Gemstones Episode 4.5: The dirt on Vance, Big Dick Mitch, and Lori, with a nude Teenjus and Joey Stefano

 


Title: "You Shall Remember," from Deuteronomy 8.18: "You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the power to get wealth."  The Gemstones have forgotten that God made them rich so they can help people.  Tonight they'll get their comeuppance.  

The Dirt on Vance: Vance Simkins (Stephen Dorff) examines his burnt-out church and glares at the Gemstone satellite church across the street.  Cut to a Simpkins Commercial with him and his siblings, Craig and Shay, saying: "Grace.. .Praise... Rejoice..Salvation."


Vance calls his siblings to his office, but Shay won't come ("she wants nothing to do with you") and Craig (Gogo Lomo David) is just there for his money: their parents' estate put Vance in charge, so he has to depend on hand-outs.  Vance gives him $10,000, and tells him to make it last.

Craig criticizes Vance for running the church into the ground, destroying their parents' legacy.  He keeps trying to open new churches when they're broke, just to compete with the Gemstones: "You can't admit you're beat, can you?"  

Vance protests that he's going to win the Top Christ Following Man Award. 

"You're a straight white man," Craig digs. "Your kind don't get awards anymore. Wait -- are you straight?  Never had a girlfriend, sweetie-pie."  Enraged by the implication, Vance slaps Craig and throws him onto the desk.

Uh-oh, a church deacon saw the attack.  Vance is violent, like Uncle Peter in Season 3 and Lyle Lissons in Season 2....he's the Big Bad of the season!

Vance had some queer codes back in Season 3, when he swished around with that tiny dog.  It would make sense for him to be gay and closeted.

Gogo Lomo-David is gay in real life, but there's no evidence that his character is gay.

Baby Billy and Kelvin in Decline:  Baby Billy finishes his screenplay about a teenage Jesus and his friends, changes the title from "Teen Jesus" to "Teenjus," and snorts some cocaine.  That's the Belly of the Beast in the Gemstone universe, buddy.

Cut to Kelvin and Keefe rushing through the crowd of queer well-wishers to a party to celebrate his Top Christ Following Man nomination.  Jesse, Amber, and Judy look angry; Eli, Lori, and Gideon look happy.  Abraham looks intrigued; Pontius sneers.  Abraham is the last of Jesse's kids to get a queer code.  I wrote a fan story where he comes out.

They begin partying.  Kelvin joins his siblings to gloat at the big turnout.  Judy sneers: "You're their little gay avatar."  Jesse: "You need to stop smelling your farts."  Translation: He's getting way too conceited about this award thing.

Lori drops by.  They criticize her for having sex with their father.  She promises to lock the door next time, and asks if they can start over and be friends again.  After all, she's known them all their lives.  Nope, "We reject this union."  

Lori: "All y'all little cocksuckers better put on your big boy pants and get the fuck over it."  Hey, that's homophobic, and at a LGBTQ event!  My estimation of Lori dropped 20 points. 

She continues: "I wanted to be y'all's friend, but if you want a wicked stepmother, I can do that, too."  

The siblings interpret "stepmother" to mean that Lori and Eli got married.  They are disgusted. 

BJ's Injury. BJ tries to make it from the toilet to his wheelchair, but fails and falls into the bathtub. Judy rushes in to help.  He complains that he can't even pee on his own. "I'm broken. I'm half a man."

Judy points out that the doctors say he will have a full recovery, but he refuses believe it. When she tries to help him out of the bathtub, he angrily yells at her to go.  

Amber arrives to see how they are doing -- they're both miserable -- and to give Judy a service monkey named Dr. Watson.  She works with a charity that trains service monkeys for disabled veterans (first I'm hearing of it)


Rebuilding the Tree House: Cut to Keefe using his carpentry skill to rebuild the tree house that got destroyed in the storm (he actually has a crew, visible in the background).  He swings like Tarzan from one building to another.  Easter Egg: The blueprints are dated 4/24/24. 

Kelvin exclaims that "it's all coming together.  A project like this tree house is exactly what I needed."

Next up in the Top Christ Following Man of the Year contest is a tv roundtable discussion: "A great chance to drop some dank soundbits and establish myself as a clear fave."

The Yellow Kerchief: Jesse at the Cape & Pistol headquarters, drinking and glaring at Eli as he talks to his friends. Vance stops by to heckle him for Eli dating Lori, and to blame him for bombing the Simkins church.  He threatens to "drop a yellow kerchief," challenging Jesse to a duel.  Jesse smirks and pretends not to know who Vance is, angering him even more. 

BJ and Watson:  Judy introduces BJ to his new service monkey.  She demonstrates, asking him to bring a Black Cherry White Claw (a hard seltzer beverage) -- and he does!  Actually, it's Citrus Yuzu Smash, another flavor of White Claw.  Close enough.  Capuchin monkeys can learn up to 200 words and understand complex sentences. 

The Dirt on Big Dick: The Gemstone Leadership Team, aka Jesse's Goon Squad, has been researching Miss Lori's socials, and found lots of photos of her with different men, especially Big Dick Mick, her ex boyfriend (although Matthew doesn't think it's very big -- you can't see the outline through his pants.  This will become important later).  

A newspaper article reveals that Big Dick Mick went missing on May 11, 2024.  Plus several of Lori's other boyfriends have gone missing, and some are just dead: drowning, car accident, suicide.  Uh-oh, she's a "Black Widow."  

Wait -- Lori started dating Eli last September, during the Aimee-Leight telethon.  These guys are dying eight months or more after she ended the relationship.  Why would she kill them?  Corey must be the culprit.

The siblings need more information.  Time to ask someone who knows Miss Lori well.

Teenjus Again: Baby Billy pitches his television show, Teenjus, to the siblings.  They don't like the name.  He promises to give them some dirt on Miss Lori, if they greenlight the project, so they agree.

The dirt: Miss Lori begged him to let her sing at the telethon, saying that she was broke and needed the gig.  Don't performers volunteer their time at those things?  And she immediately starts dating Eli.  Suspicious?  That's it?  I expected something juicier.

The Dirt on Miss Lori:  The siblings wait for Eli, discussing who gets to "crush him" first with their revelation. 

When he arrives -- wearing a ridiculous outfit --  they reveal that many of Lori's ex-boyfriends have ended up missing or dead.  Also "she's in debt up to her eyeballs."  Eli thinks they're just making stuff up, and yells at them that "Mama ain't coming back!"

"Us or her?" the siblings demand.  "Pick a side."

He picks the one that lets him have s*x, of course.  

Later, as they fume, Kelvin struts his stuff, bragging about his achievements.  Jesse thinks that his nomination for Top Christ Following is a sham, just tokenism.  Got to nominate the gay guy to prove that we're into diversity, but no way will he win. I remember when I was applying for jobs, I would often get interviews as a diversity token.  

Kelvin counters that Jesse is a loser.  Even his kids don't respect him.  And Judy, married to "a pole-dancing cripple."  Dang, Kelvin, you're a super jerk today.   They both get hurt feelings from these savage jabs.  "I hope you feel good about yourself," Jesse says. 

Kelvin turns his back -- no, he doesn't feel good about himself at all.  


Filming Teenjus: Teenage Jesus (Matthew Garbacz) complains to his sidekick Johnny B, aka John the Baptist (Pilot Bunch) that the kids in the village will never give him a shot.  Maybe if he wins the big dance contest, they'll believe that he's the Chosen One.  A centurion (Dan Auerbach of the band Black Keys) criticizes him for being a trouble-maker: "You're late to class."

Baby Billy cuts the action and asks Jesus for more "smolder."  

Matthew Garbacz began his career at age eight.  At age 16 he began touring as John Deacon in a Kings of Queen tribute band.  He has performed in Oliver!, Gypsy, Billy Elliot, and Les Miserables.


I assume that he is gay because appeared in Trust in Love (2024), about a record producer who comes out to his wife and son

And because of the way he celebrates Valentine's Day: "Tag the one you love."

And because he played a Queen.  Not the gay one, but still....


And because of his....
.  

Lori's Edibles: Lori and Eli want to give the siblings "some space," so they move to her house. Wait -- I thought she was living in Pigeon Forge.  If she's been living in Charleston the whole time, why hasn't she visited the Gemstones for years?

Corey meets them at the door: he dropped by to bring dinner, "Kung Pao Dynasty." Also, he left her edibles by the microwave.   Eli doesn't know what edibles are, so Miss Lori explains. Apparently he's ok with drug use now; he wasn't in earlier seasons.

Corey shakes Eli's hand and says "Have fun, you two," but as he walks away, he grimaces.  He's been killing the ex-boyfriends.


Meanwhile, Kelvin in a flamboyant costume is being photographed with the conservatively-dressed nominees for Top Christian Man. And it's time for the Live TV Roundtable.  

The full cast list is not in the episode credits or the IMDB, but I think the conservative minister being hugged by Kelvin is Chad Darnell, who is gay in real life.  He works primarily in casting, but he has 21 screen credits, and a lot of theater work, including the gay-themed Love! Valour! Compassion!, Forced, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Plus some gay-themed screenplays and two novels.



More after the break



He's got a biopic coming up of 1980s gay model and video star Joey Stefano, one of the icons of my years in West Hollywood.

Back to the roundtable discussion, led by Stevie from Eastbound and Down.  First question:"Should children be taught a comprehensive overview of all major religions in school?" 

Kelvin jumps in, but doesn't answer the question.  Instead, he blathers about "I teach my followers everything good about Jesus.  The Bible can be confusing, so we translate it for modern, cutting-edge times." You're not qualified to be a Bible translator.  How about explaining passages in their historical/cultural context?  

Vance complains about "a homosexual" being nominated for the award.  "God's Word is clear on this issue."  Uh-oh, how are you on the Clobber Verses, Kelvin?

He's not good on the Clobber Verses.  "Um...um..lots of parts of the Bible are outdated." No, they don't refer to contemporary gay people at all!  Get with your queer theology.

When I was just coming out, I joined the gay-specific Metropolitan Community Church.  Most members were recovering from Evangelical trauma, so every sermon -- every sermon -- was about how being gay is not a sin.  Sometimes there was detailed exegesis of specific Clobber Verses (there are only five), sometimes just "God loves you."  



Anybody who's been gay and Christian for five minutes could respond to this very vague attack easily.  And Kelvin works with queer youth, so he must have to deal with religious trauma all the time.  But he apparently doesn't even know the basics.  Hey, Kelv Baby, some books for your library.  There are hundreds more.

 All he can think of is: "Um...the Bible...um...also forbids eating shellfish."

Vance doesn't eat shellfish. How about wearing mixed fibers?   Why haven't you stoned your sister to death for having extra-marital sex?  And sold your brother into slavery?

See how easy it is? Of course, it never convinces a homophobe.


Vance mocks Kelvin, and another pastor agrees. 

We see Kelvin's agonized face, a flashing red light, a closeup of his trembling hands.  He's having a panic attack.   At home, Jesse turns off the tv, too upset to continue.

This was very painful to watch, since I knew exactly how to respond -- I've responded to that question many times -- but Kelvin does not.  He has fallen from the heavens just as definitively as BJ from his dancing pole.

In Season 1, Kelvin falls into a depression and scraps the Satanic Sweep project.  In Season 2, the God Squad turns on him.  In Season 3, the Smut Busters project goes wrong, resulting in Kelvin and Keefe breaking up. I suspect that this is the end of Prism.

Mama is in the House: Cut to Judy coming home and finding the table set for dinner.  Bj announces that the helper monkey Dr. Watson did it all.

Notice that BJ is drinking wine.  He was always a teetotler before.  Continuity error or character development?

Judy suggests that God has been testing them, and they passed the test. They apologize and kiss.  The monkey looks outraged.

This may be a reflection of Monkey Shines (1988), a thriller with Jason Beghle (left) as a quadriplegic law student whose helper monkey become jealous of his girlfriend, and commits some murders.  


The Attack:  In an unfinished room, with ladders and tarps, a man I don't recognize attacks a blond woman who looks like Vance's sister, throwing her against the door and strangling her.  

Psych! It's a movie!   Eli and Lori are eating ice cream and watching Pacific Heights (1980).  Danforth (Michael Keaton), the Tenant from Hell, is getting revenge on his former landlords (Matthew Modine,  left, Melanie Griffith).  This may be important later.

Suddenly a brick is thrown through Lori's window! It says "Sinners."  Eli grabs a gun and runs outside to see his car on fire!  But only Corey knows that they are there.

Lori: "Eli, there's something I haven't been straight with you about. Me and you need to have a talk about my ex."






Who is bigger? Adam Devine is about the same length but thicker than 1980s porn star Joey Stefano. 

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