Gemstones Episode 2.1 Continued: Keefe's kiss, Kelvin's boner, and a thug with broken thumbs. With Jonah Hauer-King and some boners

Previous: 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 being a mother, she argues that she's trying to keep her body "foine" to incite BJ's desire.  Nope, they need to have a family. 

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 women's 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 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

"English Teacher" Episode 1.8: Birthday party at a leather daddy bar, with Evan's work friends getting cruised or fitting in

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Corey Sevier: Dog's best friend, Greek god, Yoga mogul, and shirtless Christmas romcoms. And maybe Peter Brady

You might remember Canadian actor Corey Sevier from the 1997-98 reboot of Lassie.  I never saw it, or the original (1954-74): the melancholy "lost dog" intro is depressing, and who wants to watch a "dog in peril" series?  

I didn't see Summer of the Monkeys (1998), either.  A guy on the Canadian prairie in 1910 adopts four monkeys so he'll have enough money to buy a horse?  Sorry, I went to see Star Trek: Insurrection instead.

Corey's next role of note was Black Sash (2003): a disgraced ex-cop runs a martial arts dojo for teens.  It only lasted for seven episodes.

And North Shore (2004-2005), a Fox sleaze soap opera about women walking around in bikinis at a hotel in Hawaii.  There were some cute guys, too, but this shot will give you an idea of what you had to endure to see them. 

An annoyingly heterosexist entry into young adulthood.

Some minor "show your pecs" roles followed, like Aquaman (2006), with Justin Hartley as the teenager with superpowers, and Surf School (2006), which gives teens who have no surfing experience a week to learn what they need to win the championship.  Say what?

In this shot from Gospel of Deceit (2006), it looks like Corey is in bed with a guy, but the plot synopsis on the IMDB says that a preacher's wife (Alexandra Paul) is having an affair with handyman Cory.

I checked the original movie: It's Alexandra Paul, who uses she/her pronouns.  Lady definitely has a masculine gender presentation: triceps, no breasts, a man's haircut.

The first movie with Corey that I actually saw was The Immortals (2011): I was drawn in by the Greek gods, everyone from Zeus (Luke Evans) to Poseidon (Kellan Lutz).  Corey played Apollo.  Of course, the story was ridiculous, with no connection to any Greek myth.

Left: Matthew G. Taylor as the King's Guard

The IMDB says that Corey is known for Conduct Unbecoming (2011): a soldier is charged with killing civilians in Afghanistan. Of course I wouldn't see that.

In Awaken (2012), Corey meets the Girl of His Deams.  The only problem: she's dead.

And The Northlander (2016), which sounds like Mad Max: crazy-looking people travel through a post-Apocalyptic desert in search of something or other.

Two episodes of Psych: 

Brody, a contestant on a dating game

The model Bryan Frou, who might be gay. A Corey first!

More after the break

"The Breakthrough": Swedish murder mystery with Peter's prick, some Stockholm hunks, and a lot of sobbing.

 In keeping with my new policy of just clicking on whatever a streaming service thinks "I'll LOVE!",  without doing any research, I clicked on The Breakthrough, on Netflix: a detective tracks down a killer, with the help of "an eccentric genealogist."  So they'll fall in love, or on the off-chance that they are both men, there will be some buddy-bonding.  

At least it's in Swedish, so I can use some of the photos from my trips to Stockholm -- one of my favorite cities in Europe (In case you're wondering, it goes: Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Tallinn, Stockholm)

The language is cool, too.  Remember in fairy tales, the monster threatens to "eat you up."  In Swedish, that's how you say "eat":

Eat my sausage.

Ät min korv opp

Episode 1: "The Unthinkable."  

Scene 1: "On October 19, 2004, a murder investigation begins: the second largest criminal investigation in Swedish history." Cut to a bedroom, with an Arab or North African Dad showing his son Adnan how to use a watch: "When the hands reach 12:00, a new day begins, and then another, forever and ever.  Time always moves forward."  Then why are we so obsessed with the past? 

Someone types on a computer "Must kill."

Scene 2: Linkoping, in southern Sweden about 2 hours from Stockhom by train.  This all happens in montage, splitting back and forth.

1. The Detective (Peter Eggers) jogs past a soccer game, says hello to a guy he knows, pets a dog.  

2. Mom wakes up Adnan and his sister, who now have bunk beds, for breakfast with their Dad.  They all cuddle and smooch and discuss how much they love each other.  Not once, as I was eating my cereal, did my mother ever smooch the top of my head and say "I love you so, so, so much."  Thankfully.

 Adnan sets off for school.

3. An old guy and his wife hold hands in bed. She has nail polish of a very strange color, like an orange push-up (remember those?).  They get up and discuss ringing Samuel about Christmas. Maybe there will be a cute son droppiong by? Wife leaves and heads through the park.

4. A man with a hidden face rides on the subway.  He gets off and head down the street, fingering a knife.

You know where this is headed, right?  The Man stabs Adnan; the wife sees him, so he stabs her, too.  Why is the park so empty in the morning, if everybody walks  through it on their way to school or work?

Scene 3: Another montage.

1. The Detective brings food home to his pregnant wife (established as heterosexual at Minute 4.5). Close up of his hand with a wedding ring on her stomach.  Ok, the heteronormativity is getting a little loud in here. He gets a call about the murders.

2. Adnan's sister walks past the cordoned-off area and sees his toy tyrannasaurus.  She runs to his school to check -- nope, not there. 

Scene 4:  You heard me.

Left:Peter's prick

1. The Detective listening to his car radio, reports about how we're all doomed.  Is this a post-Apocalyptic series, or is it just supposed to set a dark/depressing mood.  At the crime scene: the woman is still alive, at the hospital.  Adnan is dead.  A witness, a woman who was cycling past.  They start canvassing house to house.  Uh-oh, a man is watching from afar.  Must be the murderer.

2. The Husband of the Injured Woman calls Samuel to see about Christmas.  Samuel does not appear in the credits, so why is he being emphasized so much?  A cop knocks on the door: "A woman was assaulted in the park across the street at 8:00 am.  Did you see anything?" 

"No, but my wife, who I love more than anything else in the world, was walking through that park at 8:00 am.  Maybe she saw something...oh."

3. Adnan's parents arrive at his school to see his sister wrapped in a blanket, crying.  

Scene 5:  Maybe we're done with the montages.  The Detective in a parking garage, calling his wife.  She doesn't think he should lead the investigation, with the baby due any minute.  Wait -- is this all going to take place in 2004?  I thought we would jump ahead, with the main story in 2024.  Otherwise what's the point?  It's just a murder story.

Next the Detective addresses plain-clothes cops or community members.  The Wife has died, so it's a double murder.  He sends them out to check if anyone in the neighborhood knows anything

He interviews the Witness and her husband, but she can't remember what he looked like.  

More crying and some cocks after the break.