David Boreanaz and Friends: A tortured vampire, a fundamentalist FBI agent, a homophobic ghost, and a porn video

 Born in Buffalo in May 1969, David Boreanaz graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in cinema in 1991 and moved to L.A. to start his film career. Instead, he found his way onto Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-99).

Buffy Summers is The Slayer, the "one girl in all the world" with the power to kill the vampires, demons, and other evils who keep escaping from the hellmouth located in suburban Sunnydale, California, while trying to negotiate high school. 

Her scoobies include science nerd Xander (Nicholas Brendan, left); his girlfriend, a 1000-year old vengeance demon;  witch-in-training and eventual lesbian Willow; and  Willow's doomed, bury-your-gays girlfriend.

Not a lot of beefcake in the bunch, but the writers took care of that by giving Buffy lots of boyfriends, including two feuding vampires, the conflicted, tortured Angel (David Boreanaz, top photo), and the sassy punk rocker Spike (James Marsters).  

Literally tortured.  The writers kept trying to out-do themselves in thinking of creative ways to torture Angel.

I liked some of the adventures, such as when everyone in town had to sing instead of speak, or when grinning men who fed on fear started floating around.  And Buffy gave us two indispensable terms for analyzing tv shows, scoobies and Big Bad.  

The attitude toward LGBT people was a bit old fashioned.  Xander, upset because a lady demon rejected him, announces that he's going to go gay. Willow explicitly states that she was straight, but changed to gay.  Their handler shuts them all down, proclaiming that there's no time to worry about "orientations" when they're facing the most severe crisis of all time (every season).

In 1999  Angel left Sunnyvale, except for a few guest appearances, to start his own paranormal detective agency, in Angel (1999-2004).  His scoobies included Cordelia, a reformed high school Mean Girl; the half-demon Doyle (Glen Quinn),  and Wesley (Alexis Denisof, left), a "rogue demon hunter" -- at least in the first season.  Glen Quinn died, and there were many defections and replacements, doubtless because this was not a fun, tongue-in-cheek paranormal adventure.  

I had to keep watching due to a partner who was a big fan, but it got very, very dark.  Sure, Cordelia used to be a Mean Girl, but did that justify putting her through excruciating physical pain in every episode?  I insisted that he fast-forward past  the scene where Wesley's girlfriend spends five minutes dying, in the awareness that she has no soul, so she's headed for extinction. This is supposed to be entertainment?  F*k the Sadness. 

After Angel, David finally managed to break into movies.  I didn't see any of them, and probably won't.  These Girls (2005): high school girls blackmail a "slightly older hunk," who happens to be married, into having sex with them?  In 2005, David was 36.  But at least he gives us frontal and rear nudity.

Explicit David dick after the break

Under the Banner of Heaven: Murder and crisis of faith in a fundamentalist Mormon familiy with five brothers (and five dicks)

 Under the Banner of Heaven, a Hulu series about corruption in the LDS Church, was written and produced by Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, so there's bound to be some gay characters or subtexts.  Besides, who isn't interested in cute Mormon missionaries?  

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Salt Lake City.  Jeb (Andrew Garfield), a super clean-cut nuclear family Dad, is listening to "Let's Hear it for the Boy."  A gay anthem!  So the protagonist is gay?   His preteen daughters, who wear long pioneer dresses, ask him to do loving-father activities, like lasso them.  Wife, who wears a modern t-shirt and cut-off jeans, calls him to the phone.  He has to go to work, so everyone has to do the evening prayers early.

We hear all the prayers: for the Mormon missionaries (how about a visual?), for Church President Kimball, for Grandpa in heaven, and for an Easy-Bake Oven.  "Let's Hear it for the Boy" came out in 1982, and Spencer Kimball died in 1985, 

Scene 2: Continuing to pray, Jeb the Cop puts the siren on his car and heads to a house surrounded by yellow tape and police cars.  Inside: the tv on, bloody footprints, scattered toys, a dead lady, and something in a basinet that makes him say "Evil."  The dead lady's murder was not evil?    He goes out to the yard and arrests the bloody young man who happens to be walking around.

Scene 3:  At the police station, Jeb the Cop and his Gentile (Non-Mormon) Partner do the good cop-bad cop routine on the blood-splattered suspect, Allen Lafferty (Billy Howle), who happens to belong to one of the most important familiies of the Church.  He claims that for the last year, "peculiar men" dressed like Mormon prophets have been stalking his family, so no doubt they did it.  They are probably after his brothers and their wives and kids, too.

Left: Billie Howie, Dick #1

Scene 4: While they book and strip Allen (Billie Howey), Jeb watches, flashing back to someone he saw at church (was this a flash of same-sex attraction?).  They send a squad car out to check on the only brother whose address Allen knows: the others all moved to hide from the humiliation of having a brother who left the Church.

Scene 5: Jeb is too disgusted to continue the interrogation, so his Gentile Partner continues alone.  Stunt casting: he's played by Gil Birmingham, a bodybuilder who appeared in Diana Ross's music video "Muscles" in 1982.

Allen: if you want to know who did, check out the Mormon saints.  

Flashback to his future wife Brenda winning runner-up in the Miss Twin Falls, Idaho contest in 1980, then going to Brigham Young University, to stay away from the "Democrats and crazies," and studying broadcast journalism.  She meets Allen at church.  

Back at the interrogation, Allen blames the Church on his wife's death: "My only regret is that I didn't drive her out of Zion (Salt Lake City) to protect her from our people."  

Scene 6:  Jeb the Cop continues to ruminate about how evil Allen is, to do that to a baby (and an adult?).  They're still having trouble tracking down the addresses of his brothers and their wives/kids, so Jeb calls his wife -- they went to church with the Lafferty family, so maybe she has some of the brothers' addresses.  

He returns to the interrogation: Jeb: "So, you despicable monster, was there anyone besides you who hated Brenda enough to do it?"  Allen:  Everyone hated her because she was so perfect."  Yeah, I heard that a lot in high school.

Scene 7: Flashback to Allen introducing Brenda to the family at a picnic. "Just don't say much," he warns. Patriarch Ammon (Christopher Heyerdahl, Dick #2) wants to know why she abandoned Twin Falls, Idaho for the evil Big City (Provo, Utah?).  There are an endless number of boisterous brothers, Stepford wives, and staring kids to meet. 

More Lafferty boys after the break