Alex Saxon: From fundamentalist Missouri to ace and trans roles to androgynous teen angst hunk. With his n*de older brother

A new Righteous Gemstones character has appeared in the Episode 4.1 cast list, Alex Saxon as "Thaddeus," no doubt a Civil War guy.

According to Alex Saxon's biography on the IMDB, he was born in  1987 in Liberty, Missouri, 15 miles north of Kansas City, began acting in the theater at age 8.

A femme appearance, in the theater, and living in Liberty, Missouri.  I can't imagine how terrible the bullying was.

He sang, danced, and sometimes acted in Bye Bye Birdie, Jekyll& Hyde: The Musical, Grease, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Breakfast Club Live

After high school, he enrolled at William Jewell College as a pre-med major, but then changed to Psychology and Applied Critical Thought, with a minor in Chemistry.  He graduated magna cum laude in 2009.

The William Jewell College in Liberty is affiliated with the Baptist Church, so I imagine that it's not at all gay friendly. 

He hit Los Angeles in 2011, and began acting for the screen:

A vampire guy at the Big Dance in an episode of Awkward (2011).

The Olivia Experiment (2012): A woman suspects that she is asexual, so she accepts a friend's offer of sex with her own boyfriend to find out.  That is wrong on so many levels.  You know whether you're into sex or not without actually having it.  That's like the people who ask "How do you know you don't like sex with women unless you've tried it?"  Easy...look at a woman, and ask yourself "Do you want to have sex with her?"

Alex plays a member of the Asexual Support Group, where Olivia is informed that she's not really asexual, she's just afraid to open up to intimacy.  

Young Paul Holt in Chapman (2013), which seems to be a Western.

Young Henry Bird in The Advocates (2013), which seems to be about lawyers

Chloe in two episodes of Ray Donovan (2013-2015): a "transvestite" hooker who is blackmailing movie star Tommy (Austin Nichols) to get money for "a sex change."  What is this, 1975?  The vocabulary is all wrong.  Transgender people don't get "sex changes," they transition.

Coin Heist (2017), about four teens -- "the hacker, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student," who scheme to steal from the U.S. Mint.  Alex, with relatively short hair, plays the Slacker, who is the ex-boyfriend of the Perfect Student (a girl, of course) and falls in love with the Hacker (a girl, of course).  Not to worry, the Perfect Student hooks up with the Athlete (a boy, of course), so everything is all tied up into a nice little heteronormative package.

Then it's back to long hair for 28 episodes of the teen angst series The Fosters (2013-18), as Callie's on-off boyfriend

36 episodes of the teen angst series Finding Carter (2014-15) as the on-off boyfriend of Carter's sister.

10 episodes of The Fix (2019) as the stepson of Sevvy Johnson (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), an actor accused of murdering two of his girlfriends.  He assaults his father, gets into fights, and does other deviant stuff while dating girls.

62 episodes of Nancy Drew(2019-23), as a drug-addled outsider who becomes one of the teen sleuth's scoobies and dates girls.

An episode of Criminal Minds as Pete Bailey, younger brother of the murdered Deputy Director Doug Bailey (Nicholas D'Agosto, left).

Noticing a pattern in Alex's screen presence? Long hair, soft, feminine, gay-coded in spite of his characters' endless series of girlfriends.

He doesn't have Instagram, and his X just promotes his tv series, so his personal life is up for speculation.  LezWatch calls him cisgender heterosexual, but that may just be default.

Could he be gay in real life?

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.6, Continued: Torsten gets ** up, Keefe holds Kelvin's di*k, and Sky is skyclad. With random skyclad dudes

Previous: Episode 2.6: Yep, they had sex. Plus Judy grows a heart,  Torsten a brain, and Amber the noive.  With an orgasmic bonus

Kelvin and Keefe have returned to the God Squad, but muscleman Torsten (Brock O'Hurn) challenges their authority.  He's the strongest, so he should be the ruler. 

The Second Cross-Raising Test: This time the contestants not only have to carry the gigantic phallic symbol, they have to push  nto an upright position.  So whoever achieves a proper erection is the leader.  And it goes on like that. What do you expect from a society dedicated to homoerotic desire?

First Torstein tries, and succeeds!  "He got it...up!" Liam exclaims.  

It's Kelvin's turn, but since he is injured, Keefe goes in his stead.  First he strips to his jock strap.  "You don't have to...." Kelvin begins, but then he likes what he sees and says "Ok."  

Keefe does several splits on the ground, presenting himself as a valid object of desire.  We get a shot of a very interested muscleman; apparently Kelvin didn't realize that a group of gay alphas was bound to include a few tops.  

Keefe tries, but staggers under the heavy weight.  A concerned boyfriend, Kelvin yells "Get it off him!", and the contest ends. 

Moderator Sky (Joel Rush, left and below) asks: "Do you concede?"

Kelvin kneels and indicates that he does. Torsten achieved the best erection, so he will now lead the God Squad. 

Sky: "Clean your underwears out of the master. Torsten stays there now."

Two questions: Why underwear, and not all of his clothes?  Because underwear has a sexual connotation.  Kelvin's erotic supremacy is over.

Why underwears?   Usually underwear is a mass noun, like water or rice.  It doesn't have a plural. Sky is referring to two sets of underwear, Kelvin's and Keefe's.  They share the master bedroom, so both are ejected.

Jesse tries to man up:   Jesse and the family watch Wonder Woman (har-har) and discuss who shot the Cycle Ninja.  Everybody thinks that it was Amber, which Jesse continues to find emasculating. Amber mollifies him: you were trying to help.  You're just a terrible shot.  This was not a symbolic castration, but we can still find a parallel with Kelvin's loss of power with the God Squad.  

She continues, whispering in his ear like Lady Macbeth: Why do you need your Daddy's permission.  You're a man, aren't you?  Take care of the Junior problem yourself.

Left: Justin Deeley as Macbeth

Inspired by a painting of David and Goliath, he distributes slingshots to the men's group and asks for volunteers to go to Memphis and "beat the shit out of some guys."  He needs a second chance to "be a man." 

Skyclad guys after the break 

Caleb Ruminer: From fundamentalist Arkansas to angst drama, softcore straight porn, j/o videos, and gay teases

 

In the teen drama Finding Carter (2014-2015), 16-year old Carter (Kathryn Prescott) discovers that the woman she thinks of as her mother actually kidnapped her when she was three.  She is reunited with her birth family, and must juggle the standard high school "boyfriends! fashion!  mean girls!" drama with soap opera angst: kidnapping, insanity, sexual assault, cancer, drug abuse, murder, "shocking revelations," and "dark secrets."

She has two potential boyfriends, the violent drug dealer Crash (Caleb Ruminer) and the kind, gentle Max (Alex Saxon). 

There are two lesbian characters, Madison and Bird, who face extensive homophobia, go through extensive angst, and date Max before figuring "it" out. 

I've already done a profile of Alex Saxon, so this is about Caleb Ruminer,  which is hard to type without it sounding dirty.  It means "someone who ruminates," fixates on negative thoughts.

Caleb was born in Cabot, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock.   Ulp.

He found his passion for acting while singing in church, appearing in church plays, and so on. Ulp.

After graduating from high school, he attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, AMDA, in Los Angeles, for two years. Then dropped out because they were too liberal?

His first acting gig was an 2013 episode of Castle, as the brother of a teenager who would grow up to be on death row.

Then came the unyielding angst of Finding Carter 

In a 2014 interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (wait -- there are Democrats in Arkansas?), Caleb talks about a struggle with being a Christian and playing a bad dude.  But, he figures, the bad dude is never praised for committing sins, so it's ok.  He found a church in Los Angeles where they talk about how you can be Christian and an actor.  

Ulp.  Doubtless there's some (a lot) of homophobia in Caleb's background.

But some penises, too (after the break)

After Carter, Caleb starred in Lethal Seduction (2015), which is what it sounds like: teenager Caleb is seduced by his cougar neighbor, who influences him to do  a lot of deviant stuff.  His mother is also in love with him, so the two psychos have an increasingly violent tug-of-war with Caleb in the middle. Plus he has a teen girlfriend and a best buddy (Sam Lerner, right)

Sam Lerner is best known as Geoff Schwartz on The Goldbergs (2014-23). Here he chills with some very gifted homies.

Next Caleb had guest spots on:

Episode 1.5 of The World According to Billy Potwin (2018), about a far-right anti-vax 13-year old in a family of liberals. Like Family Ties? 

Episode 1.1 of Strange Ones (2018): "Two enigmatic travelers make their way across a remote landscape," facing paranormal peril. First up: an abused high school girl conjures a demon.  Wait, a movie entitled The Strange Ones and a tv series called Strange Ones both premiered in 2018.  I may be mixing them up.

Episode 2.3 of Dirty John: Betty Broderick (2020), a true-crime show about the woman who murdered her ex-husband (Christian Slater) and his new wife in 1989.  "Betty takes a desperate step to save her marriage."

Episode 1.1 of The Irrational (2023): A professor (Jesse L. Martin, left) uses his knowledge of human nature to solve murders.  His roommate and best friend is a queer woman.

Caleb's character is a former Marine suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse.  Figures.

Dude, try a comedy.  They aren't that bad.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

Gemstones Episode 2.6: Yep, they have sex. Plus Judy grows a heart, Torsten a brain, and Amber the noive.

Previous: Episode 2.5: Yep, Kelvin is gay.  But there's embezzlement, murder, and accountant cocks, too. 

Title: "Never Avenge Yourselves, but Leave It to the Wrath of God." Romans 12:19.  Who will suffer God's wrath?

Episode 2.6 has that controversial scene that fans are still arguing about, three seconds that have been analyzed backward and forward, frame by frame. Are they having sex or getting dressed?  But really, it's so obvious that it could become porn with only a few minor changes in the actors' directions. It's so obvious that I can't even put a screen shot at the top photo without getting a "sensitive" tag.   But first we have some unfinished business to attend to.

The Cycle Ninjas:  We begin immediately after the Cycle Ninja attack in Episode 2.4.  Jesse and Amber grab guns and fire on them as they zoom off, grazing one.  He falls off  his motorcycle, but jumps onto his colleague's and gives them the finger.

Later the family, except for Kelvin, gathers in Eli's drawing room to discuss the incident with Sheriff Brenda.  Judy thinks that it was a case of road rage.  Sheriff Brenda thinks that it was a botched robbery by some teenagers: professional assassins would have finished the job.  Eli is sure that Junior sent the Cycle Ninjas to kill him.  Other family members are at risk too, so he puts the compound on lockdown.

Judy complains about being stuck at home, with Tiffany living there after Baby Billy abandoned her. "She cleans everything with vinegar."  Not the time for complaints, girl.  Eli agrees: "Are you incapable of thinking of anyone but yourself?"

Out on the porch, Eli asks if Jesse has been to see Kelvin since the assault: "No. we ain't friends.  He grew up to be a nerd." 

The Second Dressing Room Scene:  We cut to a full body front-and-rear shot of Kelvin, as he stands naked in front of the mirror in his dressing room. "Look at me," he tells Keefe, "A grotesque reflection of what I once was." Dude, you're not going to get any sympathy with that incredible body on display.

 He is distraught over the fight with his father and the loss of the God Squad; he has been de-manned by the symbolic castration. Why should he get dressed?  "I shall remain hidden, like the beast I've become."

 Keefe advises that dressing for the day "soothes the soul," and drops to his knees.  Kelvin pushes his head forward and down to begin oral sex.  We see and (and hear) his climax, orgasm, and post-orgasm release.  Keefe swallows and says "nice." 

The scene lasts only a few seconds, and thus is easy to miss (I missed it the first time).  And it is immersed in the act of getting dressed.  Viewers are expected to be unsure whether they had sex or not, thus continuing the "are they or aren't they?" speculation. 

But the non-sexual explanation makes no sense: 

While stepping into his Tommy Johns, Kelvin steadies himself by pushing on Keefe's head. You steady yourself on your friend's shoulders, not on his head.

Using his hands to push is painful.  Elsewhere he is shown using the palms and base of his hands without pain.  

Keefe says "nice" because...um... Go on? 

Structurally, it is a logical conclusion of the first dressing room scene.  The guys move from quasi-sexual erotic activity to an overt sexual act.

It makes sense for Kelvin's character. He that his injury has rendered him impotent in a society dedicated to the phallus, grotesque in a society that prizes male beauty.   What better way to demonstrate that he is still potent, still beautiful? 

It makes sense for Keefe's character.  You've just gotten a good look at the amazingly hot backside of the Man of Your Dreams, and now you are kneeling with your face three inches from his amazingly hot cock --aroused by your proximity.  What guy could resist going down?

Afterwards, Keefe helps Kelvin get dressed, boops his nose, and puckers up for a kiss.  Kelvin moves in, then changes his mind and abruptly turns aside.  He still resists the idea of romantic love, but he is gradually coming around.

Down in the yard, the God Squad is running a motorcycle over the tennis court and otherwise wilding.  They've even moved into the house.  Kelvin is horrified: "Our empire is crumbling."  Notice that it's now "our" empire; they are equal partners.  Keefe encourages him to prove that he is still strong, physically and mentally: "Your will is not broken, even though your thumbs are."

Judy Grows a Heart:  Judy is signing fan photos with an erect penis and "stay horny," a call back to the Kelvin/Keefe sex scene, while Tiffany calls the area hospitals to see if Baby Billy was  admitted.  Judy scoffs: "He abandoned you."  But Tiffany can't believe it.  Maybe he's still looking for Funyons, and will return with the car loaded-down with them. Maybe he had a stroke, and doesn't remember who he is.  What if he's dead?  

Tiffany starts to cry,  and Judy starts to feel compassion, "thinking of someone other than herself" for maybe the first time in her life. This reminds me of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz: "If I only had a heart."

Amber Grows Courageous.  Next the Cowardly Lion: "If I only had the noive." At the marital support group, Amber brags about how she chased off the Cycle Ninjas and shot one from 50 yards away.  The women cheer.  Jesse, feeling threatened, argues that they were both shooting, and it's unclear who actually "grazed " the Ninja,  The women aren't having it.  Amber luxuriates in the cheers, feeling for the first time that she's her own person, not just an extension of her partner. 

 Later, Jesse's crew tries to console him for being de-manned by his wife. They suggest some buddy-bonding over craft beers, but he refuses.  He's too upset about "the whole church sucking my wife's dick." Another call-back to Kelvin's blow job.

Hand-holding and orgasms after the break