Michael Sayfou: Ethiopian-American model/theater major with a cat, a physique, and a lot of queer codes. Plus some Ethiopian d*cks
Solar Opposites Episode 4.9: Skyler Gisondo plays a muscular bat-alien with a human boyfriend, plus Thomas Middleditch penis
Solar Opposites is an animated sitcom about a family of sentient slugs that crash-landed on Earth and must look for a way home while adapting to bizarre human customs like gender polarization: Korvo (Justin Roilland/Dan Stevens), the "man of the house," resistant to assimilation; Terry (Thomas Middleditch), the childcare expert, who eagerly adopts human culture; Yumyulak (Sean Giambone), the teenage boy, a rebel who hates humans; and a teenage girl and pupa (infant).
But this is a review of an episode where no one in the family appears except in flashbacks. I'm including a beefcake photo of Sean Giambone (left) and frontals of Thomas Middleditch (below) anyway.
Episode 4.9, "Down and Out on Planet X-Non," stars Glenn (Kieran Culkin), the family's snoopy neighbor, who got blasted into space. He joined the SilverCops Space Force, but they framed him for murder. He had to flee into the wilderness of an alien planet, fighting monsters and nearly dying many times. And now his story continues in what seems to be the pilot for a spin-off.
Scene 1: After having an "expositional dream," Glenn awakens in a run-down office, naked. Zy (Skyler Gisondo, top photo), a muscular being with a bat-head, found him in the wilderness, half-dead. "What were you doing all alone in the woods?"
"I go there to jerk off," Glenn jokes. "I got a thing for trees. Why am I naked?"
"Your clothes were soaked with piss and shit."
Zy infers that he has a "secred, fucked-up past," so he'll be perfect for their group of multi-species thieves and con-men.
Glen tries to leave, but outside the door, beings are robbing and killing each other, so he decides to stay. First queer code; Zy puts his hand on Glenn's shoulder and leaves it there.
Scene 2: The tour. Most of the group has holograms on their chest, which means "they need extra help."
"But I don't have a hologram on my chest," Glenn complains.
"I'm sure you have a hologram in your heart." Awww..getting a little crush on this human, Zy?
Second queer code: Hand on shoulder again. Third queer code: Again. Gee, Zy can't keep his hands off Glenn.
Scene 3: Interview with the group leader, Skeletom, a hippie dude with a glowing green skeleton. He explains: "This place is for people who don't fit in." Island of Misfit Toys, huh? Queer code #3. "No one else has our backs, so we have to be family to each other."
Scene 4: Glenn, Zy, a cat-being, and a Cthulhu-being on a scam run. Zy explains that the 'Raffs (sentient giraffes) took over and pushed the indigenous population into slums, using SilverCops to break heads: "They claim they're keeping the peace, but they're racist as hell, and they play the natives against each other." Cthulhu Lives Matter.
Uh-oh, their last victim called the SilverCops. Run! Hiding in an alley, they discuss how much they hate the Sils. And Glenn is one! If they find out, he'll lose their friendship -- or worse.
More after the break
Gemstones Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f**k, yeah! We got both.
Nice Cock: In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a naked guy. "That's a nice cock, Ernie," Glendon says. Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again. The teenager is definitely into cocks and butts.
The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat. Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.
"Kill 'em!" we hear. Psych! It's the tv. We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband. While Junor subdues his wife and son, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).
Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement.
As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":
They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and that a devil rides closely by his side.
So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him. How long will they ride together?
Abusive Daddies all the way down: Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match? Like at 11 or 12 pm? There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3).
Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh. Dad slaps him. End of flashback.
We're fine with the faggots: In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist. He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught videotaping his wife and another woman having sex in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts"). The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial sex scandals. Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object. (Left: random pecs)
A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones (roughly faggots), but we're not ready for swinging and tropus." Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples." They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.
Why did Pastor Diane translate maricones with two words, gays and queers? Why queers, doubtless with the old pejorative meaning rather than the contemporary reclamation? I get the impression that the pastors are not really ok with maricones, so any gay ministers might want to stay in the closet, especially with the reporter snooping around. Since this is the first scene in the present day, it is doubtless setting up one of the main conflicts of the season. But who is the gay minister Eli, Junior, or someone not yet introduced?
Left: God Squad pecs
A stalker? At least we know that he's not the closeted gay minister. He turns out to be Eli's grandson Gideon, back from a job as a stuntman to assist with the Gemstone ministry. He's going to move into the house that Eli built for his abusive dad.
In other news, Gideon's younger brother Abraham has been masturbating, and leaving "semen loads" all over the house, like in the freezer next to the Dreamsicles.
Left: Selfie. Not Gideon or Abraham
We cut to a church service with Eli Gemstone, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, announcing the start of their streaming service, GODD. We see Jesse's wife Amber, their sons, and Judy's husband BJ in the audience. No partner for Kelvin. He must be single
F*k, yeah! More pecs and dicks after the break
Gemstones Episode 1.2, Continued: Eli catches a snake, Christian poses nude, and Kelvin sees the Devil's Testicle
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.
Kelvin sits up, breathing heavily. The camera moves in for a close-up of his face. He is shocked and confused.
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.
History of the World, Part II: Homophobic jokes, gay subtexts, and Brock O'Hurn. With Ike and Nick nude
History of the World, Part I (1981) was a Mel Brooks vehicle involving sketches parodying various historic periods, from the Stone Age to the Spanish Inquisition, featuring nearly every comedian in the business. To the infinite confusion of audiences, no Part II was intended.
Until 2022, when Part II appeared as a tv series on Hulu, again (mostly) produced, written, directed, and narrated by the 96 year old Mel Brooks -- who appears "swole," borrowing the body of Brock O'Hurn. Three or four time periods are parodied, but I'm going to review only the Civil War.
Episode 1: 1865. In the waning days of the War, President Lincoln asks the drunken Ulysses S. Grant (Ike Barinholtz, left) to take charge of his son, Robert Todd (Nick Robinson): the 22-year old Harvard student has been begging to enlist, and now that the war is nearly over, he can do so safely. This is historically accurate: Robert Todd did serve on Grant's staff for several months in 1865. But he was a "dandy," and Lincoln was gay; both are closeted here.
Every soldier in Virginia has been ordered to deny Grant alcohol, so he decides to take RT on a "dangerous mission."
"I would follow you to the gates of Hell," RT says. Awww, how sweet.
"It's worse than that. We're going to West Virginia." Har, har.
Episode 2: In Rock Ridge, West Virginia, stylized as an Old West town out of Blazing Saddles, RT and Grant try to fit in because "They don't like our kind." He means Yankees, of course, but.... In a tavern, we get a shot of the two holding hands as they both look at the same menu. That's a queer code.
Left: Ike nude
Their cover is blown when Grant tries to use Union currency, and his face is on the bill! Grant is on the $50 bill today, but of course he wasn't during the Civil War. "We hate Yankees!" The scene dissolves when a Red Sox fan starts to complain (the baseball team opposed to the New York Yankees).
The mob (led by Scotty McArthur) leads them out to be hanged. Actually, West Virginia was almost entirely Union-occupied through the war.
They are all dumb as a stump, and can't figure out which way West Virginia is. They end up the Underground Railroad, which is actually a subway run by Harriet Tubman, going the wrong direction.
More gay subtexts after the break
Gemstones Episode 3.8: Is Peter a woman? Are Kelvin and Keefe lovers? Does Jesse dye his sideburns? With a military fetish bonus
Episode 3.7 was the worst in the series due to its chronological disaster, plot incongruity, annoying misdirections, and assertion that the guys were just good buddies. Maybe that was intentional, to disorient the viewers so they would not be expecting Episode 3.8 : It is intricately plotted, and gives us a huge number of queer codes, including one that most fans consider definitive.
Title: "I Will Take You by the Hand and Keep You." Isaiah 42.6, ESV: "I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you." We'll see who gets to hold hands.
Reunited with the Loved Ones: After their rescue, the siblings are taken to Rogers Regional Medical Center to be examined. Gideon must have finally phoned the family, because the partners and kids burst in, coincidentally in the order they need to be in to reach their loved ones without bumping into each other.We cut to the siblings being interviewed by the police. BJ and Gideon stand in front of them. Amber is not present. Keefe waits by the door, still not included in the family; but he does get a bit where he knocks over a trash can and yells "I hate what you had to endure." They all hate Eli, who left them to suffer and possibly be killed.
Next, having established that May-May wasn't in on the kidnapping plot, she and Eli bond.
Which of you is a woman?: With the marital problem plotlines nearly over, we have time for a deep-dive into the Militia.
They stop at Dodge's Fried Chicken, a real fast-food place on Savannah Highway in Charleston (next to a KFC, har har). Marshall continues to grumble. Peter asserts that complaining is "like a woman," and Marshall retorts that he drives "like a woman." They continue to call each other women until Chuck gets tired of it and tells them to focus on the new plan. Whatever it is.
Peter re-asserts his authority: if they rebel against him, they are rebelling against God, because he is the Keeper of the Word. Uh-oh, another Messiah.
We see again parallels between the Militia and Kelvin's God Squad in Season 2: both societies devoted to the masculine, suspicious of women, informed by homoerotic or homosocial desire. run by a messianic figure. The militia is the dark side of Kelvin's God Squad We can go even farther and juxtapose Kelvin's bodybuilder fetish with the militia's fetishization of the soldier.
First, BJ and Judy take a bath together. BJ: "The whole time you were in captivity, I would light candles and just cry." It sounds like they were held for longer than a day. Also, his eye, puffed out from his fight with Stephen, is almost healed. Maybe a week?
Next it's Kelvin and Keefe's turn. Keefe has changed into a sleeveless leather top with gold studs from the Jim Morrison Mr. Mojo collection. The Doors' song "Mr. Mojo Risin'" may be relevant here:
First he eliminates the platonic pal option by asking if Kelvin is dating Taryn. Immediately after asking, he has Kelvin spread his legs, feels up his inner thighs, and starts"taking liberties," as Adam Devine reveals. The actor needed to be semi-aroused so his penis would look bigger for a cut scene with frontal nudity. In-universe, Keefe is answering his own question.
Kelvin: "Nah. She ain't my type." I've heard gay men say "You're not my type" to reject a flirtatious woman without coming out, but why would Kelvin feel the need to be closeted with his ex-boyfriend? This must be a structural ploy to avoid having him say "gay."
He continues: "I hated all the forced claps and laughter and fun times. I like doing claps and laughters with you." I've analyzed this scene in detail, and I still can't think of an in-universe reason for bringing up Taryn's work performance. That wasn't the question, and besides, Kelvin is no longer the church youth minister, so he's in no position to hire Keefe back.
But Keefe assumes that he's talking about the job, and responds in kind: "I love getting the children zazzed up and excited to learn about Jesus with you."
Now Kelvin clarifies that he was answering the "Are you and Taryn dating" question, not "Can I have my old job back?" "I mean, Taryn was nice and all, but she's not you." She was nice, but you can't build a romance from niceness. You need passion.
Keefe understands: "She tried to replace me, but it was a failed try." They're going to be romantic partners, combining eros and phileo, trying to "build something" for the future., regardless of its impact on Kelvin's career. Which shouldn't be a problem. He's not working for the church anymore. They can move to Atlanta and march in Pride Parades.
More reconciliations after the break
Gemstones Episode 3.5: A gay boy's bare butt, castration anxiety, a pukka shell necklace, and three random cocks
Previous: Episode 3.4 Continued: Mistaking dependency for love, two breakups, Kelton's butt, and some Cantonese cocks
Judy's Back Story: Rogers High School, 2000. High school-aged Judy tries to flirt with her crush, art student Trent (Braxton Alexander), by throwing her hair over his desk. He asks her to stop several times, but she says "You know you like it, Stud," embarrassing him in front of the class. Finally he gets even by cutting her hair. Wait -- why isn't the super-rich Judy in private school?
Some fans wonder whether Trent is gay. Of course, lots of straight guys would reject Judy's vulgar come-ons, but Trent wears a pukka shell necklace: according to my research, around 2000, that was a queer code, a way to identify other gay people while leaving the straights oblivious. Plus he's an artist and a musician. "Artistic" and "musical" are often code for "gay."
Kelvin's Little Tiny Doll Pecker: College-age Jesse brings his girlfriend Amber home to meet the family. Is she pregnant? Gideon is going to be born in a year or less.
Background Note: "Titi" is a type of shrub, a type of monkey, your aunt, and an unattractive drag queen. Apparently the writers invented the "penis" meaning to bring to mind the adult Kelvin's obsession with "titty meat."
The Snake Handler. After a scene where Judy bullies Amber and steals her ring, setting up their squabbles in the present, we cut to a service at Peter Montgomery's Pentecostal-like snake-handling church. Actually, he's the only one playing with a snake, while his sons play the guitar and violin, and his wife May-May goes into a filled-with-the-Spirit ecstasy.
Background note: Snake-handling, based upon the injunction to "take up serpents" in Mark 16:17, was introduced by the Church of God with Signs Following during the Great Depression, and spread throughout Appalachia. Today the practice is illegal in most Southern states, including South Carolina, and there are no more than 100 snake-handling churches left.
In Them That Follow (2019), Walton Goggins (Baby Billy) plays the pastor of a snake-handling church.
Gemstone-Montgomery Tensions: At the Gemstone Compound, May-May complains about having to identify herself at the security station, just to put flowers on her father's grave. "You can visit the grave whenever you want," Aimee-Leigh assures her. "We'll have security flag you right on through." But she's not satisfied. Geez, he's been dead since 1995. Haven't you figured out the visitation schedule by now?
Later she bosses Peter around and rejects every effort of Aimee-Leigh to be friendly, suggesting a long-standing feud. We can see parallels in Amber and Judy in the present.
Gay boys and bare butts after the break
Did the "Solar Opposites Valentine's Day Special" really change everything?
Discussing the Solar Opposites Valentine's Day Special, showrunner Josh Bycel noted that holiday specials are usually stand-alone episodes, with no plot or character development: "So we love the idea of [this one] tricking people into realizing like, ‘Oh my God, the end of the episode is actually the biggest thing that’s ever happened to these characters short of landing on Earth!"
Co-creator Mike McMahon adds: "it really changes the dynamic of the characters."
Left: Mike McMahon.
Spoiler alert: Korvo and Terry, have sex.
Solar Opposites is an animated comedy about a group of aliens from the doomed planet Schlorp who crash-land on Earth: team leader Korvo, the "let's do this by the books" micro-manager; the effervescent goofball Terry; their teenage replicants Yumyulack and Jesse, and the Pupa. Korvo and Terry find each other's habits annoying, and often argue about how assimilated they should become.
In the special, the group tries to order cold, wet tuna in a restaurant, only to discover that it's Valentine's Day, so only romantic dinners are available. Should they come back tomorrow, or use their alien science to eliminate romantic love from the world?
Terry asks: "Couldn't we love each other?"
No, all Schlorpians have is teammate affinity. But maybe that will be enough. They have to try.
Terry hates teammate affinity: "It's so annoying that I miss you uncontrollably when you leave the room."
Korvo agrees. He hates "the way it makes the prickly bumps on my arms stand up when you bend over to pick something up from the floor."
Um..guys, that's erotic and romantic desire.....
They get it on.