Christopher & Eric

Pool boys and Evangelicals and cougars, oh my! Christopher and Eric kick off Sex Scandal Summer by serving up the spicy Hulu documentary GOD FORBID: THE SEX SCANDAL THAT BROUGHT DOWN A DYNASTY. When twenty-year old Miami pool boy Giancarlo Granda is invited to take part in a night of taboo busting sex with a wealthy older woman he met at the Fontainebleu Hotel and her (at least) voyeuristic husband, little does he know he’ll eventually find himself at the center of a scandal that helped remake American presidential politics. It’s a seemingly no holds-barred expose of con artists and blackmailers, and the culture war politics that attacks minorities while enriching sanctimonious hypocrites. But Christopher and Eric still have questions about what’s not being said in this otherwise steamy tell (almost) all.

Your hosts wrap up Sapphire Cove Summer, their celebration of Christopher’s steamy new gay romance novel, SAPPHIRE DAWN, with a warm and delicious serving of one of Eric’s favorite movies, BIG EDEN, an open hearted, wonderfully acted and beautifully shot rom com set in mountainous Montana. And the romantic leads are both men! The perfect antidote to last episode’s foray into reality show hell, it’s also another case of “Christopher should have watched this movie when Eric first recommended it fifteen years ago” and a great opportunity to talk about the special ingredients that can make romantic stories so swoon worthy and uplifting.

Orange County is once again the setting of Christopher’s steamy new Sapphire Cove novel, so your hosts decided to take a fun and frivolous trip to the region by way of a popular Netflix reality show. Big mistake. Huge. Sapphire Cove Summer was supposed to be a much needed break from dark and disturbing true crime stories, but when your hosts decided to sample the first four episodes of the third season of SELLING THE OC, they found themselves relentlessly tortured by a gilded coterie of witless malignant narcissists. The venomous cat fights, sexual manipulation and rank unprofessionalism on display here might not be criminal — but they should be. At the very least, these so-called real estate professionals should lose their licenses. And did we mention the show used queer baiting to promote its latest season? There’s little Eric hates more, save for everything else about this dreadful train wreck. You might want to turn the volume down on this one. Or up, if you hate this kind of soulless reality television as much as they do.

As Sapphire Cove Summer, their celebration of Christopher’s steamy new gay romance novel continues, Christopher and Eric serve up a controversial slice of sexy Hollywood history. In SCOTTY AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD, documentary filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer deftly explores the relentlessly cheerful Scotty Bowers, Tinseltown’s most famous male escort. The former sex worker’s tell all memoir blew open closet doors and shocked readers upon its release a few years ago, but it was Scotty’s frank and unashamed accounting of his wild sex life that left an indelible impression on Christopher, who made him the basis for one of his new novel’s central characters. But is there a darker side to Scotty’s story that the man himself isn’t hearing? It’s all on the table in this wide-ranging discussion of sex, secrets and celebrity.

Welcome to Sapphire Cove Summer! Christopher and Eric kick off a rollicking release party for SAPPHIRE DAWN, the new installment in Christopher’s steamy gay romance series. One of the most brash and controversial characters in the series is getting his very own happily ever after…courtesy of a premise from Eric Shaw Quinn himself. (Opposites attract planning a wedding anyone?) Your hosts also shower tons of love and attention on the gay romance novels they love, with special shout outs to bestselling authors K.J. Charles and Tal Bauer and others. SAPPHIRE DAWN is available June 25th for Kindle Unlimited subscribers and everywhere physical books are sold. Get ready for a month of sex, sand and summer.

Say the name Matthew Shepard to any queer person who lived through the 1990’s, or any person with an ounce of humanity, and they’re likely to get tears in their eyes. That’s the case with Christopher and Eric. As they serve up THE MATTHEW SHEPARD STORY: AN AMERICAN HATE CRIME on Discovery ID, their own memories of that painful time come bubbling to the surface, reinforcing their personal devotion to the concept of Pride Month, visibility and equality. It’s a searing comprehensive documentary about the horrific, headline-making murder that changed the nation’s understanding of what a hate crime is. But its final note is a controversial one. Are we losing the progress we’ve made or are we losing perspective on how much has been accomplished since Matthew’s terrible murder and beyond? Christopher and Eric share their thoughts.

Sometimes LGBT equality means the freedom to make the same crappy choices straight people do. Your hosts travel to the beautiful Ohio River Valley to meet an out and proud hairdresser turned coal mine foreman with questionable taste in men and home decor. In episode 8 of season 32 of venerable true crime classic DATELINE, entitled “Dangerous Secret”, the unflappable Dennis Murphy narrates this twisty, soapy tale of bedroom antics turned deadly. Meanwhile, Christopher and Eric play a speedy game of who can spot the guilty party the quickest. It’s usually Eric, but this time it might be a draw.

Pride Month continues as Christopher and Eric head to Texas for a True Crime TV Club installment that deepens their previous episode’s discussion of crime and hate in the Lone Star State. It turns out Paul Quintanilla was just one of many queer people who lost their lives to cable TV’s supercharging of bigoted televangelists in the 1990’s. In season 2, episode 3 of VANITY FAIR CONFIDENTIAL, entitled “The Killing Trail”, we follow a hateful and bloody path from the windswept beaches outside Corpus Christi to the public parks of Dallas. Along the way they encounter brave, dedicated activists who managed to effect change in one of the country’s most conservative states.

Christopher and Eric kick off Pride Month with a much anticipated return visit from their very own citizen detective, Clark Williams, the man who solved the Billy Newton murder. This time Clark sits down at our table to share the work he’s been doing on an eerily similar case brought to him by one of our beloved Party People. In June of 1994, 28-year-old Paul Quintanilla was discovered in an empty field within sight of the Dallas Cowboys training facility in Irving, Texas, hours after leaving a popular Dallas gay bar. His hideous wounds suggested a crime driven by hate and rage. Our conversation with Clark is a searing history lesson in the dangers queer men faced throughout Texas during the 1990’s and beyond.

Rain drops on roses and 2024 is almost half over. We will have no whiskers on kittens, but Christopher and Eric do have plenty of opinions about the pop culture highlights from the first part of the year – not a big surprise. More importantly, will their current crop of favorites still be in their top spots by the time 2025 rolls around? Even more importantly, will Christopher and Eric even remember they promised you they’d answer this question come December? Doubtful, but stay tuned. In the meantime, we’re left to wonder if Christopher will enjoy more than just the pricey pilot episode of a certain much ballyhooed new FX drama and if Eric will manage to watch anything that doesn’t include a murder mystery being solved in a British garden with a side of tea.

In the final chapter of Couples From Hell Month, Christopher and Eric take a trip to Paduka, Kentucky by way of Tampa, Florida thanks to a devious, underhanded and murderous, lonely hearts con artist who cruelly plots his way into a good woman’s heart with the help of his long lost “illegitimate stepson”. While they’re all about diversity and inclusion, your out and proud hosts see little to celebrate about the fact that Charles Chumbler and Michael Kariakis are one of the few same sex couples covered in the Oxygen series KILLER COUPLES. As they serve up episode 3 of season 17, entitled – you guessed it “Charles Chumbler and Michael Kariakis” – the legal system presents them with a morally ambiguous twist that tests the definition of bias, and Christopher and Eric’s tolerance for fairness in the eyes of the law. Keep your ears open for Eric’s NSFW litmus test for homophobic judicial misconduct!

Couples From Hell Month continues with Christopher and Eric’s outraged final serving of the last two episodes of KEN & BARBIE KILLERS: THE LOST MURDER TAPES on Max. Canada’s most hideous murder case turns into Canada’s trial of the century. (Don’t just take our word for it, check out the comments from our Canadian Party People!) The resulting media melee raises questions about the nation’s legal system in the process — questions that raise Christopher and Eric’s blood pressure as well. Just when you thought this story couldn’t get any worse, we’re greeted by a legal legerdemain from hell, evidence so distressing it sends spectators fleeing from the court room and obstruction of justice of the lowest and most pernicious sort. Eric rounds out the fiery discussion with an interrogation of everything that wasn’t covered in this otherwise exhaustive series. (Spoiler alert: Which wolves raised Paul Bernardo?)

It’s May. Here at TDPS, wedding bells are ringing and true crime victims are screaming. To pay their own special homage to this season of renewals and nuptials, your bitter old hosts Christopher and Eric kick off our exploration of Couples From Hell Month with Part 1 of a True Crime TV Club installment serving up KEN & BARBIE KILLERS: THE LOST MURDER TAPES on Max. Our tale of marriage and mayhem begins in the Toronto area in the early 90’s, where a sexual predator is stalking one of its most peaceful suburbs. As the evil spreads, the trail of clues leads to the doorstep of a charismatic and attractive young couple, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Is this a story of domestic abuse spiraling out of control? Or is there evil beyond imagining behind closed doors? Christopher and Eric’s discussion of episodes 1 and 2 ends with a shocking cliffhanger in this tangled investigation. In our next episode, they serve up the stunning conclusion of what many still describe as Canada’s trial of the century.

In which Christopher and Eric try to put Spring Broke back together again. Your hosts discuss the lighter side of the raucous, drunken, licentious holiday that occupies the worst nightmares of most parents. And it’s all thanks to you our beloved Party People. We asked you to share your warmest Spring Break memories on The Dinner Party Show’s Facebook page, and the result was a nostalgic discussion of coming of age, coming out and how we define family and home.

The only thing a true crime aficionado loves more than justice is when beloved Dateline host Keith Morrison calls BS on a lying criminal. To their face! You’ll get plenty of the later and some of the former in this Spring Broke installment of Christopher and Eric’s True Crime TV Club. Keith even asks the FBI some hard questions. In 2009, the disappearance of teenager Brittanee Drexel from a crowded Myrtle Beach sidewalk made headlines around the world. In episode 12 of season 31 of DATELINE, entitled “The Last Walk”, we travel the years of false leads, dramatic twists and outrageous lies that led from that rowdy Spring break evening to a jail cell in rural South Carolina and a confession that feels half-baked at best. Plenty of people failed to prevent this awful tragedy, and Christopher and Eric have plenty to say about all of them — but maybe not as much as Keith!

A fateful walk to the beach. A make-up case left behind. A serial killer who died before he could answer for his crimes. Following this trail of sandy clues, Spring Broke heads to the heart of Spring Break country — Daytona Beach, Florida — and travels back in time to 1984. Here Christopher and Eric unearth a decades old story of a vanished young woman, a mysteriously troubled mother and a tragically incompetent medical examiner as True Crime TV Club serves up DISAPPEARED, Season 4, Episode 9, entitled “Spring Break Nightmare”. What became of struggling high school student Colleen Orsborn on that long ago afternoon when she left her house in search of sun, sand and freedom? And why did it take so long to find out?

Welcome to Spring Broke, where adolescents make reckless decisions and your hosts are reminded why they don’t have kids. Because they’d be too afraid to let them out of the house! It’s not the first time Christopher and Eric have visited a small Texas town in search of a missing young man. Echoes of the Tom Brown story can be heard in this breathless installment of True Crime TV Club. Here your hosts serve up a two part episode of the Paramount + series NEVER SEEN AGAIN, Parts 1 and 2 covering the dramatic disappearance of 18-year-old Caleb Diehl. When the borrowed truck Caleb was driving suddenly reappears but the young man who was driving it doesn’t, the resulting investigation unearths a dark legacy of abuse and lies, shaking the tiny, dusty hamlet of Nocona, Texas down to its cattle ranching roots. Police might have the right man, but for what crime? More importantly, where is Caleb? The question remains unanswered, but Christopher and Eric have theories. And they’re not as pretty as the young man at the center of this disturbing case.

Christopher and Eric have done their fair share of snickering at famous paranormal hucksters. This time the joke’s on them. After visiting their respective hometowns, this final installment of Mortality Month pokes at the veil between the living and the dead in not-so-sunny Southern California, the place your hosts have called home for decades. In the process, they rustle up some genuinely terrifying entities. In episode 11 of season 2 of PARANORMAL WITNESS entitled “The Good Skeleton/Hollywood Haunting”, we’re transported to the night-dark hills beneath the Hollywood sign and the dusty and dangerous backgrounds of rural California. Your hosts are set back on their heels by these compelling and disturbingly believable accounts from real people who’ve brushed up against terrifying events they can’t fully explain. (Actually, Eric only believed about 40% of the second story, but you can’t win ‘em all.)

Mortality Month continues. After visiting the haunted happenings in Christopher’s birthplace, it’s time to rustle up some spirits in the Medieval German town in which Eric Shaw Quinn took his first breath — and barked out his first highly detailed tea order. Welcome to Heidelberg, Germany. Here your hosts are introduced to a band of high-strung ghost chasers for whom every breeze, shadow, snapping twig or leafless tree is the stuff of a complex and frightening supernatural narrative for which they present not a single shred of compelling evidence. In this episode of GHOST CHASERS, entitled “Heidelberg”, Eric decides the secret gay romance he’s dreamed up between two of the handsome ghost hunters is a far more interesting avenue of exploration than the team psychic’s ceaseless and absurd proclamations. It’s his birthday, so we’ll let him roll with it. Word to the wise — if you watch the episode on Tubi, it’s actually episode 6, not episode 7. Be advised we don’t recommend watching either.

Christopher likes to say he’s a man with two hometowns, and the City by The Bay is the first of the two. That’s why Eric suggested they serve up this special about Bay Area hauntings. Or was it Christopher who suggested it? One thing’s clear, after watching episodes 1 and 2 of THE HAUNTED BAY, neither host wants to take blame for bringing it to the table. Despite the profoundly amateurish filmmaking and incomprehensible interviews, these two episodes of — we’re not sure what to call it, exactly — left your hosts tackling some hard hitting questions. Can ghosts fry camera batteries? Was a nightclub employee who was crushed to death by a prop piano during an act of lovemaking the victim of a grisly accident or murder? You know, the important stuff that keeps everyone up at night.