James Weir recaps television’s latest wiener obsession

Have you seen it? There’s something incredibly racy on TV screens at the moment — and it’s extremely NSFW. James Weir recaps.

WARNING: Mature content

Lately, it seems wieners are everywhere.

They just keep … popping up. It has simply become impossible to dodge them.

One moment, you’re unwinding after a long day at work by watching one of the many edgy new TV shows everyone’s talking about. The next, there’s a wiener. Wham. Right in your face.

They’re all over our TV screens. Cropping up like mushrooms after rainfall (I used this same folksy expression in last week’s column but, really, it’s more appropriate to use it in this one).

This is really rather crass subject matter to dedicate an entire Sunday column to. Apologies. Particularly if you’re eating a Sausage McMuffin.

It’s probably a good idea to take a more highbrow approach with this discussion. Let’s reframe it: Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we’re in the midst of a wiener renaissance.

The appendages have become the supporting cast members on multiple TV shows and they’re the ultimate scene stealers.

As viewers, we’re being bombarded with full-blown, full-frontal male nudity. And it’s not just a quick flash in the background. It’s front and centre. The pénis de résistance.

In this week’s latest episode of And Just Like That — the Sex And The City reboot — we copped two. One belonging to a main-ish character — Harry — who was receiving some morning delight from his wife Charlotte. The other belonged to a random character whose bath towel fell to the floor.

Both glimpses were gratuitous. The scenes still would’ve made sense without their presence. But there they were. The wieners were so prominent, it’s surprising they didn’t receive their own separate mentions in the end credits.

We saw a lot of racy stuff on Sex And The City during its original six season run — but never this.

Samantha Jones would’ve been really proud of Charlotte in this racy moment from the Sex And The City reboot.

It’s the same story over on HBO’s scandalous drama Euphoria. The recent season two premiere was overshadowed — figuratively but also kinda literally — by the penis (one of three featured in the episode) belonging to one character who made a mere 20 second appearance in a scene that showed him bursting into a bathroom and pulling down his pants to sit on a toilet.

And last year, Aussie actor Adam Demos went from unknown to very known after getting completely nude in a shower scene for Netflix drama Sex/Life.

Of course, these scenes whip the internet up into a frenzy. Screenshots start circulating on social media. Entire think pieces are dedicated to the respective wieners and debate ensues over whether they’re real or the prosthetic handiwork of a crafty prop department co-ordinator.

And then the actor is forced to formally address the world, putting to rest all the speculation by confirming — once and for all — that what we saw on screen was indeed his own flesh and bone(r).

Sorry guys, this picture is cropped. Mainly because the bottom half was too big to fit into frame.

“Yes, that is me in the bathroom,” Ansel Pierce, the US actor who played the random toilet guy in Euphoria, said in a TikTok video this week where he responded to the viral chatter about his body parts. “(It’s) Not a prosthetic, (but I) got a lot of questions!”

When Aussie actor Adam Demos’ shower scene from Sex/Life blew up, he received the same worldwide speculation about whether he sported a prosthetic. The attention directed at his impressive proportions became so wild that KISS 106.5’s Kyle and Jackie O started receiving call-ins from listeners who claimed they’d seen it in the flesh and could confirm its size.

If I had a dollar for every pixel I had to use on this picture...

The big question is: why now? What makes wieners the new hot topic on everyone’s lips (yes, yes — unfortunate wording)?

I raised the issue with my podiatrist this week. She loves making annoying small talk and I thought this topic of conversation would shut her up. But it turns out she had keen observations.

“A full-frontal penis has more of an impact than a full-frontal vagina,” she said over the roar of the foot sander.

Interesting. In an effort to plunge deeper, I posed the question while on the phone to one of my energy provider’s call centre operators.

“Pretty soon we won’t have to pixilate penises in the news,” he said over the clunky tip-taps of his keyboard. “They’ll be normalised.”

TV has ushered in the wiener renaissance. Full-frontal screenshots of naked male TV characters are our version of The Statue Of David. Eat your heart out, Michelangelo.

And just like that dusty old marble statue, the naked guy with the whopper on the toilet in Euphoria is the perfect image of youthful beauty.

It’s the fine art of our lifetime. In a century from now, museums will be filled with these screenshots — preserved and displayed in ornate gold frames — and millions of people will fly all over the world to view curated exhibitions that capture the life and culture of people living in the year 2022.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, they’ll probably even dedicate an entire wing to the masterpieces. The Wang Wing.

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir