The Summer Gay TV Viewing Guide

Actually, it was the "father" Dr Cullen's perfect coif that had me thinking of Mormon missionaries on bicycles. That and the placid wife who doesn't seem to have any dialogue. Also, I had to laugh at the blogger's commentary on "vampire baseball" because Mormons really do do such family activities, particularly on Monday nights. Indeed, everything about the Cullen's screams "Mormon", right down to the attempts at arranging marriages and, ideally, conversions.

The Batman-like garage is also not far-fetched. Maintaining the "perfection" of their families tends to leave Mormon men with a lot of nervous energy, so they're always building and working on stuff.

Of course, the novelty is that these really aren't "vampires" per se so much as idealized Mormons. Dr Cullen has his lovely family of perfect "children" for whom he's arranging "marriages" and they all live in conflict-free contentment. Until the non-Mormon Bella comes into the picture. She's a guaranteed source of familial discord until and unless they can convert her to Mormonism. 

Fortunately, they're such inoffensive "vampires" that they don't do anything that might freak her out, such as snarl or drink blood openly.

But it was Bella herself that was the weirdest creature of all. Okay, Meyer goes out of her way to demonstrate that all the other boys in her high school are immature frat boys in training. Thus it's no surprise that the extremely mature (hey, he's like 90!) Edward would have more appeal. It's what's attractive about Bella herself that I don't get.  She complains, she's whiny and she's passive-aggressive.

I guess she symbolizes the allure Mormon men feel for women that have not been raised Mormon and who have some spice. Now that I think about it, Mormon guys I know love movies with female superheroines and martial artists. Basically any woman who is not a submissive, mindless walking womb. It's an inner rebellion against what they're supposed to want in a wife. But of course it's their duty as a priesthood holder to "tame the shrew".

The only redemption would have been to see all the male Cullen's shirtless, but they didn't even give us that much. This was clearly sanitized so as to make it safe for Mormons to watch with their families on Monday night.