The Sinner, Episode 3.1: Retired cop, sleazoid prof, and predatory chum, in Australia or New York. But at least we see Matt Bomer

 

I was recommended Season 3 of The Sinner, a crime drama anthology starring Bill Pullman as a cop drawn into different adventures every season.  I'm not much into crime dramas, but there are reputedly gay subtexts, so here goes: Episode 1.

Scene 1: Jamie (Matt Bomer) a guy in a scruffy suit, sits in a toilet stall, smoking marijuana. He walks through a ritzy private school, getting drooled over by all the coeds.  They need another chaperone for the LGBTQ  Alliance field trip.  "Sure, I'm happy to do it."  So he's bi?   

Then he teaches his class -- something about the Treaty of Versailles --in a small, crowded conference room.  Only female students?.  Is this a girls' school, or are we emphasizing that he's a hetero horndog?

After class, a girl hangs back to flirt while her friends glare jealously from the door.  Don't worry, you'll get your turn.  She's decided to apply to Brown, and she needs a letter of recommendation.  "Sure, you write it and I'll sign it."   Sleazing on co-eds, and now forgery?  This guy is a jerk.

Scene 2: The Big Boss congratulates elderly cop Harry (Bill Pullman, left) on his retirement, although his replacements, Soto (Eddie Martinez) and McCafferty, are awful.  They have verve and energy, but no experience. 

Scene 3: A train chugging by a river.  Inside, Jamie the Sleazoid Prof is staring angrily at the other passengers as they scroll through their cell phones.  He gets off and chases after one, a bald guy in a business suit.

Meanwhile, Harry the Retired Cop, at the same station, greets his daughter and grandson: "Welcome to the Northern Territory." So this must be Darwin, Australia.  They drive to the creepy, isolated house that he bought to retire in -- a former army barracks.  Daughter disapproves -- what if he need help? Cell phones don't even work out here.  "I can get bars in the front yard." 

She also disapproves of her son's interest in reading.  "That's all he does.  He's got no friends."  Especially that one fantasy novel -- he won't put it down. Plot dump: she's recently divorced, and ex Andy has vanished to London.

Scene 4: Jamie the Sleazoid Prof is barbecuing, while his wife Leela complains about the customers in her shop.   Wait -- what happened to the guy he was chasing?  I thought he'd end up dead.  Suddenly Jamie has the urge to stick his hand onto the barbecue grill, but Wifey interrupts him.  They smooch.  .

Doorbell rings: Amazon Delivery.  Jamie is shocked and horrified. "What are you doing here?  I told you not to come here." So he prefers brick-and-mortar bookstores?  

Nope, the Amazon stuff was a misdirection.  It's actually Nick (Chris Messina), whom Jamie knows but hates.  Maybe a downlow hookup?  They argue and sputter at each other, but when Leela shows up, Nick is all smiles, and gets a dinner invitation.

Scene 5: Jamie the Sleazoid Prof and Hookup Nick glaring at each other across the dinner table, while Leela drones on about her shop. I don't really understand what she sells, but there are candles and  "essential oils"  Nick criticizes Jamie for forcing his wife to move to Australia, when she wanted to stay in Brooklyn. He makes more ominous, threatening statements, but Leela is oblivious. Not very smart for someone named after a space pilot on "Futurama."  

Scene 6: Night.  Harry the Retired Cop is asleep on the couch.  He gets a phone call. Hey, no cell phone reception in the house, remember?  There was an accident off Route 9, so he has to go investigate.  Hey, retired, remember?

And now he's driving on the right side of the road.  This can't be Australia!  But the only Northern Territory I'm familiar with is in Australia.  There's a Northwest Territory in Canada, but I don't think Yellowknife has that huge train station.  Maybe he was riffing on the remoteness of his community, and expected viewers to have the sound on, so they could hear the accents. 

Accident scene: The driver crashed into a tree. "He's ok -- at St. Emilia's getting checked out."  But he got splattered all over the car.  WTF?  Lady, you just said he was ok! Are we watching events in parallel worlds simultaneously?

What was the driver doing on private road that leads to just one house, where the owner wasn't expecting him?  The cops scratch their heads, baffled by this mystery. Harry checks out the driver -- it's Hookup Nick!

Scene 7:  The other "he," the one that's ok, is Jamie the Sleazoid Prof.  He sits on an examination table, looking sinister, staring at his hands.  

Scene 8: Retired Cop Harry works while his replacement, Soto, glares at him.  He calls a lady to tell her that the cops have some of her father's stuff.  Does she want it?  "No. Ok, I'll give you my home address."  Now he says he's in Dorchester, New York 11332.  The zip code is Flushing, Queens.  I was not aware that Queens was called the Northern Territory.  So when Nick got angry because Jamie forced his wife to move to the other side of the world, he meant ten minutes by subway? 

Jamie the Sleazoid Prof comes in for the insurance interview. After dinner, they went out for a drink at Nick's hotel. On the way back, Nick was driving too fast, and crashed  No big mystery.

"But where were you going?  You were nowhere near your house or his hotel. "Um...um...we were looking for an overlook, and got lost."  An overlook in the middle of the night?

Gay subtext: "I saw Nick die.  It was like seeing him for the first time.  The way he looked at me..."  This makes Harry suspicious.  So what if Nick and Jamie were boyfriends?  How would that affect the case?

More Bomer after the break

Revisiting Brideshead Revisited: Does the groundbreaking portrayal of (temporary) gay love hold up after 40 years? With bonus dicks.

January 18th, 1982, a Monday night, the second week of classes in the spring semester of my senior year.  I'm lying on the bed in the attic room my brother and I share, reading a book for my Advanced Spanish class.  Significantly it's Ciro Alegria's El mundo es ancho y ajeno: Broad and Alien is the World.  

I always watch tv while studying.  Tonight the only options are two boring movies, MASH (doctors during the Korean War), and something called Brideshead Revisited on PBS.  It turns out to be an adaption of the Evelyn Waugh novel about 1920s Oxford undergrad Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) falling in love with the flamboyant, decadent, teddy bear-toting, alcoholic Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews).  

They run away to Venice together. They go slumming in Soho, along with Sebastian's sister Julia.  Then Ryder begins a romantic entanglement with Julia, and the outraged Sebastian dumps him and runs off to Morocco. 

 Later Sebastian hooks up with a sleazy German guy named Kurt (Jonathan Coy), and later still he dies.  Ryder can't marry Julia because she's Catholic and he's an atheist, so they just live together.  Later he becomes Catholic.

I'm mesmerized.  In 1982, surrounded by the hetero-horniness of workplace sitcoms, my parents demanding "What girl do you like?", and the preacher at church bellowing about homa-sekshuls, just seeing two men involved in a romance is a revelation.  Sure, no one says "gay," Ryder turns straight, and Sebastian dies, but they walk arm in arm, cuddle, even go nude sunbathing!  And everyone around knows! Even Sebastian's mother.  Even Julia, who tells Ryder that "all our loves are hints and signals," leading us to God.  A same-sex romance leads us to God?  Hear that, Preacher?

40 years have passed.  I've studied a lot of LGBT history and literature, and watched a lot of gay movies, published a lot of books and articles on queering fictional texts, and recently I decided to revisit Brideshead Revisted.

You can't go home again.  Rewatching today, I strongly dislike Brideshead.  Sebastian is a decadent, flamboyant stereotype who ends up dead.  Ryder may fall in love with him, but then he moves on to Julia.  Evelyn Waugh, like Freud, believed that gayness is a phase -- adolescents, newly potent but forbidden access to the opposite sex, turn to each other.  Their brief period of quasi-romance ends when they move on to "mature" heterosexual love.

In 2008, the BBC aired a new version of Brideshead, with Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Sebastian.  This time there's no subtext: Sebastian is gay.  But there's also no romance: Ryder is heterosexual but pretending to be interested in Sebastian to gain access to his vast wealth.

 It's more honest -- and there's a lot more nudity -- but nothing can match the joy of seeing same-sex romance on screen for the very first time.

Bonus dicks 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 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