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Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!
In the last scene, Keefe is excluded from Sunday dinner with the family. Now we see what he missed:
Judy and BJ accused of betraying the family because they got married at Disney World (by Prince Eric, the "hottest guy in the Disney catalog").
There's also a jab at Kelvin's muscle obsession. But it’s not just homoerotic desire. Heterosexual desire is also incompatible with the family: when Jesse disses Judy for not having kids, she argues that she's trying to keep her body "foine" to incite BJ's desire. Nope, they need to make babies. Well, how are they going to make babies if BJ isn't into Judy? Desire and family can't be polar opposites.
Left and below: Jonah Hauer-King, who played Prince Eric in the Litle Mermaid movie.
More Disruptions: We cut to Eli playing croquet, gazing at girl butts, and flirting with a lady.
Suddenly Junior, his friend from his wrestling days, appears amid sinister music! Eli ignores him and drives away.
A homoerotic disruption of Eli's heterosexual dalliance, parallel to the God Squad disrupting the nuclear family procession earlier. Next, the Jesse-Amber plot, a new Christian-themed resort, Zion's Landing, proposed by their megachurch pastor chums, Lyle and Lindy Lissons. Jesse doesn't have any money of his own, so he'll have to convince Eli to invest. He's got a job at the church; he should get a salary. Daddy Eli is super over-controlling, like his daddy was, and like Kelvin will be with his homoerotic Band of Brothers.
My Mans: The family flies to Florida to inspect the site of the Lyssons' proposed resort. When they return, Keefe and the God Squad meet them at their private airfield. The family is shocked: didn't they know about the God Squad?
"Uh-oh, my mans!" Kelvin exclaims, rushing forward to tell Keefe "You are looking great!
" In Southern Coastal grammar, "mans" is singular, "mens" plural. He means Keefe.Keefe tries to move in for a kiss, but Kelvin blocks him with an awkward hug. He tries again, and Kelvin blocks him again. Finally he makes a blatant "enough!" gesture and backs off. Judy finds this little dance hilarious. It reflects the couple's conflict this season: Keefe wants to join the family as Kelvin's partner, the equivalent of BJ, sitting at the dinner table being criticized, while Kelvin isn't sure that same-sex romance is even possible. His muscle cult is about desire: no love allowed.
We cut to Eli in his office, watching a tv news show: Thaniel Block being interviewed about the "salacious scandal" story that took down Pastor Butterfield. How famous was this guy? I thought he was just the anonymous pastor of a satellite church. They preach "sex only between married heterosexual partners, or you're going to hell," but privately they do everything under the sun. Who will he target next? Maybe Kelvin-- "Secretly gay youth minister holds wild sex orgies with his stable of muscle boys." Ulp.
Damn, we got old: Later, Eli is standing at the docks, worrying, when Junior approaches him and grabs him from behind, another homoerotic intrusion into his heteronormative life. Junior complains that Eli forgot that he existed.
Then: "We got old. I look like a piece of shit, but damn! You look sturdy! Still got that mass going on!" He grabs Eli's butt to check. Sort of presumptuous, dude, thinking that your ex will still be into you after fifty years.
Eli thinks that Junior plans to blackmail him over revealing their days as loan enforcers (and lovers?), but he claims that he's just there for nostalgia, looking up an old friend. "Why you all nervous, Eli? Why are you bein' all weird?" In this series, "weird" usually refers to sexual frustration.
Junior tries to hug him again, but Eli pushes him away. On a scale of 1 to 100, how certain are you that these guys spent the psychedelic 1970s enjoying free love?
As Eli walks away, Junior guilts him into a dinner invitation.
Sticky Stephens: Nuclear families are eating at Sticky Stephens, a parody of the Sticky Fingers Restaurant in Charleston that closed down in 2020. Both sound dirty. The 1972 Rolling Stones album of that name depicted a pair of jeans with an enormous bulge, leaving no question about why the fingers are sticky.
Junior points out a kissing couple: "Damn, look at that piece of tail he's with!" Ok, so he's bi. Everybody watches as the man, Randall (Rene Rivera), lifts his girl onto the counter so they can have sex right in the restaurant! Why doesn't someone on staff intervene? Eli yells at him to "tone down romance," and Randall yells "Suck my dick, Grandpa." But the couple leaves.
Over dinner, Junior reveals that he's now a wrestling promoter: "I got a stable full of fellas I keep working." Tell me more, tell me more. What do they do besides wrestling? Stripping? Sex work?
"I wonder what my Daddy would think about you and me being reunited," Junior says. Eli answers: "He put us together, so he would think he did a pretty good job." Except they were separated for a lifetime. That's not a great job of matchmaking.
Junior says that his Daddy just disappeared one day, setting up a major mystery of the Season: Did Eli murder Glendon Marsh?
Proper erections after the break. Warning: explicit
