Jansen Panettiere: Gay-positive actor buddies with Jake T. Austin, stars in fundamentalist and "Girl of His Dreams" movies

Teenagers often find themselves pushed into heterosexist vehicles, regardless of whether they support gay inclusitivity or not. Jansen Panettiere is no exception.

The younger brother of female star Hayden Panettiere, Jansen was born in Palisades, New York in 1994, began securing guest roles on tv in 2002, at the age of eight.  He also did voice work on cartoons and appeared with his sister in the thriller Tiger Cruise (2004).

His first star vehicle was the Nickelodeon movie The Last Day of Summer (2007), in which the 12-year old Luke (Jansen) relives the same day over and over, and uses it to win the girl of his dreams.  Yawn.

At least he took his shirt off, in case any gay preteens in the audience weren't too upset by the heterosexism to look.

After the fundamentalist Secrets of Jonathan Sperry (2008), Jansen starred in The Perfect Game (2009), about a group of Mexican boys who become the first non-U.S. team to win the Little League World Series.  It's an underdog-triumphing film, with nearly every Hispanic child actor in the business, including Moises Arias (Hannah Montana), Jake T. Austin (Wizards of Waverly Place), Ryan Ochoa, Gabriel Morales, and Carlos Padilla.

No girls around, and Jansen became best friends with the gay-friendly Jake T. Austin. They uploaded a youtube video called "The Closet Chronicles," which doesn't appear to be about the gay metaphor.

Next came 8, a 2012 movie version of the play about the fight to repeal Proposition 8, the amendment that banned gay marriage in California. Many actors, gay and allied, appeared, including Kevin Bacon, Matt Bomer, George Clooney, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Brat Pitt, Martin Sheen, and George Takei.

More after the break

The Testament of Ann Lee: The origin of the Shakers, with a female Christ, energetic dancing, gay guys, and a lot of n*de men

Link to the n*de men

In high school I read Escape to Utopia by Everett Webber, about Icaria, New Harmony, and the many other attempts to create a perfect society that sprang up in 19th century America. They were usually founded by a reincarnated Jesus Christ, or God himself (or herself).  Most were communal, s*xually adventurous, and, at least according to Webber, wacky.

The Koreshans believed that "we live inside," on the concave surface of the cosmic egg, even after the Messiah Cyrus Teed failed to come back to life three days after his passing.

Thomas Lake Harris and the Brotherhood of the New Life worshipped Lady Pink Ears, queen of the rabbit fairies.

The Shakers practiced a radical separation of the men and women (they could never touch each other) and regulated everything (climb out of bed on the left side, with your right foot hitting the floor first).  Their energetic dance-worship drew the attention of many ghosts, iincluding Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who chatted with them and recited poetry.

Could we go back to the "never touch a woman" rule?  

I read more about the Shakers later, and visited one of the restored Shaker Villages, Sabbathday Lake in Maine.  And last night I saw The Testament of Ann Lee (2025), a sort of musical biopic about the founder of the Shakers.

Yes, it has gay interest.

Ann Lee was born in Manchester, England in 1735, and went to work in the cotton factory when she was five years old.  She had seven siblings, but she was only close to her younger brother William, who followed her everywhere.

She longed to be close to God, but didn't know how.  The rituals in the Anglican Church were meaningless.  Women were not permitted to learn to read, so she couldn't consult the Bible.  All she knew was that a barrier of some sort kept her broken, unable to experience Divine Love.

One night Ann saw her father (Willem van der Vegt) engaging in marital relations with her mother.Points for showing all of Dad's body and none of the wife's..   

 It was a sordid, bestial act; she imagined the Serpent tempting Adam in the Garden of Eden.  The next morning, when Ann called him out on his sin, he beat her.  

Years passed, and  the young adult Ann took a job as a cook in an infirmary, where she was overwhelmed by human suffering.  But she also heard about the Shaking Quakers or Shakers, a radical group that believed that God was male and female, so men and women had equal access to the Divine. 

One night she and her brother William attended a meeting.  The Shakers trembled uncontrollably as they confessed their sins to the group, and then as they were overwhelmed by the joy of God's forgiveness.  They also performed energetic, intricately-choreographed dances.  I imagine that these were not historically accurate, but they are worth the admission price.

Ann and William had found a home.

  

 She married a fellow Shaker, the blacksmith Abraham (Christopher Abbott, top photo), but was disgusted when he insisted on performing the same sordid, bestial act that she saw her father performing years ago.  

One of his apprentices loaned him a book about b*ndage and s*x games.  Maybe adding pain to the act would make it a sort of penance and ease her disgust?  But she didn't enjoy the n*de spanking.  

Ann bore four children, but they all passed away in infancy.  This proved that the act could never be holy.  

More after the break

"John from Cincinnati", Part 2: Surfing Has Nothing to Do With It

Having binge watched all 8 episodes of John in Cincinnati in 2 days, I can report the following:

1. "Three generations of surfing champions find their lives turned upside down by a mysterious visitor."  Wrong!  The surfing is completely irrelevant.  They might as well have been family of taxidermists.

2. The mysterious visitor, who they call John from Cincinnati because he never tells them his name (Austin Nichols), latches on to Butchie (Brian Van Holt), the black-sheep son of the surfing family.  I thought that they were a romantic couple because Butchie sees him and immediately wants to be part of his life forever (and they hold hands).   But it's more like a religious conversion.  After their life-changing day together, Butchie gets off drugs and reconciles with his father and son, and John moves on to redeem more people (but of course they stay friends forever).

He performs some miracles, like curing the teenage Shaun's broken neck, but mostly he hangs out with you, smiling and repeating back what you have said, tinging it with cryptic but life-changing significance:

"Get back in the game"
"What do you want?"
"See God"

 Someone suggests that "When you repeat my words, I can hear the voice of your Father." 

John: "Hear the voice of my Father."  

Get it?  Well, he said he was coming back.

Among the publicans and sinners who get transformed through John smiling at them: 

Ramon (Luis Guzman, center), who runs the fleabag motel, starts to cook

Dickstein (Willie Garson, left), the sleazy corporate lawyer, quits his job, dumps his fiance, and joins the motel gang.  Ramon and Dickstein remain a gay subtext couple.

Barry Cunningham (Matt Winston, right), the teddy-bear lugging gay guy who is tormented by the physical and sexual assault in his past, joins the motel gang.

Kai (Keala Kennelly) starts to write again

Drug dealer Steady Freddie (Dayton Callie, right) cleans up , moves into the hotel and helps with the renovation.

His sidekick Polacka (Paul Ben Victor, left) moves in with him.  Gay-subtext couple.

Dr. Smith (Garret Dillahunt), a doctor who saw grandson Shaun cured of a broken neck, joins the motel gang and starts dating Barry.  Canonical gay couple.

Beefcake: An occasional shirt off.  Most of the actors are unattractive, anyway.

Heterosexual romance; Almost none. Butchie reconciles with the estranged mother of his son, estranged Grandma and Grandpa Surfers reconcile.  Some minor kissing, no sex. Grandson Shaun is 14,but displays no interest in girls.

Gay characters/subtexts:  All over the place.

My grade: A-.

See also: John from Cincinnati: Surfing Great Gets a New Boyfriend

Willie Aames: Charles in Charge's Buddy shows his willie, becomes Bibleman and a platinum-selling author

 

Link to the n*de photos

According to his IMBD biography, Willie Aaames is an award winning, Platinum-selling writer and producer/director and a 6-star cruise ship director. How does a book go platinum? But he's best known for showing the world his d*ck

He started appearing on screen at the age of 11, with guest spots in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Odd Couple, Adam's Rib, Adam-12, and The Waltons.

A starring role in Swiss Family Robinson (1975-76), which adds paranormal peril to the ill-fated island.

120 episodes of the sappy drama Eight is Enough (1977-81), as Tommy Bradford, the second-to-youngest son,  whose shtick was being absurdly amorous, sneaking into the girls' locker room and so on, until he got his girlfriend pregnant and married her.

This led to the dreadful Zapped! (1982), with the nerd Barney (Scott Baio) getting telekinetic powers, and apparently using them to look up girls' skirts.  Willie played his best friend.

And Charles in Charge (1982-90), as Buddy, the bodybuilding best buddy of the college student turned male nanny.  His scene consisted of "Charles!  There's this party tonight, with GIRLS!!!  We can meet GIRLS!!!,", and Charles responding, "I can't go, I have to stay home and watch these two teenage girls, one of whom is my age, so why she needs a nanny is beyond me."

And Paradise (1982), a knockoff of Blue Lagoon, with none of the scintillating dialogue or intriguing plot (ok, I'm joking.  Blue Lagoon didn't have those things, either.)

But you did get to see Willie's willie, and his bare backside.

More after the break.

Chaim Potok: The Gay Jewish Romeo and Juliet

During my junior year in high school, our English teacher assigned My Name is Asher Lev (1972), the novel by Chaim Potok about a Hasidic Jewish boy torn between his artistic talent and his extremely conservative religious heritage.

I could relate: I was being torn between my artistic interests and my extremely conservative religious heritage (no theater, no movies, no science fiction, no rock music, no nothing but church and the Bible).

And I didn't miss the fact that Asher Lev displays no heterosexual interests.  He does, however, become the apprentice of established artist Jacob Kahn, who teaches him about life and love, an interesting parallel to the "coming of age" movies that pair a young boy with an older woman.

I quickly sought out Chaim Potok's other works.  The Chosen (1967) is also about culture clash, but this time it's the Orthodox Reuven bonding with the Hasidic Danny (played by Robby Benson in the 1981 movie).  The novel follows them from their initial meeting at a baseball game (where Danny's pitch hits Reuven in the eye).

They remain partners to college, where Reuven's Zionism angers Danny's father, Rabbi Saunders (Hasidic Jews believe that establishing a secular state in Israel is blasphemous). He forbids Danny from speaking to Reuven again.

Danny complies, but the loss of his life-long friend has a devastating effect.  After years of anger, depression, and pain, Rabbi Saunders relents, and the two joyfully reconcile.

I finished the novel, speechless.  An amazing, touching Romeo and Juliet story!

(Robby Benson isn't shirtless in the movie, but it's impossible to write about him without at least one shirtless photo.)

How did a conservative Jewish writer manage to create two touching portraits of same-sex romance?

Certainly not by design.  But maybe the gender-stratified world of Hasidic Judaism, where men rarely interact with women outside their families, left a space free of the  heterosexist shouts of "Look at the girls!  Aren't girls great! Aren't you glad that you are attracted to girls, like every other boy in the world?"  When heterosexism stops yelling, gay voices can be heard.

See also: Nick Arapoglou: A Hasidic boy, a straight drag queen, a gay Muppet, Adult Toy Teen's Dad. With his backside and a n*de Chris Evans

Lanigan's Rabbi

 I didn't meet anyone who was Jewish until my junior year in high school, when a rabbi's son named Aaron was in my English class.  He was lean and wiry, with thick black hair and expressive hands, with a preference for lumberjack shirts and a sky-blue yarmulke. He was always surrounded by a crowd of girls who knitted him sweaters and baked him cookies and sighed a lot, but occasionally I managed to push through the crowd to ask him a few questions about kosher laws or Hebrew School or his bar mitzvah, anything I could think of to keep his attention.

At the same time, our English teacher assigned Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev and I read on my own his gay Jewish Romeo-and-Juliet story, The Chosen.

So I must have been very receptive during the spring of 1977, when two tv series with homoerotic Jewish subtexts appeared, Busting Loose and Lanigan's Rabbi.


On Sunday nights, NBC had a recurring series, The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, with an alternating series of detectives.  My friends and I weren't impressed.  We called McCloud McClod, and Colombo Clod-Dumb-Bo.  But Lanigan's Rabbi became must-see tv, "good beyond hope."

Lanigan (Art Carney, right) was police chief in a small town in California. When he investigated a murder in a synagogue, he had to collaborate with Rabbi Small (Bruce Solomon, left), whose keen mind, trained in Talmudic scholarship, figured out whodunit.  They continued to be thrown into mysteries for three more episodes, with corpses including guest of honor at a Man of the Year celebration, a miserly millionaire, and the guy who accused Lanigan of malpractice.

The stories were by-the-books stuff, not very interesting.
Bruce Solomon, who also played a cop on Mary Hartman, was very attractive, but his shirt never came off.
Art Carney was 58, too old to be of interest.
 And they both had wives.

What was the gay angle?

It was about two men from different worlds finding common ground, mutual admiration, and finally a deeply intimate bond.  Why did the Rabbi keep tagging along on Lanigan's investigations?  Was it the joy of sleuthing?  Or were they in love?

Bobby Edner: gay-positive child star grows up, joins a boy band, posts beefcake photos

In the short film The Seventh Sense (2001), a boy named Kyle (Bobby Edner) develops the mystical ability to see gay people.  The only problem is, they don't know they're gay.  With the help of benevolent psychiatrist, he puts his ability to good use, helping people to see themselves as they really are.

 

Bobby Edner was one of the most popular child stars of the 1990s, playing everything from the young Zack on Saved by the Bell to the "Can I touch your boobs" kid on Ellen, not to mention innumerable victims of child abuse, stranger danger, and incurable diseases.  

He appeared in commercials for Backyard Sports, Home Depot, Taco Bell, KFC, State Farm Insurance, and Fruit Roll-Ups.

He was most famous for The Day the World Ended (2001), about a boy who believes that his father, Randy Quaid, was taken over by an alien and killed his mother.  No one believes him, but it turns out he was right.

And Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003), as Francis, one of the testers of a real-life video game (along with Ryan Pinkston and Daryl Sabara).

In adolescence Bobby only a few screen roles, notably in Welcome to the Paradise (2007), as the son of a  female preacher (gasp!).  

And he voiced Vaan in several Final Fantasy video games.

More after the break

The top 15 hunks of the "Twilight Saga," with some n*de vampires and werewolves

Link to the n*de vampires and werewolves

Twilight, a series of four young adult paranormal fantasy novels by Stephanie Meyer, was published between between 2005 and 2008, with sequels in 2015 and 2020. They have been translated into 49 languages, with worldwide sales of 140 million.  The movie series, which appeared between 2008 and 2012, grossed $3.36 billion worldwide.

The premise: teenager Bella moves to Forks, Washington with her parents, and falls in love with the vampire Edward.  When he leaves town, she falls in love with the werewolf Jacob.  Eventually she has to choose between them: she chooses Edward, and they get married and have a daughter. 

There were lots of sexy, tortured bad-boy vampires before, on Dark Shadows and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the novels of Anne Rice, but never whole tribes of them.  And uber-muscular, macho vampires, not sophisticates and androgynes.  Perfect for erasing the gay symbolism from the vampire mythos and producing a totally gay-free world.

And it is.  There are dozens of vampire, werewolf, and human characters, but not a single gay one, in the books or any of the movies.

Are you really surprised?  The series is aimed at an audience of teens, who are never allowed to know that gay people exist.  It's fantasy, and gay people appear almost exclusively in comedies set in the real world.   Kristen Stewart, the actress who played Bella, claimed that the series had a "gay inclination...it's all about oppression."  

Big deal.  This was in 2012, not 1965.

But that doesn't mean that gay teen boys must be content to watch actors looking sullen with their shirts off.  There are always subtexts, either intentional or accidental, especially among the gay or gay-friendly members of the cast: 

The Vampires:

1. Robert Pattinson, left, as head vampire Edward.

2. Peter Facinelli as Carlisle, his Dad.

3. Kellan Lutz, left, as Emmett, his brother.

4. Jackson Rathbone as Jasper, his younger brother.

5-6. Christopher Heyerdale and Cameron Bright as Marcus, leader of the Volturi vampires, who have lived in Italy since Etruscan times.

7. Xavier Samuel as Riley, companion of the evil vampire Victoria, who is trying to kill Bella.

More after the break

Reefer Madness: marijuana hysteria, demonic bulges, a dinner date with Satan, and Christian Campbell's cock

I've shown many classes the 1936 film Reefer Madness.  It was originally released as Tell Your Children, a cautionary tale about the dangers of marijuana. 

Link to Christian Campbell's cock

There's a strong gay subtext: drug dealer Ralph (Dave O'Brien) sees high schooler Jimmy (Warren McCollum), murmurs "Nice!", and practically licks his lips in anticipation.  Wrangling an introduction, he says "Nice to meet youuuuuu!" with a lascivious leer, then invites Jimmy to the soda shop, where he will try to get him hooked on the psychosis-inducing weed in a parallel to how gay men were accused of recruiting boys.

After Jimmy is tricked into taking a puff of the "evil weed," he is plagued by instant addiction, psychotic rambling, uncontrollable sexual desire (the most horrifying to audiences of the day ), drunk driving, and finally murder.  It seems laughably sensationalistic today, but in fact Harry J. Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1963, devoted his entire career to feeding the flames of the panic.  As late as the 1950s, marijuana was considered more dangerous than heroin. 

The movie was placed on the exploitation circuit, officially meant to educate viewers about the "dangers" of the  practice, but drawing crowds interested in gawking at the degradation. In the 1970s it was discovered by the hippie art-house crowd, who would watch while high for an ironic twist.  

In 1998, Reefer Madness: The Musical appeared off-Broadway, eliminating the redundant characters and upping the camp.  Christian Campbell (left) played Jimmy, lured from his "wholesome" heterosexual chastity by drug dealer Jack (Robert Torti, top photo) and cohort Ralph (John Kassir).  

In addition to the gay subtext, there was a lot of beefcake, with the super-muscular Jimmy stripped down to his underwear and a chorus of semi-nude male and female devils.

More music and bulges after the break

Jack Griffo's Gay Connection

 Jack Griffo (left) was both a Nickelodeon and a Disney Channel teen hunk, with a guest spot on Jessie and a starring role in The Thundermans.(2013-2018).

Born in December 1996, Jack got his first commercial contract at age 2, and soon began modeling and acting in community theater in his hometown of Orlando, Florida.  A talent agent spotted him, and convinced him and his family to relocate to Los Angeles in 2010.

In 2011, he appeared in the movie Sound of My Voice, and on the Disney channel teencom Kickin' It (as a dancer) and Nickelodeon's Bucket and Skinner's Epic Adventures.

In 2012, in the short What I Did Last Summer: First Kiss and the music video American Hero.

In 2013, in Nickelodeon's See Dad Run with Scott Baio and Marvin Marvin 

He starred as a gay-vague supervillain in training in the Nickelodeon teencom The Thundermans. 

More after the break

Donny Osmond

Another performer who made gay teenagers swoon was Donny Osmond.  Originally the rascally "cute kid" in the Osmond group, he began his solo career in 1971, while still a 13-year old soprano, with "Sweet and Innocent." A string of hit singles and albums followed, mostly covers of pop classics from the 1950s -- with a twist.  Donny -- or his managers -- eliminated pronouns and the refrain of "girl!" to ensure that the object of his devotion could be male or female, thus doubling the potential audience.

For instance, in his cover of the Four Preps’ “Big Man,” Donny tells a former lover that he once he felt like “a big man,” but now that they have broken up, he feels small -- “boy, you oughta see me now.”

 “Boy” can be an intensifier regardless of the person being addressed, but after hearing 10,000 songs with “girl!” as every other word, it called attention to itself, making it seem to me that Donny was actually addressing a boy.

Similarly, in “Sweet and Innocent,” Donny either gender-bends himself into a girl or openly alludes to a same-sex love:

Lots of boys are gracious, and lots of boys are true,
 But they can’t make me feel the way I do when I’m with you.

In other words, he has had many previous relationships with boys. They were “true,” they didn’t seek out other partners. But his current boyfriend is far superior.

The most evocate of Donny's  albums, A Time for Us (1973), omits heterosexual desire almost completely. In the titular “A Time for Us" (penned by gay-friendly Johnny Mathis), Donny asks his beloved to imagine a future when “dreams so long denied can flourish, as we unveil the love we now must hide.” Fifteen-year old boys and girls rarely hide their loves; they are busy hiring limos for the junior prom, while parents snap photos to place on the mantle, friends pat them on the back, and teachers beam with satisfaction. But a boy's love for a boy may well be a “dream denied.”

At least, that's how I understood it in 1973.

Donny never did any shirtless shots for the teen magazines, but he was dreamy, with thick hair, brown eyes, and a bright smile, and as he grew into adolescence and then adulthood, he filled out his sequined jumpsuits well.

During my sophomore year in high school, my friend Rita used God's Infallible Promise to "get" Donny as her future husband.

An expert at reinventing himself, he transitioned seamlessly to an adult performer who still packs in the crowds.  He's guest-starred on countless television programs, showcased in Vegas, and performed on Broadway. His Broadway show Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which became a 1999 movie, gave audiences something they'd been dreaming of for 30 years: extensive views of Donny's physique.

Donny Osmond is a devout Mormon and staunch advocate of “family values”; but, unlike his younger brother Jimmy, he's not complicit with his church's condemnation of gay people.  He happily acknowledges that about half his fans are straight women and the other half gay men.

Happy Trails to Homophobes: The Roy Rogers Show

When I was a kid in the 1960s,  my church didn't allow us to listen to rock music, go to movies, or read comic books or science fiction (I usually found loopholes in the rules).  Television was permitted, but preachers and Sunday school teachers railed against it anyway. 

Did The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ever ask God's guidance in fighting the Communists?
Did The Beverly Hillbillies ever bow their heads and say grace before eating Granny's vittles?
The Flying Nun tried to brainwash you into becoming an evil Catholic.

The only program they approved of was Roy Rogers, about a singing cowboy named Roy Rogers, played by...um...long-time singing cowboy star Roy Rogers.  He never said grace before meals, either, but in real life he was a fundamentalist Christian who always mentioned God in interviews and included Christian songs in his live performances.

The preachers didn't realize that his show (1951-57) had been off the air for over ten years.  But I must have caught glimpses of the Saturday morning reruns (1961-65 or after-school syndication (1961-1972),  because I remember hating it.  Who cared about the Old West in the Space Age?  We were all about astronauts, not cowboys.  Besides, there was hardly any gay content.

1.  Roy didn't hang out with guys like "real" cowboys.  He had a wife, Dale Evans, who sometimes rode next to him in her petite cowboy skirt, but usually stayed home to run a restaurant.

2. This wasn't even  the Old West. They had electric lights, telephones, and cars. As a kid, I found that idiotic. Why would you ride a horse if cars were available?

3.  No beefcake of any sort.  Roy never unbuttoned a button on-screen.  There were a few semi-nude shots in movie magazines, but nothing memorable. The top photo, with Roy eating a hot dog, may look promising, but according to Darwin Porter's autobiographical novel, the "squinty-eyed homophobe" was not particularly gifted beneath the belt.

4. No dreamy boys or muscular men. I found Roy unattractive,  with a face like a mask and tiny, beady eyes. The only other male star was Pat Brady, the cook at Dale's restaurant,  a gawky, comic-relief character who drove a jeep named Nellybelle.

5. The closing song, "Happy Trails to You," sung by the disembodied heads of Roy and Dale, freaked me out.  I distinctly remember them singing it to "cheer up" some kid dying in the hospital.  Mememto mori, a reminder of the transience of life and the inevitability of death -- not what a four-year old wants to hear about while eating his Coco Puffs on Saturday morning.

The only gay content: some buddy-bonding potential, I guess.  Roy and Pat starred in many movies together during the 1940s, and were close friends in real life.

Grantchester: A Hot, Hip 1950s Vicar with a Grumbling Detective Sidekick and a Gay Assistant

 Grantchester.  Why do British dramas always have three-syllable name titles, like Loudermilk (wait, that's American)?  This one, six seasons long, is set between 1953 and 1958, when a "young vicar"  solves murders in a "quiet English village," sort of like Miss Marple.  He's assisted by a police detective, maybe there will be a bit of buddy-bonding.  Plus, as The Mirror reports, there's a shirtless scene.  This vicar knows his way around a gym!  

Plus the Vicar's curate (like an assistant), Leonard, is gay!  And has a boyfriend, Daniel (who isn't just mentioned, he actually appears in 25 episodes).  The Vicar is fine with it -- yes, there were gay-positive clergy in the 1950s.  So I watched the first episode where the boyfriend appears -- Season 2, Episode 1.

Scene 1: The family (whose, I don't know) picnicking along the river. Curate Leonard is reading a book (can't make out the title, but not much of gay interest available back then except The City and the Pillar).  Detective Geordie (Robson Green, left) and Vicar Sidney (James Norton, top photo) go swimming, along with a dog named Dickens. Whoa, here's the shirtless scene!  Everyone criticizes Vicar Sidney for not having a girlfriend.  "One day you'll be sad and alone."  "Alright, then, find me a woman."

Scene 2:  Singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," they return to the vicarage. Uh-oh, Detective Phil is there to arrest Sidney for "sexual assault."  Did they have that crime in England in the 1950s?  Wouldn't it have been rape?

Scene 3: At the police station in London, Chief Inspector Burroughs interrogates Sidney: "Are you married?  Do you have a girlfriend?"   The complaint was made by the father of a teenage parishioner, Abigal Redmond.  According to her diary, Sidney took her to a hotel and forced her to have sex.  Plus Abigal and her diary have now gone missing.  Sidney says "She's lying!", so the Inspector releases him.  That's it? I thought they'd arrest him for murder.

Scene 4:  Vicar Sidney is depressed.  Flashback (I think) to when some teenagers were browsing in the church library.  Abigail complained that a Bible story book left out the naughty bits. She asked Sidney if he had ever had sex with a woman, which upset teenage Gary (Sam Frenchum).  He appears to be mentally challenged.

Detective Geordi reveals him that no one has seen the diary except the father.  Maybe he made the whole thing up!  

Scene 5: Back at the vicarage, Vicar Sidney gets a visit from Sam (Andrew Knott, left), an old seminary friend sent by the Archdeacon (that is, the Big Boss) to check on the scandal.  I don't know why this is important.

Sidney bursts into the youth group and yells "Where is Abigail?  Is this one of her jokes?"   "She went to the Daniel Marlowe Studio to pick up some photographs." Daniel is the future boyfriend, so he can't be the murderer.

Scene 6:  Night.  The photography studio is deserted, so Geordi and Sidney break in.  A bit extreme, innit?  In the dark room, lots of developing glamour photos of Abby.  A lot of booze scattered around.  And a bottle of turpentine, for some reason (maybe you need it for photography). And her dead body!  She's been strangled!  

While the police take photographs, Sidney flashes back to Abby asking him: "How bad do you have to be before God won't forgive you? And what if you can't forgive yourself?"  When Dad showed up, she cried "Please don't make me go home!"  Aha, an abusive father.  No doubt sexual abuse. This is very modern.  Sexual abuse by a parent was not mentioned in the criminological literature until the 1960s.  The official word was that it never happened.  

Scene 7: Back to the vicarage.  The parents are there, still thinking that Sidney is responsible for Abigail's disappearance.  He rushes inside while Geordie gives them the news. 

Whoops, the Archdeacon is there, too, to assure Sidney that he'll be "presumed innocent." He assigns Sam from Scene 5 to be his watchdog.  

Sidney decides to let Watchdog Sam do the funeral, and Curate Leonard (Al Weaver, left) do the counseling of Abigail's friends. 

Scene 8:   Abigail's Dad also accused Gary (the teenager from Scene 4) of sexual assault, so Detective Geordie and Sidney interview him.  One night he drove her home from youth group.  Dad saw them, and called the police to have him arrested for assault!  But they were just friends.  Geordie doesn't believe that a boy and a girl can be just friends, but Sidney does.

Scene 9: Next they interview Abigail's Mom.  She didn't even know that Abigail kept a diary.  "Maybe it never existed." Dad comes in and yells at Vicar Sidney for "all the things you made her do."  "By the way," Detective Geordie asks, "Why did Abigail keep a chair lodged against her bedroom door, so no one could come in?" 

Scene 10:  Curate Leonard trying to hold a counseling session for Abigail's friends.  He doesn't relate to the kids very well.  Gary asks if he's a pansy.  "It doesn't  matter," Tommy (Alfie Field) exclaims. "We're all going to hell." He specifies "Abigail's in hell," for which Gary punches him in the nose.

When Vicar Sidney intervenes, Tommy explains: "It's my fault she's dead."  He came across her in a "dirty picture book," and knew that Daniel Marlowe took the photos.  So he confronted Daniel, told him that she was just 15, and he "blew his top."  And by the way, Abigail was pregnant.

Scene 11: The police finally track down Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale) and arrest him.  He asks "A bribe won't be enough this time?", but then they tell him it's for murder!  You'd have to know that in earlier generations, when being gay was illegal, the police often took a bribe in exchange for not arresting you.

I'm out of space, so I'll stop the scene-by-scene there.  But in case you are wondering, the diary is real; the turpentine is an important clue; Daniel Marlowe didn't know that Abigail was 15, and he had nothing to do with her death (or her pregnancy, of course).  There are different people responsible for each.  I guessed one but not the other.

Coming Out: Detective Geordie finds out that Daniel is divorced and has no "ladyfriend," and there was the thing about the bribe.   He concludes that Daniel is a "pansy.": "Once you look, they're everywhere, crawling out of the bloody woodwork." Curate Leonard is listening, but pretends to be reading his book.

Meeting Leonard:  In the penultimate scene, Daniel (cleared of the charge) shows up early at the church, when no one is there but Leonard: "I have a lot to atone for.  I want to be a better man."  Leonard invites him to pray.  The end.  24 episodes to go; I imagine their relationship will blossom.