Previous: Gemstones Episode 2.4: BJ gets baptized, Baby Billy gets Funyons, Kelvin gets dissed, and Harmon gets a cat. With Israeli and Egyptian men
The Baptism After-Party: An elaborate affair, with many humorous set-pieces that reveal the inner state of the characters:
Levi, the only single member of Jesse's crew, dances joyously by himself amid dozens of pink balloons.
A life-sized BJ cake, so you have to cut slices out of his head.
The outraged Kelvin chooses two cupcakes, carefully removes the pins, places a napkin on top of them, and splat!
Jesse and Amber seethe with rage as Eli dances with a lady.
Eli tries to be friendly to BJ's family, but Judy interrupts him: "They're from Asheville. They hate God." "Yes, but God loves them."
When BJ enters in his shiny pink "romper with a cummerbund," his family criticizes him for being feminine, but he counters that men can wear one-pieces. Then they complain that he is a child, a little baby, not a man at all. (Notice the parallel with Kelvin constantly trying to prove that he is a "fully-grown adult man."). He's ridiculous, the Gemstones are ridiculous, he's ruining his life. BJ rushes back to his dressing room and tears off the outfit (some momentary beefcake).
Since when does Eli Gemstone like ladies?;. As the party is winding down, Kelvin and Jesse meet at the baptistry and discuss how Eli always ruins their plans, "I wish I could fight that man!" Kelvin exclaims. "I'd destroy him...make him look like a fool." Eavesdropping, Baby Billy notes that he's wanted to fight Eli many times over the years.
Kelvin tells him that Eli has been having sexual encounters with "multiple somebodies" Jesse continues: "Dude fancies himself a damn cocksmith...trying to make himself into a big character for the ladies." Interesting that Jesse specifies women, but Kelvin does not. Women just don't pop into his head when he thinks of sex.
Baby Billy finds this hard to believe. "Eli Gemstone...with the ladies?" Why, when you were young, was he just into guys?
All women want to screw their brothers: Judy accosts BJ's sister KJ in the ladies' room, claiming that "siblings have to hate siblings' spouses." Jesse and Kelvin hate BJ, because he "took her off the market," made her unavailable: "They may be my brothers, but that don't mean they're not sitting in their room at night, thinking they might someday get to hook up with me." Does she not know that Kelvin is gay, or does it not matter?
KJ protests that Judy's theory is "disgusting": she would never hook up with her brother. "Well, what if I held a gun to your head?" Then she might consider it. "I knew it!" Judy exclaims in triumph. "BJ is mine! Stop fighting me for him!"
The Fist Fight: As Keefe passes out the food he stole, Kelvin seethes and bursts balloons, and KJ complains that the Gemstones are a "train wreck" of a family, BJ throws a piece of cake at her -- which hits Eli just as he is schmoozing with a senator! "You kids are an embarrassment!" he exclaims.
As Eli leaves the party, Kelvin appears to yell him about the Judean desert trip: "You made me look like a fool in front of my men."
"I'm not spending one cent so you and your muscle boys can frolick in the desert!' Frolick is feminine: Eli believes that Kelvin is planning an homoerotic orgy in the desert. Referring to them as muscle boys, not men, enrages Kelvin, and he attacks.
The two have a fist fight in the foyer of the church, with everyone watching, Keefe and the musclemen doing a chest-pound display of loyalty. Kelvin throws one of BJ's gifts at Eli: he ducks, and it smashes a picture of Aimee-Leigh.
"You could have killed me!"
"I wish I had!" Kelvin cries. Wait -- killing your father, hooking up with your siblings. This episode is overloaded with Freudian symbolism.
Eli pins him in the thumb-breaking position and demands an apology. Kelvin refuses, and taunts that he doesn't have "the balls" to actually follow through. A call back to Eli's testicle injury in Episode 2.3, a symbolic castration that has rendered him impotent.
But Eli does it! I suppose I don't need to point out that in Freudian theory, the thumb is a stand-in for the penis, so Kelvin's broken thumbs represent yet another symbolic castration. But this time it is the father who performs the castration, rendering his own son impotent.
More after the break
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