Your Week in Beefcake: "The Witches of East End" Prodigal Stud and a "True Blood" Farewell
The TV landscape had an extra plentiful bounty of shirtless hunks showing off ripped, hard-earned physiques and that makes the latest Your Week in Beefcake especially fun. Not only do we get to see if The Witches of East End can beat last season's hunk quotient, General Hospital had an epic day of shirtlessness.
The glorious cheese platter of magic and hot guys that is The Witches of East End came back Sunday. I'll be honest, I had a hard time following the plot because it looks like Lifetime took away their lighting budget. Still, murky as things were, the show did introduce us to Joanna's son Frederik (Christian Cooke) who casts sinister magic spells in the forest shirtless.
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After reuniting with his mother and his distrusting Aunt Wendy we see him in his room. But there's a plot reason for his shirtlessness! He's got a scar in the shape of the sigil that keeps showing up. Again, sinister.
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The second episode of Reckless offered some shirtless Adam Rodriguez in a context that wasn't disturbing. Thankfully.
Reckless also introduced Arliss (Falk Hentschel), the husband of the woman accusing the police of sexual harassment and rape.
And then there was some miscellaneous Cam Gigandet shirtlessness.
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This week, True Blood featured a flashback to the days when Eric (Alexander Skarsgard)'s hair was floppy and when he didn't care about vampire politics or rules.
It also offered a Alcide (Joe Manganiello) wrapping himself in a towel to walk around Sookie's house.
We also saw Alcide (in his wolf form) run into Sam (Sam Tremmell) in his dog form. They switched to their human form and stared at each other naked in the woods until someone from rudely interrupted them with gunfire.
We'll miss you Alcide. At least, we'll miss you as much as we can miss any True Blood character these days.
On The Leftovers, we learned what Patterson Joseph's "Holy" Wayne's cult is based on the claim that he gives hugs that can make all the bad feelings from the Disappearance go away. Apparently, he also needs to lose his shirt before giving one of his magic hugs, based on him taking off his shirt before trying to "heal" Tom (Chris Zylka).
Aw. Hoyay averted.
Meanwhile, Kevin (Justin Theroux) had a dream where he thought his daughter's friend was hitting on him, except it turned out she was just leading him to another moment of weirdness involving a deer. I'm starting to think they're working up to a reveal that Kevin falls asleep gorging himself on sriracha snack mix (implausible, I know, considering his abs) while watching Princess Mononoke.
American Ninja Warrior got blatant with the beefcake this week as Evan Dollard posed like it was time for the college track team to make their fundraiser calendar and talked about how shirts were too constricting for the American Ninja Warrior course.
A new challenge, "Cannon Ball Alley", turned out to be a huge challenge. 15 competitors fell, but even in defeat Dorian Cedars looked glorious.
Are we sure Kyle Cochran isn't going to be Mr. August? He'd make a great Mr. August.
Dear American Ninja Warrior. Please stop relegating stuntman Dan Mast and his collection of novelty-print briefs to the "While you were away" montage. Such a waste.
For those who started the course wearing a shirt, thankfully some of them like Alan "The Beast" Conneally dumped the muscle T in celebration of passing the first few obstacles.
Travis Brewer also joined the celebratory strip tease club.
Meanwhile, acrobat Brennan Mejia took no chances and got rid of his shirt before hitting the septuple steps. I owe him a thank you card.
In the end it was hairless newcomer Kevin Bull who beat Cannonball Alley.
I guess we have axe murderers now on Teen Wolf? Whatever this new axe-weilding villain may be, he did attack at Sean (Glenn McCuen)'s bedtime, which meant Sean was wearing just a pair of sweatpants when he decided to check what was under the bed.
Thankfully, he got away after hiding out in the bathroom for a moment.
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Meanwhile, Teen Wolf introduced new La Crosse team player Garrett (played by Flowers in the Attic's Mason Dye). He was wearing such tight top that I have a feeling we'll be seeing him here again soon.
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The Bridge surprised fans in its return Thursday when Sonya hooked up with Jack Dobbs (Nathan Phillips), the brother of the guy who killed Sonya's sister.
This week, Dominion started with Michael being rushed to medical care after being run through by Gabriel's sword. It didn't take long for him to be well enough to indulge in his usual after-sex mope.
However, Michael's brooding time was interrupted by an angel attack.
The story, this week involved a Senator demanding to see that the Chosen One was real. That meant a plot reason for Alex (Chris Egan) to take off his shirt.
Days of Our Lives celebrated Independence Day with a picnic by the lake, which gave us several minutes of Will (Guy Wilson), Tad (Brendan Coughlin) and Ben (former The Price is Right model Rob Wilson) hanging out shirtless. We don't see the fake trees of the lake set often enough.
And on Tuesday, Brady (Eric Martsolf) declared Theresa's apartment way too warm to wear a shirt.
Tuesday, General Hospital started with Shawn (Sean Blakemore) going for a shirtless jog and running into Alexis.
Thursday, General Hospital did its best to wear out the PrtScn button on my keyboard. First we learned that even a quiet night of watching a DVD of The Golden Girls ends with Lucas (Ryan Carnes) and Felix (Marc Samuel) in their undies.
Next we learned that Nathan (Ryan Paevey) is the kind of roommate who gets undressed before he walks from his bedroom to the shower. We're preparing our roommate application now.
Thankfully, Levi's powers of being super-annoying manifested in the form of keeping the shower occupied, forcing Nathan to decide he'll shower at work. That gave him a chance to lose his shirt again for a chat with a co-worker in the PCPD locker room.
Meanwhile, Patrick (Jason ) lost a patient, prompting him to take the shower of shame.
Patrick also had a shirtless conversation with a work colleage (this time Felix) in the staff changing room. Maybe they're trying to see if they can have most of the show happen in work staff changing rooms.
Things ended with Brad interrupting Felix's shower to have a discussion about Lucas not sharing the shirtless time with Brad.
What an amazing day in Port Charles.
First, I need to play some catch up. It turns out (thanks to D Wesley) Murder in the First has had a decent amount of Tom Felton shirtlessnes, like when he angrily changes his top:
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And when he has creepy, disturbing sex.
Meanwhile, I spent the July 4th holiday failing to get cable channels to stream video. It was like they all insisted on taking the holiday off. It turned out I missed ABC Family's new comedy Young & Hungry getting Jonathan Sadowski shirtless.
Meanwhile, Fox alerted me to Matt Atkinson's towel scene on last Thursday's The Young and the Restless.
That's it this week. Is there anything we missed or something you’d like us to know about? Drop us a line at weekinbeefcake@outlook.com! These last few came with the help of reader tips!