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

Jake Satow: Saving Christmas, a Christian horse, a nonbinary internet celebrity, and the Baywatch guy

 

I was looking for actors who played nonbinary characters, and the name "Jake Satow" popped up.  Never heard of him, but he's attractive, so I checked the listing on IMDB.

He has 18 acting credits.  The most recent is Saving Christmas Spirit, 2022.  

How many times does that holiday need saving?

Spoiler alert: Christmas Spirit is a store that needs saving.  Jake plays a teenager who gets a girlfriend.

Adeline, 2022, is about a horse that heals people in a small town.  I swear, I'm not making this up.  Presumably a Christian movie, since one of the IMDB reviews says something like "Stop the insanity. The Bible isn't real." 

It stars 1980s hunks John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard, bottom photo, and David Chokachi from Baywatch, butt left.

Jake had a busy 2022.  Other roles include Howard Hunt's son in Gaslit,  which has a maddenly misleading title.  You expect the gaslit Victorian era, with hanson cabs clattering down cobblestone streets.  It's about Watergate.

Hockey Trophy Jake in Breathing Happy, about a recovering drug addict celebrating his first year of sobriety on Christmas Day, naturally. Other characters are named the Mysterious Door, the Golden Door, and Salvation Elf.  Another Christian movie, I imagine. 

Christian Holmes at age 14 in The Dropout, about a woman dropping out of college to start a tech company that revolutionalizes the health care industry.  Christian Holmes at age adult is her husband.

This is all terribly heteronormative. 

Before 2022, Jake was starring in a lot of shorts: a clown with marital problems, the morning announcements at a middle school, an alarm clock going off an hour early, dad dying, and Christmas.  They all have about the same cast, so I'm guessing local productions.

His website lists a theatrical production, The Honorary Counsel, performed with the actors in Zoom rooms, plus modeling on runways for Columbus Fashion Week and for Macy's and Homage.  

No indication of nonbinary, trans, or otherwise LGBTQ roles.  Maybe in real life?

Jake has 17,000 followers on Instagram.  His profile says says "Christian"...uh-oh, probably homophobic... SAG/AFTRA....The Dropout, and Saving Christmas Spirit.

More after the break

"Rock Paper Scissors": Paper meets the Girl, Rock proves that he's a Dave. With two gay characters, four Danny dicks, and Mickey from "Seinfeld"

"Rock Paper Scissors" is a game where players turn their hands into the objects, hoping that theirs will cover, crush or otherwise defeat their opponents.  

Here Kramer and his gay-subtext buddy Mickey (Michael Richards, Danny Woodburn) play on an episode of Seinfeld.

Want to see Danny's dick? 

I feel bad about the misdirection, so I put a really Danny dick on top:  Danny Hobson, who hopes to Win the Girl on Naked Attraction (2017).  Plus some explicit photos after the break.

When Paramount Plus recommended a tv series called Rock Paper Scissors, I figured it was for preschoolers, like Bananas in Pajamas.  But the fan wiki states that there are two walk-on gay characters, Hipponoid Commander (Episodes 1.1) and Dave (Episode 1.14), and Common Sense Media (the homophobic one) says that it is "completely inappropriate," with "strong LGBT undertones."  Can't let gay kids know that they exist!  So we'll check it out.

Episode 1.1, "Paper's Big Lie"

Intellectual Paper (Thomas Lennon), trying to invent something, is annoyed by the loud ninja practice of his roommates, athletic Rock (Ron Funches) and hipster Scissors (Carlos Alarazqui).  There's a knock on the door: it's their new neighbor, a female Pencil.

Cliche shot of Pencil walking in slow motion, her long hair blowing in the wind, while Paper gushes in "girl of my dreams" ecstasy.

She works for a high-tech company, so he pretends that he has a high-tech job, too.  His brain objects: "You work at a crappy store that sells technology."  But his nether parts outrank his brain.

Even when Pencil asks for a tour: Paper puts up a poorly drawn sign and claims that she can't go inside because they're working on a top-secret device that will produce unlimited food out of nothing. 

The human boss yells: "I don't pay you to talk to girls, I pay you to unravel the pile of wires in the back room."

This makes Pencil a bit suspicious, but not the President of the United States: she saw the sign and figured that Paper must be super-smart.  The world needs his help. Lady is not too bright, is she?

Problem: The Hipponoids, "the most dangerous species in the galaxy," have the Earth surrounded.  The  Commander (Darin de Paul) explains that their planet is low on food, so Earth must hand over its supply. 

Perfect!  Pencil announces that Paper can make a device that will produce unlimited food, with no raw materials needed.

Paper's brain begs him to admit that he knows nothing about technology, but no, he thinks he can still find a way to fix this and Win the Girl.

In the workshop, Pencil praises Paper's tech expertise while building the device herself.  She seems to be just as invested as Paper in keeping up the Big Lie.  There must be some "Boy of My Dreams" going on.

When they show the device to the Hipponoid Comander, Paper tries to take credit, but accidentally breaks it.  He lies about that, too.

New plan: he'll bring his ninja roommates Rock and Scissors to the ship, and they'll knock out the aliens before they can invade the planet.

That doesn't work.  Finally Paper decides to come clean: "I was just trying to impress someone that I like, and the lie got out of control."

The Commander is sympathetic: back on the home world, he was an office drone, but he lied that he was  a great warrior to impress his crush.   Then he had to join the space force, and somehow he rose up in the ranks to become commander.

"There he is -- handsome, huh?"  The crush looks rather goofy, but Paper agrees.

"I've had to keep up this lie for 50 years!"  You'd better seal the deal soon, buddy. "And I can't invade Earth because then he'll find out that I lied, and never speak to me again."

Paper and the Commander find a solution that permits them to retain both lies: they pretend to use hand-to-hand combat to decide the fate of the Earth.  Paper wins, but "Your Commander is so tough that he 'accidentally' destroyed the device."

Whoops, Rock just fixed it. 

Gay Representation: The Commander as a muscular being fights stereotypes, and Paper responds nonchalantly to his crush on a male.  The writers could easily given him a crush on a female warrior, so this is a positive step.  But how about a scene where the Commander actually interacts with the crush? B

Episode 1.14, "The Character Quiz"

The guys' favorite tv show is The Gang's All Here, with 27 people living under one roof.  They take a quiz to see which character they are.  Paper and Scissors got Stephernie, so they are invited to the Stephernie Party next door (hosted by this muscular mouse).  Rock wants to be Dave, "kind, stylish, and made of granite," but he gets Creepo the Stinkboy.

"That can't be right!  I know who I am!"

At the Stephernie party: one of the guests brought the wrong kind of pizza, so is obviously just a wannabe, not a real Stephernie.  Each guest is quizzed about details that only a true fan would know, like her last name.  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Weird Science, the movie and tv show: three gay-subtext couples, two gay-vague guys, and a lot of bulges and butts. Plus Lee's dick.

Weird Science (1985) is a John Hughes brat pack comedy with a paranormal twist. Nerds Gary and Wyatt's (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan-Mitchell Smith) are discouraged because the Girls of Their Dreams are dating a pair of belligerent, obnoxious preppies (Robert Downey Jr., Robert Rusler), and won't give them a chance (maybe they're not into three-ways?  Try asking them out separately).  So they use a computer to create their perfect dream girl, Lisa: she is not only hot but super-smart, plus she has magical powers.

I forget most of the plot after 40 years, but wikipedia has helpfully filled in the details, Instead of having sex with them, Lisa conjures them a car, gets them fake ids, and hosts a wild party, where she thwarts their adversaries and their bullying older brother, military-school graduate Chet (Bill Paxton, butt right).

She also summons a pack of rabid bikers to kidnap the Girls, so Gary and Wyatt can mount a daring rescue and win them.

It was cheesy stuff, and entirely heteronormative.  There was a scattering of the incessant homophobia that one sees in every John Hughes movie, but spewed by the evil Chet, not by one of the good guys.  That was a big win in the era.  

Plus some strong gay subtexts between Gary and Wyatt and the prettyboy preppies Ian and Max.  And quite a surprising amount of beefcake, including Ilan Mitchell-Smith's bulge and Bill Paxton's butt.

I wanted to do a "any gay roles/are they gay in real life" profile of one of the guys, but I can't find anything suitable.

Don't pay attention to the femme-half shirt and girly underwear.  Ilan-Mitchell Smith, now a history professor, is straight in real life.

Anthony Michael Hall, the darling of the Brat Pack, appeared in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Johnny B Goode, and as an adult The Dead Zone and Awkward.  Straight characters, with maybe one exception, and straight in real life.

Brat Packer Robert Downey Jr. appeared in Back to School, The Pick-Up Artist, Johnny B. Goode, became famous for Chaplin (playing the silent-era comedian), and went on to play Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.  More straight characters, with maybe one exception, and....well, you get the idea.

At least we know that Robert Rusler (butt left) is a gay ally: he befriended his Nightmare on Elm Street 2 co-star Mark Patton, and took him to some of the gay bars in West Hollywood (no, we never met).  But his tv work, in The Outsiders, Babylon 5, Snoops, Murder She Wrote, Bones, Ray Donovan...as far as I can tell, all heteronormative.  And...straight in real life.

Let's try the Weird Science TV Series.

It aired on the USA Network from 1994 to 1998. I watched on occasion, usually while on the treadmill at the gym. Gary and Wyatt are now played by Michael Manasseri and John Mallory Asher. Lisa characterizes herself as a "magic genie," and Wyatt's parents are absent, leaving his older brother Chet (Lee Tergesen) to look after/bully them.  

The "winning the Girl of Our Dreams" plotline appeared in just the first two or three episodes; later Lisa turns the boys into girls, clones them,  turns them into rock stars, traps them in a horror movie, traps them in The Twilight Zone, transports them to the Old West, and brings a video game villain to life. 

More after the break