Link to the n*de photos
Tonight I have nothing to do while waiting for my partner to get back from the gym (and bring food), so I'm going through Season 3. Episodes about "Randy's close friend vanishes" and "a hidden relationship in a lawless desert town" have been disappointing, but Episode 3.11, "an 18 year old with a secret life" looks promising. It stars Ben Krieger, a Broadway star who is obviously gay: he goes to Pride events, performed magic in a gay bar, and spent his 21st birthday with a male companion.
Scene 1: Queens, New York. Stepho's Greek Taverna. Ben is cleaning up his parents' restaurant after closing. A girl invites him to a party, but he refuses. Your first sentence is rejecting a girl? A nice queer code.
He locks the back door, sets his bag of food aside, and walks over to the dumpster to throw out the trash. Suddenly a car zooms up with its headlights glaring.
Scene 2: The parents call for Tracker (Justin Hartley): Ben didn't come home last night, and because he's 18, the police won't do anything. He also failed to deposit the day's receipts, several thousand dollars. In cash? Doesn't everyone pay by card nowadays?Tracker suggests that maybe he took the money and vanished, but the parents dismiss that idea. He would never just leave. But he didn't want to work in the restaurant forever. He was interested in social justice issues. Like LGBTQ rights, for instance?
They open his locker, and find a taser cartridge. Dude needed to protect himself for some reason.
Scene 3: Next they check the back. Notice the Pride Flag on the building next door. It is visible in several scenes, certainly a deliberate background choice to hint that Ben is gay.
A homeless lady is eating the food that Ben dropped off. She saw him arguing with a guy, and then being loaded into the car.
Next they find Ben's cell phone: he must have dropped it during the scuffle. Tracker gets his associate, the Hacker, to hack into it.
Left: Google says that the Hacker is played by Eric Graise, a gay actor best known for the new Queer as Folk. He may be disabled: some sources say that he's a bilateral amputee, and others, that it's his character.
The new, straight Hacker tells Tracker that yesterday Ben called Ellis Brawner (Alex Barima from Daniel Spellbound, straight in real life) a dozen times.
The parents know him: he used to work at the restaurant, but was fired for stealing. Could he have gotten revenge by kidnapping Ben?
Scene 4: The B-Plot, back at headquarters. A lady is buttering up another lady, who praises her work on previous cases.
Alex Barima (right), seen here in a non-romantic scene in The Exorcist, has no n*de or beefcake photos online.
The Hacker looks up Brawner's address, and Tracker breaks in. A lot of fake passports and drivers' licenses. No posters of bikini babes? A good sign. When Brawner arrives and sees Tracker, he runs, but Tracker chases him down.
He explains that he and Ben-Ben are partners in the fake id business. Ben-Ben? Sounds like they're boyfriends.
Last night Ben called and told him to get to the restaurant fast. They were yelling because Brawner was angry over being awakened in the middle of the night. It was just after a restaurant closed, and one of the staff was heading to a party. Do you go to bed at 7:00 pm?
He needed some ids and a car right away, and paid for it with the money he took from the restaurant.
"Was it about the fake id business?"
"No, I think it was about a girl. I heard him talking." Ulp, heterosexual identity established at Minute 15.
Ben left his laptop at Brower's place. Tracker confiscates it.
More after the break.
Scene 5: The laptop has nothing in it but some ids that Ben was working on, but Hacker finds the car, in a scrapyard across town. Tracker drives over; there's a dead lady in the trunk! Looks like somebody killed Ben's girlfriend and kidnapped him.
Cut to the police examining the scene. The detective tells him that the Dead Girl is Nadia, from Romania, here on a tourist visa that expired three months ago. Ben is the prime suspect.
"No, Ben couldn't have done it because there are two sets of tire tracks. Someone drove in, killed her, and drove off with him." Or he killed her and called a friend to drive him away.
Hacker finds photos of the Dead Girl on Ben's laptop. He was making her a green card, so she could stay in the U.S.
Tracker wonders why Ben-Ben didn't tell Brawn-Brawn about Dead Girl. "Maybe she was more than a client," Hacker suggests. So Boyfriend would be jealous?
"Or maybe she was into something dangerous, that got her killed, and BenBen didn't want his...um....friend involved."
Scene 6: The address on Dead Girl's id is fake, but her photo was taken at a house "across town."
It's a sort of unfinished house on a factory lot. Door's open, so Tracker goes in. A padlocked door leads down some stairs to living quarters. Several beds. Girls' names taped to doors (including Nadia, the Dead Girl).
Kendall's room has a broken mirror, and a cap from the Greek restaurant where Ben works. Ulp, Ben was here!
Cut to a warehouse space, where a Kidnapper (Jo Bryant) and a woman have Ben tied up. "Let's try this again."
On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Jon Bryant fills his Instagram with photos of the most beautiful woman in the world, his only reason for living, in various stages of undress, but this is the only n*de photo of him that I could find. The full version is no longer on the website that promises it.
Scene 7: Tracker has no idea what to make of the space, but Hacker knows: it's human trafficking. You lure girls overseas with the promise of making them an actress or model, then take their passport and put them to work. 20% of the people trafficked for s*xual exploitation are boys and men.
"So Nadia went to Ben for a fake id so she could escape," Tracker concludes. "And the baddies made an example of her. But Nadia was killed two days ago. Ben disappeared last night."
Hacker checks: Ben made Kendall an id, too, just last night. "So she must be The Girl. He came to the warehouse to rescue her, and was captured."
There's a webcam filming the girls as they work. Hacker hacks into the one in The Girl's room. Yep, it shows a woman screaming while Ben fights and gets knocked out.
Scene 8: A New Bad Guy (maybe Sean Kohnke) enters the house with take-out, notices the padlock broken on the door to the human trafficking space, and investigates. Tracker ambushes him and breaks a few bones to get intel: He was assigned to keep Ben alive, so they could use him to track down The Girl.
"Who's in charge?"
"Watts, Eliza, Nico." Is that three people, or Nico and Eliza Watts?
Hacker knows: They're brother and sister baddies, the two Kidnappers from Scene 6, with lots of police records, including three missing person cases, all women, but dismissed for lack of eviddence. Again with the heteronormative "only women get trafficked" rhetoric.
Tracker stole the New Bad Guy's wallet; inside, there's a business card for a place called Celebrities, "a nightclub across town, run by the same company that owns the warehouse brothel". Why is everything across town? This is Queens; do they mean it's in the Bronx?
Scene 9: Tracker sneaks in the back door. It's a nightclub; you could just pay the cover and go in.
He follows a muscleman (Canadian wrestler Kale van Bruggen) to the basement, where he prepares to strangle the tied-up Ben. "Sorry, kid, it's nothing personal." What a silly coincidence, almost a deus ex machina. Tracker attacks and overpowers the guy, then unties Ben.
But Ben's not ready to go home yet. "They went through my burner and found out where The Girl is. They're on their way to kill her. We have to help."
Scene 10: On the way, Ben explains: The Girl found the Dead Girl in a closet, and was worried that she'd be blamed. "I couldn't go to the cops, or tell my parents, so I found a place for us to run away together." Wait -- why did you have to run away with her? Were you dating?
Cut to the Kidnappers bursting into the safe house -- actually the Golden Sun hotel -- and asking the Girl who else knows about the Dead Girl. Tracker and Ben arrive just in time.
Scene 11: Back at the restaurant, Ben hugs his parents, apologizes for disappearing, and "there's someone I want you to meet. Is it ok if she stays here for a while?" He introduce The Girl.
"Sure, no problem." I would have a few more questions.
Beefcake: None.
Gay Character: One expects Ben to be in love with The Girl, but they never mention being in love, they never touch each other, and she looks to be about half Ben's age (the actress is actually 31). We can still read him as gay, but it's easily deniable. The episode discussion on Reddit doesn't mention it.
And Ben Krieger writes songs about "In love with a girl who doesn't like me" and "In love with a girl on the other side of the world." If you go way far down on his Instagram feed, you find that he's pretending to be gay for just the top 50 or so posts. Before that, it's constant hugging, kissing, fondling, and bragging about the lady parts of girls. Grr....why are straight guys so often closeted?
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See also:Tracker: Guy tracks missing people in scary states. Are any of them gay? Do any have beefcake pics?
"Daniel Spellbound": Gay Subtext Between Tracker Boy and Half-Demon. For Awhile, Anyway
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