Ryan Merriman: From gay-vague child star to "girls! girls! girls!" teen to man's man. With a gay kiss, a hot tub cuddle, and his butt

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Gemstones Episode 3.6: BJ swallows a lot, Keefe learns about hard wood, and Kelvin gets a girlfriend. With a nude boxer bonus

In the last episode (before the interlude), we saw the family shattered, with Judy/BJ and Kelvin/Keefe breaking up and the Montgomery boys plotting against Eli.  Now we're going to see life amid the ruins.

Title: "For Out of the Heart Come Evil Thoughts." Matthew 15:19: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." We don't need to match the Gemstone with the sin: they are all guilty of false witness, lying to others or to themselves.

How to Make Things Right: BJ didn't move out, after all,  but the two are barely speaking. Judy asks what she can do to make things right. He doesn't know.  She is despondent. Remember that in 2000, she worried that she would never find anyone who would love her.  It took 18 years, but she finally found someone, and now it's over.

Gay joke: "I swallow a lot, but this may be something I can't choke down."  You just need a little practice.  Ask Keefe for some pointers. 

The Montgomery Boys Leave:  At Eli's mansion, the Montgomerys thank the family for "straightening them out."   Kelvin suggests that it happened "when we dressed them up."  That sounds like a gay reference.  

Jesse says "They're ready to fuck": their next steps should be girlfriends,  intercourse, wives and kids, the whole heterosexual trajectory.  To start them out, he gives them his monster truck, the Redeemer.

 As they drive away, Kelvin takes off his "wedding ring."  If he leaves it off, the relationship will really be over.  He'll be single again.  He puts it back on.  But maybe he is thinking of a heterosexual trajectory of his own. 

Taryn is Back: We cut to Kelvin introducing Taryn, who we last saw at Keefe's "wieners and ice cream" party, as his new assistant youth pastor.  A kid asks about Keefe, and he gets all bitchy: "He is leaving to pursue other opportunities.  Not even sure why you keep bringing that up!" -- while fiddling with his wedding ring again.  He continues to fiddle -- and look despondent -- as Taryn leads the kids in a dance. 

Paying off the Scandal:  The siblings meet with Stephen, his wife, and their lawyer.  They want $500,000 for "damages and emotional distress," or the affair goes viral.  So it's like the blackmail over Jesse's sex-and-drugs party in Season 1, but this time there's no tape.  Judy could just deny that anything happened.  She could even sue him for slander.

Martin suggests paying the money, along with an apology.  Kelvin must be wondering: if it's worth $500,000 to keep an extramarital affair under wraps, how much damage would he cause the church by coming out  -- or being outed.  He doesn't like Taryn in that way -- he doesn't like women in that way -- but what choice does he have?  

After scenes where Baby Billy and Jesse discuss the hologram Aimee-Leigh idea, and BJ stalks Stephen, Kelvin tries to find out if the relationship is really over.

The First Reconciliation Attempt:  We find Keefe working at Woodpecker's Carpentry.  Wood-pecker, har har, the first of many phallic references in this scene.  His earring, necklaces, and rings are gone -- for safety, or to keep closeted?  

Suddenly Kelvin appears. Looking around nervously, Keefe asks "Brother Kelvin, what are you doing here?" Note that he uses formal titles to reaffirm that they have broken up: they are just pastor and parishioner.  No doubt he's worried that Kelvin will out him by referencing their relationship or just being flamboyant.  Kelvin does try his usual titty-tweak, but Keefe doesn't respond.  You're broken up!  You're not allowed to take liberties anymore!

Gay joke: "Master Bishop has taught me a lot in the ways of hard wood." Tell me more about your...um...hard wood.  The odd title "Master," not used for master carpeters, led some fans to speculate that he and Keefer were involved in a BDSM relationship. 

 Wait -- how long has he worked there?  Surely it's only been a few days since the breakup.

Kelvin asks "Have you found happiness?" An odd question. Why not just ask if he likes his new job.?  Keefe says that he has, but of course he's lying.  He's busy working on a reconciliation rocking chair.  He uses the  punching gesture that straight guys sometimes use to ward off physical contact: a bro-hug would be too painful.

Apparently Kelvin expected Keefe to be crying and miserable, lost without him, like in the Season 1 breakup.  Seeing that his ex is doing ok, he becomes bitchy, denigrating the carpentry job and declaring that he's having lots of fun with Taryn: "everybody loves her...no one misses you at all." The happiness facade fails: Keefe frowns and orders him to leave. 

We cut to Judy asking Eli for the bribe money. He exclaims "Can't you children figure out your lives?" and refuses.  

Then the Montgomery Boys zoom the Redeemer into Peter's new militia compound, claiming that they stole it.  But in Episode 2, he sent goons to kill them.  When did they start working for him again?

Don't Mention Cum: BJ bursts into tears while working at his Church Welcome Center job. Jesse and his crew sympathize: Stephen has cuckolded him, taken away his power.  He needs to fight the guy, "knock his dick in the dirt, show him who is the man."  

Crash! BJ complains that he broke his wrist on the punching bag.  "It was limp already," Jesse says: his first homophobic slur ever, again suggesting that Kelvin will have trouble coming out.  The family certainly knows, but they do not want the whole church to know. 

As BJ practices his trash-talk, Jesse tells him to: "Stay focused, don't talk about cum, and show him who the fuck you are."  Good advice for a first date.

After the Rain: At the youth group, Taryn is bouncing on the trampoline, while Kelvin looks on,  despondent.  Shouldn't the kids get a chance to play on it?  

Kelvin's turn: he bounces toward the ceiling, still looking despondent, while Nelson's "After the Rain" plays:

He never really loved you from the start.

The only thng he ever gave you was a broken heart.

Don't be afraid to lose what was never meant to be.

Only after the rain can you find true love again.

So Kelvin has to get over Keefe to find true love?  But there are no other gay guys around..just Taryn...uh-oh....  

Later, after the kids are gone, they are putting gym mats away.  Kelvin says that he was "working some stuff out" while somsersaulting. The staging suggests that he has worked out a way to stay in the closet by adopting a heterosexual facade.  The first step will be asking Taryn for a date.

 He's smiling, complimenting her, setting the scene.  They discuss how to get kids into physical fitness by making it fun, sort of like putting cheese on their broccoli so they'll eat it.  In a parallel, is he trying to use physical fitness to make a heterosexual relationship palatable?

But be careful, Kelv Baby.  In this universe, cheating on your true love is the worst sin imaginable.  It doesn't matter that Keefe broke up with you.  It doesn't matter that Taryn would save you from being outed.  If you stray, you will be punished. 

This is definitely the nadir of the Kelvin/Keefe relationship.  Even after seeing the entire season, knowing what is going to happen, I'm starting to get anxious.

But on the bright side, does anyone still doubt that they were a romantic couple?

Bonus: to reduce your anxiety, Gideon brought pizza.

The Second Reconciliation Attempt: After work, Kelvin and Taryn are putting away gym mats and flirting -- just ask her out, buddy.  It's ok to be bi.   Suddenly Keefe enters with a rocking chair carved with Kelvin's name on a tree. This is way too much for a "let's stay friends" gift: he is attempting a reconciliation. You're the one who left, dude. You could just ask to get back together.

He is not wearing a sexy outfit; actually he is sweaty and rather disheveled, as if he rushed over the moment he finished the chair.  

Why a rocking chair for an athletic 34-year old?  "This is true love: we'll be together forever."  I am reminded of Robert Browning's famous lines from "Rabbi ben Ezra": "Grow old with me -- the best is yet to be."  But viewers may be more familiar with John Lennon's version:

Grow old along with me. Two branches of one tree.

Face the setting sun when the day is done

More after the break

Yani Xander: Headless ghost, Speechless body double, Telugu cop, hottest guy on the planet has a boyfriend and a tree-trunk sized cock

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Foundation: The top 12 hunks of the tv series based on Isaac Asimov's incredibly boring "classic" science fiction

Every three or four years since I was around 15, I've picked up Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1951), lured by assurances that it's a magnificent accomplishment, a classic, essential reading, the book that propelled science fiction from Buck Rogers-style space operas to college literature classrooms.

So I start.  And it's just so darn bo--rrrr--ing that I give up after 10 or 20 pages.  Asimov is obsessed with politics, economics, and business, three of the dullest topics imaginable.  And there are no descriptions of anything.  Ever.  

There's a Foundation tv series on Apple Plus, but from the description it seems to committing an even worse sin: rampant heteronormativity.  So I don't think I'll be watching.  Let's just look at the hunks instead.

We've seen the premise 100 times before, but I suppose that in 1951, it was brand new:  12,000 years after the beginning of the Galactic Empire, it is in decline.  Just like...um...er...the Roman Empire?   Asimov is not good at cultural changes, so people 20,000 or so years from now act exactly the way they did in 1951, smoking cigars, wearing neckties, and filling their offices with men only.  They don't even have automatic elevators.

There are five or six parts, each with different characters.  I've only read the first:  A  young man named Gael travels from the provinces to the galactic hub planet of Trantor.  En route, he explains in detail how the spaceship works, which seems ridiculous.  Do you usually spend your flight thinking about how airplanes work?

1. Alfred Enoch as Raych. There are no women in Foundation except for nondescript wives, so in the tv series Gael becomes a woman, to add gender diversity (and heterosexism).  She gets a boyfriend, Raych, her boss's son.

In the city, Gael befriends a man named Jalen or something (naturally -- there are only male characters).  I'm thinking  "Gay subtext!"  But Jalen turns out to be a spy of the Galactic Empire, trying to get the dirt on his new boss, Hari Seldom or something.

2. Jared Harris as Hari Seldon.

Hairy has invented the field of psychohistory, which can predict societal change.  Asimov obviously doesn't know anything about the social sciences -- societal change is a matter for sociology, not psychology.  He has determined that the Galactic Empire is falling apart, leading to 30,000 years of Dark Ages. 

3. Lee Pace as Brother Day, one of the three emperor clones.  I don't think he appears in the original novels.

Predicting the fall of the Empire doesn't sit well with the Galactic Bigwigs:  They think that Hogwarts is trying to bring about the downfall.  So after an inquisition and trial,  they exile Hungover, Gael, and their workers (plus wives and children) to the planet of Terminus, on the far edge of the galaxy (20,000 years, and they still revere Latin?).

4. Cassion Bilton as Brother Dawn, another of the Emperor Clones.  Don't get excited, he's with a girl.

But it turns out that Hinkley has been manipulating the Galactic Big Wigs behind the scenes.  He wanted to go to Terminus, but he didn't think that his workers would go unless they were forced.  He needs a safe space to work on the vast Encyclopedia Galactica, which will preserve human knowledge and reduce the Dark Ages from 30,000 years to 1,000 years.  

Except it's all a trick.  A distraction.  The narrative switches to many years later, and a man named Salvor Hardin, who I thought was Hari Seldom's great-great grandson, but turns out to be just someone with an equally forgettable four-syllable name.  He discovers that the real goal of the Encyclopedists to start a revolt against...well, I don't know who.  

5. Daniel MacPherson as Hugo Cranst.  In the tv series, Salvor Hardin has become a woman too, so she can fall in love with a Han Solo-type.

By this point, I'm thinking "Life is too short.  I could be reading The Hobbit."  And I understand that the tv series is nothing like the books, anyway.

6. Brandon B. Bell as Han Pritcher, who falls in love with Gael (after her first boyfriend disintegrates) and works for the Foundation, although his real allegiance is to the Second Foundation.  I don't know what that means, either.

More hunks after the break