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 Howle, Dick #1

Scene 4: While they book and strip Allen, 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

Northern Exposure, Episode 1.2: Progressive homophobia, three guys in a sauna, and much ado about a toilet.

 

With new content still limited by the writers' and actors' strikes, we're watching old shows that we missed back in the day, like Northern Exposure (1990-95), about a young doctor forced to relocate from New York City to Cecily, Alaska, population 814.  It received 39 Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes, but I never watched back then because I figured it was just another "disease of the week" drama, and because of the opening: an ear-grating harmonica plays while a baby moose ambles down Main Street.

Three episodes in, and it turns out I was correct: it's a "disease of the week" drama with laconic jokes. Trigger warning: the first three episodes feature gunshot wounds,  cancer, death, and suicide.  And two different old guys who refuse to follow the doctor's instructions because they've always been independent.  The jokes are mostly of the "this town is so small!" and "it's so isolated!" sort.  

Joel (Rob Morrow, left) thought he was being sent to Anchorage, and  complains bitterly about being tricked into moving to a "hellhole" where you have to chop your own firewood and no one has ever heard of a bagel.  He does this in front of townsfolk, but it's ok, many of them are refugees from the Lower 48. Some came to escape from big cities, and some came for a visit and got stuck.  It's like "Hotel California": you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Episode 2 does something unheard of in 1990, in the heart of the AIDS pandemic and homophobic backlash: it mentioned LGBT people! Actually, 18 tv episodes in 1990 featured gay characters, but they were usually AIDS patients, murderers, or making a pass at a straight person. This episode was praised for its "progressive, gay-positive" message. Let's see how well it holds up in 2024.

Plot 1 features Ed (Darren E. Burroughs), an Indian youth, who is trying to be Joels' best friend, even though Joel treats him with unabashed contempt (but Joel treats everyone in town with unabaslhed contempt, so how could he tell?)..  His problem: Uncle Anku has blood in his urine, but refuses to see a Western doctor. He was a medicine man for 40 years; he believes in traditional Indian medicine.  

 Ed invites Joel over for dinner (KFC, flown in from Anchorage) and a sauna, hoping that he can convince Uncle Anku to get an examination.  Nope.  Joel visits several more times -- maybe he just likes being half-naked in the sauna with other guys?  Still no.  Finally he lays down the law: come in for an examination, or no more visits.  Psych!  Uncle Anku has seen a specialist in Anchorage!  Why keep it a secret, and put Joel and your family through so much anxiety?

This plotline has some gay subtexs.  Ed's interest in Joel seems more profound than "I'm lonely, and need a friend."

Plot 2: features Joel's toilet.  It doesn't work, but his landlord/love interest Maggie is still in the "I hate you!  You're arrogant!" stage, and refuses to fix it because what idiot doesn't know how to fix a toilet?  Oh yeah, prissy, elite, entitled, arrogant, sexy...um I mean arrogant New York snobs.  Joel tries to hire someone, reads a book on plumbing, and so on.  Eventually Maggie gives in.  Tenant law: you have to provide a working toilet. 

Plot 3: Chris in the Morning (John Corbett, left), the radio DJ, tells us that when he was 15, he broke into a house intending to steal stuff, and found a book that changed his life: Walt Whitman's poetry.  Later, in juvenile hall, a guard beat him up for reading it, yelling that "unnatural, pornographic, homoerotic poetry" was forbidden. Chris hadn't realized that Whitman "enjoyed the pleasures of other men," and had to rethink his habit of beating up "queers."

Minnefield (Barry Corbin), who literally owns the town, hears the broadcast, and is irate. Making disgusting accusations about America's greatest poet!  He throws Chris through a plate glass window and fires him. Hey, that's criminal assault!.  He takes over the morning radio himself, and devotes it to "normal" music, like the soundtrack to Kiss Me, Kate (hey, Cole Porter was gay!).  Then Oklahoma! and Carousel.  The townspeople hate it; they prefer Chris's philosophical musings.  So the macho, homophobic guy likes gay-coded show tunes, har har.

Interestingly, a review of the episode calls Barry Corbin a "Broadway Superstar," but I can't find him listed in anything but Henry V.

At a town meeting to complain about the new radio format, Minnefield stands his ground: "Chris made a mistake, and he has to pay for it.  A breach is a breach." Seriously, why doesn't anyone call Minnefield out on his homophobia?  Do they all agree that it's wrong to mention gay people on the radio?  They demand that Chris be re-hired.  Nope!

After consulting with Joel, Minnefield gets back on the radio to explain.  "Whitman was a pervert, but he was the greatest poet America ever produced," and we shouldn't try to destroy him.  He mentions several other American heroes with personality faults: alcoholic, gambler, crossdresser...but we aren't allowed to discuss the terrible things they did.  We need to concentrate on the positive.  We need heroes.   "If Whitman were standing here today, and someone called him a fruit or a queer, that person would have to answer to me." So you're saying that it's ok to know that he was gay, but not to disrespect him by aying that he was gay?  

This, by the way, is a heartfelt speech, telling the audience what they should take away from the episode: being gay is horrible, but we should ignore it, because "we need heroes."   From the vantage point of 2024, it seems incredibly homophobic, but in 1990 it was a plea for tolerance.

Chris in the Morning apologizes. He didn't mean to defame Walt Whitman, but now he understands that it was wrong to mention that he was gay.  He gets his job back.

And the town library/general store has a run on requests for Walt Whitman's poetry.  

Beefcake: Joel, Ed, and Uncle Anku in the sauna.  Joel in the shower.

Gay Characters: Of course not, although in a few years, the town will host the second gay wedding on network television.

Homophobia:  Everyone seems to agree that calling someone gay is a defamation.  Even Joel the New Yorker.

My Grade: Even taking into account its historic context, this was a very difficult episode to watch.  And that grating harmonica solo opening!  D.

Above: Rob Morrow's butt in Private Resort. Left; Grant Goodeve, who plays Maggie's boyfriend (before she dumps him).

Set in the same time period:

The Feast of the Seven Fishes: all the tropes I hate, but I still liked it.

Wet Hot American Summer: Skyler in a satyr costume, gaslit gay guys, and how to use your penis

"Solar Opposites": Do Korvo and Terry act like a married couple? Do they call each other 'husbands?' Do they have sex?

Solar Opposites (2020-) is a Hulu animated series about two aliens, their replicants, and their pupa,  who flee from their doomed planet and crash-land on Earth.  During Season 1, showrunner Justin Roiland addressed the question of whether male adults Korvo (Justin Roiland, Dan Stevens) and Terry (Thomas Middleditch, left) were a gay couple.  He said that since their species practices asexual reproduction, they don't have sex, and therefore they can't be gay.  Jerk, thinking that being gay is purely about sex.  What about romantic partnerships? 

Apparently he changed his mind.  The fan wiki states that Korvo and Terry became a romantic couple between Seasons 1 and 2.  But how romantic are they?  Do they say anything?  Do anything?  Or do you have to just infer from gay subtexts? To check, I reviewed some episodes, either because the premise sounded interesting or because there was a hot guest star.

Episode 2.1: The Solar Opposites discover another refugee group from their home planet, living in London!  But it turns out that they have a disturbing hidden agenda.  No indication that Korvo and Terry are romantic partners.  With the voice of Thomas Lennon, the grotesque gay-stereotype cop in Reno 911 (left: his butt)

Episode 2.2: Korvo hates dinner parties, so he declares them illegal and starts a police force to seek out forbidden dinner party paraphernalia.  Things turn deadly: people are turned into wine.  During the denouement, Korvo and Terry kiss.

Episode 2,3: Yumyulack, the "teenage boy" replicant, invents a ray that gives him a huge penis -- not for sex, for the power that goes with it.  He makes it bigger and bigger, until it threatens to destroy the world.  No indication that Korvo and Terry are a romantic couple.

Episode 3.2  Korvo wants to take up a hobby, but everything he tries, Terry is already doing, and doing better.  In frustration, he goes into a toy train shop.  The manager thinks that he's just pretending to be interested in trains to beat his "alien husband."

Episode 3.3 Terry shows Korvo the joy of standing in line, and introduces him to his "line husband," Linus (Adam Pally).  Line husband and regular husband jealously snipe at each other, until Korvo finally wins Terry's heart. (Left: Dan Stevens' butt)

Alien bulge and dick after the break