Previous: Episode 1.2: Thai ladyboys, Italian shoes, Palestinian dicks, and the devil's kiss.
Although this episode was mostly about establishing the toxic Scotty-Gideon relationship, we saw Kelvin recoiling from a butt-slap from Matthew, then touching Keefe's arm with a look of passion that's impossible to mistake. In the last scenes, we find out more about the nature of his desire.
Confronting the Blackmailers: The siblings go to the hotel where the blackmailers are staying. When they pass a breastfeeding mother, Judy gazes hungrily at the baby, a maternal desire that is not referenced again. The desk clerk tells them that the blackmailers checked out today. Dead end.
The desk clerk asks if "the little boy" is Jesse and Judy's son. Kelvin counters that he's "fully grown..an adult man." His belief that everyone treats him like a kid will be central in Season 2.
He begins to pray, interspliced with shots of Amber playing the piano and Keefe spotting Kelvin on the bench press. Suddenly Keefe's testicle pops out of his gym shorts!
Kelvin finishes a rep, his eyes closed from the exertion, then looks up and notices. Keefe moves away.
Kelvin sits up, breathing heavily. The camera moves in for a close-up of his face. He is shocked and confused.
This is not the expression of someone embarrassed from seeing his buddy's testicle. He is terrified. Something is stirring that he doesn't understand, or maybe he understands but doesn't want to. He is experiencing homoerotic desire. He got harder? He can no longer interpret his feelings for Keefe as mere buddy-bonding.
Harder: Notice the motto on the wall: "Harder..better... faster. .stronger...saved." This may be a reflection of the song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," although I wonder how Kelvin is familiar with an album by the Australian electro band Daft Punk, released in 2001, when he was 11 or 12 years old.
Other suggestions: The Olympic motto, "Faster, Higher, Stronger," and Bigger, Stronger, Faster, a 2008 documentary about steroid abuse among bodybuilders. It included interviews with practically every pro bodybuillder of the present and past, from Arnold Schwarzenegger, top photo, to Mike Bell.
More nude bodybuilders after the break
Saved from what? Evangelicals are saved from "the burden of sin," but what sin is Kelvin worried about? Soft passivity, its stereotypic association with gayness? Kelvin is trying to escape his homoerotic desires through weight training in Season 1, and through the God Squad in Season 2. In Season 3, he is not shown in the gym, since the focus of his fear has shifted from physique to phallus.
Left: Christian Boeving playing a 1950s Physique Pictorial model.
And simulating oral sex.
Coitus Interruptus: Jesse fades back in, and we cut to BJ and Judy making out on the staircase. Judy wants to have sex, but before they can start, BJ cums. The BJ/Judy and Kelvin/Keefe plot arcs run parallel. Here they seem to involve frustrated sexual desire: Kelvin and BJ both become aroused, but neither is able to become intimate with his partner.
Snakes are Closing in: We cut to Eli finding a diamondback rattlesnake in his kitchen. They are native to South Carolina, and they do sometimes find their way into houses, but chances are someone deposited it to try to kill Eli. He subdues it easily. Remember his last sermon? Snakes are closing in on the family, maybe in the guise of a trusted friend or loved on. BJ? Keefe? Wait -- is this show homophobic, presenting same-sex desire as objectively evil, or is it just in Kelvin's head?
There's a knock on the door -- another snake? Amber leaves her piano to open it. Gideon! The Big Reveal: one of the blackmailers is Jesse's son!
The earlier scenes in the montage display mismanaged erotic desire, but in Gideon's case we're not sure. Did he and Scotty finish their fight by jumping into bed? Was it their first time, or their first time as dom and sub, or were they long-term boyfriends? The queer codes are ambiguous -- maybe they'll be resolved later. The end.
Well, not really. One more naked guy for the road.
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