile, Elton explains about Helen's agoraphobia: something traumatic happened to them as kids. 

Cut to Helen in the van, unwrapping the chair -- oh, it's a Dalek costume.  But she can't bring herself to put it on.  

Back at the Toynbee speech, Richard is complaining to his seatmate, Terry (Ranjit Krishnamma) about how this is all bollocks.  

Meanwhile, Gus is trying to sneak in through the back, but the security guard (Hon Ping Tang) restrains him.

Next, Security Guard takes his shirt off and...just kidding.

Scene 6:  The immersive paranormal experience sends Astrid and Elton to the basement.  Only 11 minutes left. When is something paranormal going to happen?

Meanwhile, Dr. Toynbee is pratting on about the afterlife, named Eternis, "where you can be free to live forever."  Do you have to drink magic kool-aid to get there?  Naked people in the illustrations, but from the backside.  I can't tell their gender. 

He's not a paranormal investigator -- he's a cult leader, offering to take "his loyal followers" to the next level.

Then some flashing trigger-scenes of atrocities and demons -- is one of them Hillary Clinton?  -- and a Latin incantation.  The brainwashing begins.

Scene 7: Back in the basement, Astrid and Elton hear chanting behind a door marked with a skull-and-crossbones.  "Fun, isn't it?  Totally immersive."  

You guessed it -- Astrid and Elton stumble ooto the backstage of Toynbee's brainwashing, where his minions are chortling evilly:  'The recruitment process is almost complete."

Still thinking that it's part of the immersive experience, Astrid interrupts. "We're on to you.  We know all about your evil plans. What do we win?"

But just as the cultists are about to seize them, Elton gets a text: Helen has not only made it inside, she has entered the cosplay contest!  "Sorry, gotta go."

Toynbee's goons go back to shooting the audience with what looks like a glaucoma scanner.  

Scene 8: Gus, who is the leader of the paranormal investigators but hasn't really done anything all episode, returns to the van.  Helen is still there, afraid to go in..  They have a heart to heart.

Cut to the costume contest, with Astrid and Elton in the audience and the Dalek costume on stage (Dalek wins first prize).  Crazy guy approaches and asks why they didn't go to the immersive paranormal show.  They are shocked -- then what did we observe?

Dalek rushes off.  Surprise -- it's Gus!  Helen couldn't go in, but at least everyone saw her costume.

Scene 9: Back home.  Richard complains that the lecture bored him to death. But then he takes off his sunglasses, and his eyes light up!

Gay characters: No one expresses any heterosexual interest, except maybe Samson and Astrid.

Simon Pegg provides Nick Frost with a gay subtext in many movies.  He's all over the promo, but he does not appear in the episode.

Beefcake: None.  Could I see that security guard's shoulders again?

Other Sights:  Not nearly enough of the cosplay convention.  Just people standing in line for lectures.

Story Arc:  There are flashes of backstory.  Apparently Astrid was a victim of demonic possession, Gus has some monsters, and who knows what happened to Helen and Elton?  But the story can work just as well without.

Plot Twists:  Astrid and Elton stumbling into the cult meeting was broadcast from a mile away, but Gus in the Dalek costume was a surprise.

My Grade: Likeable characterrs, funny bits, scares but no real threats (where else can you escape the bad guys by saying "Sorry, gotta go"?).  If one of the characters turns out to be gay, A-.  Otherwise B. 

This morrning I logged on to Netflix, told them I was Boomer, not Bob or "the kids," and suddenly my screen filled with Dash and Lilly.  "New York at Christmas.  You're surrounded by possibility and the hope that somehwere in the city is the one person you were meant to be with."

That old chestnut about "the one"! We heard that in high school: every boy was destined to be with Tha Girl.  If he found her, and managed to wrestle her away from the obnoxious jock she was dating, his life would be infinite joy forever.  If he couldn't find her, or  she chose the jock,  his life would be unending misery.   

Nonsense!  There are uncountable thousands of girls in the world with whom a boy could have a perfectly fulfilling relationship.  Plus -- guess what -- some boys like girls.  And some girls like boys.  And some people have no interest in a romantic relationship of any sort.

The myth originated in the 17th century, during the transition from arranged to companionate marriage, but it got a major push during the 1950s, to promote the nuclear family: dad working, mom staying home, no other caregivers for the kids, living in a separate house that requires purchasing an infinite number of products and thereby supporting late capitalism..

I was about ready to yell "Heterosexist brainwashing! Next!", but then a review said "Queer-inclusive holiday comedy", and another said "Queer holiday feels."  So I checked out a clip

The plot: Cynical Dash (Austin Abrams) hates Christmas. Joyous Lily (Midori Francis) loves Christmas.  They have never met, but they communicate by writing notes in a book in their favorite used bookstore.  

Wait, that's vandalism!  And what teenager reads physical books anymore?  They're doing kindles and ipads.  

Austin Abrams is 24 years old, but the only beefcake photos I could find come from his early teen yers.  Or else he's just young-looking.

Well, better than nothing, but it's still a throwback to the 1990s gay best friend, who says "You need a man, girl!  Let's make you fabulous!"

According to the IMDB, Langston appears in all 8 episodes, and Benny in 4, so maybe they have a more substantial role. 

Michael Cyril Creighton appears in four episodes as "Jeff the Door Queen," so apparently all the gay guys in New York are fab-u-lous, girlfriend.

 To be sure, I fast-forwarded through the last episode.

The last episode: New Year's Eve.  Dash's friends, all guys, none fab-u-lous, are dissing him for being a dick.

His best-friend Boomer (Dante Brown) is starting to date a girl.  

Lily's family gathers for the traditional New Year's gift from conservative Japanese Grandpa: an envelope containing money.  

Everyone looks uncomfortable and embarrassed.  Has Langston been outed?  Is Grandpa homophobic?

He continues "I assume that this means your heart has been healed."  

Everyone laughs with relief.

Later Langston throws snowballs at Diego's window, and when he answers, yells "I got you a notebook."  Presumably this is a reconciliation scene?  

Dash and Lily, who have apparently been arguing, meet at a bar just as "Aud Lang Syne" starts.  They spend the rest of the episode, about ten minutes, kissing.

My Verdict: Watch if you want.  I'm holding out for something a little less 1990s.

Bjorn L., born in Germany, now lives in Haiku, Hawaii (no connection to the Japanese poem),  where he is the UnCoach of the High on Life School.  He is also the New Paradigm Wizard, "receiving and teaching codes and info for the New Leadership School."

What that means is a website filled with un-Advice based on Buddhist and New Age teachings.  

Let’s take a moment and go inward. Listen to the chant and let your inner spaciousness and knowing connect with the part in you which feels hopeless and alone.

If un-Advice is not your cup of tea, you might still be interested in the fact that Bjorn has posted many, many shirtless pics.  

The full post is on A Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake

Six of the stories have been adapted for tv under the unfortunately blah title Paranormal (maa wara' altabieat‎, "Metaphysics" in the original Arabic, which is even worse).

No beefcake -- Refaat (Ahmed Amin) is elderly, grizzled, and unattractive, and the next six cast members listed on IMDB are all women: his sister, his fiancee, his ex-girlfriend, the ghost he fell in love with as a boy, yada yada yada.  All I found was 20-year old Ahmad Dash, (top photo) who plays Refaat's older brother in a flashback to his childhood -- in one episode. 

No gay characters, which you would expect in an Arabic series, but the lack of male cast members means that even uninntentional gay subtexts are absent.  The book series gives Refaat lots of male friends and enemies for subtext-searching.

2. Adel, the government official who begrudgingly helps with the investigations.

3.  Harry Sheldon, a brash American.

4. Jewish-American con artist Sam Colby.

Here they are all absent.  The story is about the fiancee, the ex-lover, and the ghost girl.

So, is the  exotic appeal of an Arabic X-Files enough to warrant a look?

Reviews called it "goofy,""good natured," and "anarchic," reminiscent of The Kids in the Hall. One reviewer even compared the troupe to the Marx Brothers.  

The episode "Dating" has the the plot synopsis:"the boys score a date."  

Just one person for the three of them?  And is it a boy or a girl?  Surely they wouldn't be dating a boy?  

On the off chance that there was some gay representation, I turned it on.

Scene 1:  A suburban house where the boys apparently live together. Broden (bald), Mark (glasses), and Baron Gabrel de Franc, an 18th century French aristocrat who stumbled in through a time warp, are playing the "that's relatable" game: when you think you're out of beans, so you buy five cans, but then you get home and you had beans after all, so now you have too many beans. The aristocrat loses. 

Suddenly they get an email, and call in Zach (long hair) to tell him the good news: someone responded to their online profile.  They have a date!  Yes, all three with the same person. 

The French aristocrat leaves.  They celebrate.  "I hope I get a kiss!"

They haven't specified if the date is a boy or a girl.  Is this a deliberate attempt to promote inclusivity by leaving the gender open, or just an oversigh, with the heteronormative assumption that it will obviously be a girl?

Scene 2: They watch Hunk and Dork on tv.  Hunk (Broden) has lots of friends (boys and girls) and prom dates (a girl); Dork (Mark) has none.

Zach was dating both men and women, and ended up going home with a man.

Scene 4: Broden stops in at The Men Gentlemen's Barber, Where Men Can Be Gentlemen and Manly and Men.  He notes that they have a date tonight, and the barber says "Don't worry, when I'm done with you, she will ___ you, and ___, and ___."  But he also offers to give him an espresso, a tattoo,  a "tit magazine,""a fuck,," and pale ale, "Our house blend of Jack Daniels, sriracha, and hawk semen."  Broden is horrified by the toxic masculinity, but at least they give him a good haircut.

The barber assumes that the date is with a girl, which one might expect of a man who drinks hawk semen.  Broden neither confirms nor denies.

Scene 5:   Mark is so excited about the upcoming date that he pantomimes kissing them, playing both roles.  They grab each other's butts, and one gives the other a blow job (I can't tell which).  Then there's some thrusting going on, but I can't tell who is thrusting into what.     

It is impossible to tell if he is imagining sex with a man or a woman. His pantomine could go either way.  This has to be deliberate.

Scene 6: Mark watches Moogie Woogie Boogie.  Two guys in suits (Broden, Mark) itneract with a muppet-like creature whose childish repartee gradually turns dark ("Moogie found a lump on his testicle.  Moogie was scared.").  

"Someday I'm going to fuck Moogie," Mark exclaims. Ok, Moogie is a boy muppet.  Mark likes boys or boys and girls both.

Scene 7:  They receive an email from their date which turns out to be a pfishing spam.  Their date is a spambot!  They decide to go anyway.

Scene 8: Dinner at a fancy restaurant, where they are flirting with the Spambot, which is actually an alien robot planning to conquer the world.  "Kneel before the great Spambot!" he orders..

They are excited, assuming that he means kneel for sex.  

Deep male voice. Their date was with a boy.  

The end.

Beefcake: None (Antony Starr, top photo, guest stars in another episode). The boys are not attractive, probably deliberately (it's hard to be funny when everyone is staring at your biceps or bulge).

Gay Characters: This was quite an anxiety-provoking episode.  I've been fooled before by minutes or hours of guys dropping pronouns, saying "the person I'm interested in," only to discover in the last scene that the person is a girl.  But here they keep up the indeterminancy throughout.

I'm still not sure why. Are they really being inclusive, or are they presenting their characters as too clueless to realize that dates must always be boy-girl?  

My Grade: I'll have to watch another episode to make up my mind. 

And then I started kicking myself.  

1. Dreary, depressing, obsessed with death -- ok, no problem. -- have you actually read the Alice and Peter Pan books?  Stay a child forever, if you can.  Growing up is terrible.  You have to do icky things like get a job and get married, and then you die. 

Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, with bitter tidings laden, shall summon to unwelcome bed ⁠a melancholy maiden!

2. Race is irrelevant Victorian society -- ok, no problem.  Maybe the black actors were cast because they aced their auditions. 

3. But it is unforgiveable to make us slosh through the melancholy, dreary, painfully depressing world of adults, where it's always winter but never Christmas (sorry, wrong book) to the bitter end, and Alice and Peter NEVER GO ANYWHERE!  

They're supposed to be exploring Wonderland and Neverland, for chrissakes!

The family falls apart.  Jack descends to a world of gambling, gambling debts, and child neglect.  Rose, delusional and about to die of grief, takes to her bed and drinks.  Snobbish Aunt Eleanor arrives, plotting to send Alice away to boarding school, which strikes me as an excellent idea, but is presented as a fate worse than death.  Well, a fate the same as death.  

Alice and David try to ease their pain by rumbling through the Victorian underworld, encountering tawdry real-life versions of the characters and situations of Neverland and Wonderland  For instance, a Mad Hatter prototype runs the pawn shop where they are trying to raise some cash to pay Dad's gambling debts.  

But there is no Wonderland.  There is no Neverland.  There is no nothing.   

Peter, who blames himself for David's death and the destruction of the family, never manages to move on.  He "never grows up," vanishing into his father's world of gambling, drinking, and death.   Alice grows up, marries Mr. Darling -- the same thing as death -- has three kids (Michael, Wendy, and John), and writes the books as a form of grief therapy.

So if Peter Pan comes through the window, he will be Wendy's uncle?

The books were actually written by J. M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, who were living in England during this period and occasionally smiled. Wouldn't it have been cool if Alice and Peter met them?

Or if, like, they actually had the adventures the movie promises?

This lying, deceptive piece of con-artist garbage reminds me of The Bridge to Terabithia, which also lures you in with the promise of an alternate world fantasy, only to punch you in the stomach: "Fooled you! This is a movie about a child dying, but you already paid, so we don't care."

Beefcake: No.

Gay characters: None specified.

Heterosexism: Alice and Peter are siblings, so thankfully no pre-teen falling-in-love.

My grade: F-.

Wait -- aren't small towns places you escape from, and return to at Christmas to have uncomfortable conversations with redneck relatives?

I can't imagine that the intended audience for Hallmark Christmas rom-coms is clamoring for LGBTQ representation, but this year there have been a few non-Hallmark productions with gay brothers and best friends.  Christmas in New York even has a lesbian primary plot.  Anxious to avoid being labeled "square," Hallmark chimed in Christmas with the Darlings.

Terrible name, reminiscent of the Peter Pan stories, and there aren't even any characters named Darlings (they are Darlingtons).  

The plot: Jessica (Katrina Law) has a high-power job in the City, working at the law firm of the hunky Charles (Steve Bacic).  Will they fall in love?  Of course not -- true love can only be found in small towns.  At Christmas.

Charles' Australian brother and sister-in-law have just died, so he has custody of his orphaned nephew and nieces.    Don't worry, they are not at all traumatized by losing their parents.  In Australia Christmas falls in the middle of the summer, so they're excited about their first Christmas in a place where sleighbells ringing, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and guys in red fur suits actually make sense.  

Could his goofball brother Max (Carlo Marks) take care of them?  No, the "confirmed bachelor" has no place in his life for kids. They'll have to stay in boarding school through the Christmas holiday.

Perfect stranger Jessica swoops in and offers to give them a "real New England Christmas."  Charles agrees, as long as Max tags along to make sure she's not a wacko who intends to sell them, or eat them. 

Jessica doesn't like Max -- he's a goofball, a screw-up, and "arrogant."  Uh-oh, "arrogant" is tv for "sexy."

So they all descend onto the Small Town for sleighbells, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, tree trimming (why do they call it trimming, anyway?), caroling, presents, and lots of red and green color schemes.  Of course Jessica and Max fall in love, and get a ready-made family (presumably Charles won't mind giving up guardianship.)

Beefcake: No.

What, you wanted a full subplot, with a gay couple descending upon the Small Town to sing carols and trim the tree?

On the Hallmark Channel, even acknowledging that LGBTQ people exist is a big step.