The ten best "Righteous Gemstone" episodes, from "Wicked Lips" to the Season 4 Interlude. Plus the ten worst "WTF?" episodes.

  

Link to the NSFW version

The 36 episodes of the Righteous Gemstones are a mixed bag.  Some are marvels of cinematic craftsmanship, tightly plotted, exciting, rewarding a careful investigation of props and background songs, and loaded down with queer codeds.   Others are, to use the scholarly term, crap, with horrendous plot holes, terrible pacing, misleading props and background songs. and just a few queer crumbs -- if not outright queerbaiting. 

The Ten Best Episodes

1.4, "Wicked Lips."  Scotty and Gideon go on a date, and discuss their bedroom activity later. Keefe hasn't thought of Kelvin as a potential boyfriend yet, so he looks for love in a sports bar, and then encounters his old Satanist friends.  Plus Semen Load Guy (left).

1.7, "And Yet One of You is a Devil."  Scotty and Gideon break up, and each tries to pretend that it was just a fling, not true love.  But it doesn't work: Scotty kidnaps his ex-boyfriend and his father, forces them to open the church vault, and cries "You made your choice, and broke my heart" before driving off into oblivion.  Not to worry, Aimee-Leigh brings Scotty back to his true love.

1.9: "Better is the End of the Thing than the Beginning"  After breaking up with Keefe, Kelvin nearly comes out, but decides he's probably the Messiah instead. Keefe returns to the Satanists, and does a performance art piece where he is immersed in a tub of jizz.  Kelvin comes rushing to the rescue. And we see Keefe's d*ck (again).

2.1, "I Speak in the Tongues of Men and Angels."  Who knew that the world-famous televangelist Eli Gemstone started his career as a loan enforcer, breaking thumbs, along with his boyfriend Junior?  And Kelvin becomes the Messiah of Muscle, with a cadre of musclemen lifting weights and frolicking in his front yard.

     2.6: "Never Avenge Yourself, but Leave It to the Wrath of God."  Keefe and Kelvin do bedroom stuff, but fans argued that he was just helping him on with his underwear, leading to extensive conversations about how professionals help invalids get dressed (hint: you don't kneel in front of them).  The God Squad takes over the mansion, forcing Kelvin to become their maid and Keefe to become their s*x slave.  And Eli breaks up with Junior, who runs off broken-hearted (and fans argued that they were just friends!).

2.9: "I Will Tell of All Your Deeds"  The mysteries are all resolved in a way that makes sense, Eli and Junior reconcile, Junior gets a new boyfriend, and Keefe is admitted to the family as Kelvin's partner.  Plus the song "Some Broken Hearts Never Mend" has us all in tears.

3.3: "For Their N*kedness is Your N*kedness."  Kelvin almost calls Keefe his "boyfriend."  Keefe performs a highly erotic fire dance at Cousin's Night.  Afterwards they're shown on their way home for "hot s*x."  Plus Robert Oberst, a Norwegian Fire Viking, and a Balkan s*x god.

3.5: "Interlude 3."  Kelvin is obviously gay, we see Braxton Alexander's bare backside, and Uncle Peter has a beautifully-staged decline and fall.

 4.4.: "He Goeth Before You into Galilee."  At the Lake House, the siblings try various pranks to make their dad Elijah break up with his new girlfriend.  A pleasant, rather fluffy episode.  Plus we see Keefe in drag and a lot of male Gemstones in swimsuits, and Pontius is identified as gay or bi. The only plot problem: when Eli and Lori don't come down for breakfast, the siblings burst into their bedroom, and catch them in the act.  Who would do that? 

4.5: "Interlude IV." The night that the Golden Bible was stolen.  Plus Kelvin as an obviously gay teen idol fan, an effervescent Young Corey, and Young Jesse in his underwear.  I like how Jesse accidentally drinks the intruder's urine, a callback to Keefe's worry about the devil's urine earlier.

Worst episodes after the break

Jensen Gering: Fans say that he's gay, and played a gay singer on Nickelodeon. Are they right? With his brother, dad, Giovanni Ribisi, and Drake Bell

 

Link to the n*de photos

I found a file named "Jason Gehring" at the bottom of my "profiles to do."   There are several Jason Gehrings out there: a baker with a Grindr profile, a nurse from Milwaukee, an artist from Germany, and a history student from Syracuse, but none of them look like this.

Could it be "Jensen Gering" (no h), who has 70 pages of photos on the teen idol site?  A brief google reveals that Jensen is either gay in real life or played a gay character in a teencom called Erin and Aaron, or both, so let's try a profile.

Jensen's bio states that he is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, model (began at age one) and actor (began at age 13), and he's the son of the celebrities Galen Gering and Jenna Gering.

Great, two more people whom everyone in the world has heard of except me. 

Dad Galen Gering (left) was born in Los Angeles in 1971, to incredibly famous parents whom I have never heard of.  

He is a model, filmmaker, and soap opera star, best known as Rafe Hernandez on Days of Our Lives: an FBI agent whose girlfriends variously are kidnapped, trapped in abusive relationships, sociopaths, and dying of a brain tumor.  

He takes off his shirt a lot, a requisitie for soap studs.

Mom Jenna Gering got her start as a model at age 14.  Then she studied theater and journalism at the University of Miami, and started her acting career in a 2000 episode of Baywatch.   She has 23 credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of Two and a Half Men, The King of Queens, Castle, Miami Sands, and Bent (not the one about gay men in a Nazi concentration camp).

Brother Dillon (left) hasn't done any acting except for an uncredited hospital kid on his dad's soap, and the reality series Dirty Soap (2011), with the dirt on soap opera stars. Galen and Jenna's dirt: they eloped to Las Vegas instead of having a church wedding.  Quelle horreur!

Jensen grew in a theatrical environment, so he was naturally drawn to acting.  He has six credits, including:

The Confab (2019): Fading child stars Ryker Baloun  and Jensen compete for the last role they'll get before adolescence renders them unemployable.  Poor guy, already a has-been in his first real acting job.

Wickensburg (2022): "an extremely formulaic and predictable mess of a family adventure" about an extremely blond woman and her young son (Jensen) moving to a small town full of extremely silly paranormal secrets.With townsfolk named Willow Darkwood and Mr. Hexenmeister, what do you expect?  

More after the  break

Jordan Buhat: The Grown-ish hunk solves murders, is murdered, spends Christmas on Cherry Lane, shows his d*ck n 30 minute videos

 

Link to the n*de photos

A celebrity named Jordan Buhat posts 30-minute long videos where he dances n*de in front of the camera, teasing that he's goiing to show his d*ck minute after minute after minute.  Then at the very end, he finally gets around to showing it reach the sky, during the last thirty seconds (three examples on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Dude, I'll admit that it's impressive, but there are lots of guys out willing to go farther, and faster.  I don't have all day. 

He shows his backside rather extensively also, so I'm going to conclude that he's gay and a bottom.  But why the endless teases that most of us are just going to just fast-foward through?

Jordan graduated from the University of Alberta in 2018.  He had taken a few small roles, on Letterkenny, Summer of 84, and Blurt, but planned on a career as a secondary school drama and gym teacher.  Then he was cast in Grown-ish, and "everything changed." 

 Grown-ish (2018-24), the sequel to Black-ish, sends Zoey Johnson, the teenage daughter of the family, to college.  Like A Different World, but with more angst. 

Bad news: Vivek (Jordan) and Doug (Diggy Simmons, right) are not a gay couple.  During the first three seasons, Vivek Shaw is an engineering major who deals drugs to finance his extravagant fashion tastes.  He pursues a lot of girls, but fails to seal the deal.  This leads his friends to conclude that he is gay, and deliberately trying to avoid bedroom activity.  So he tries doing it with dude.  Nope, he is only into girls. Eventually he gets two girlfriends.

According to the fan wiki, there are two bi girls, but no lesbians or gay men on campus.

Although Vivek is usually the "har har, he can't get laid" comic relief, he has some angst plotlines.  He is beat up when a drug deal goes wrong, and ends up in the hospital; he is kicked out of his residence hall, and has to couch-surf; he is arrested for drug possession, expelled from the college, and disowned by his father, who dies of  a heart attack before they can reconcile. 

Jordan has six other acting credits during or after Grown-ish:

Margaux (2022): Six college friends, three girls and three boys (Jordan, Jedidiah Goodacre, Lochlun Munro) rent a house for a weekend of partying, only to find that they are being stalked by a murderous AI.  Jordan is handcuffed to a bed during a b*ndage session with his girlfriend, when the AI makes the ceiling collapse, killling him.

The three most recent of twenty Aurora Teagarden Mysteries (2023 and 2024)  flashback to the small-town librarian/sleuth's grad student years.  She solves murders and falls in love with Chef Daniel (Jordan). 

More after the break

Pontius Gemstone, the Boy Named Stacy, and the E*rotic Alphabet. With a special appearance by Gideon Gemstone

 

 Link to the n*de dudes

Stacy awoke with Pontius' arms wrapped around him, his head on Pontius' chest.  He could resist reaching down to stroke his.....

"Mmm...keep doing that." 

"Sorry, I didn't know you were awake."

"I try not to sleep when you're lying in my arms.  I don't want to miss any of it."  He leaned up, and they kissed.

"Good morning."  Pontius' gaze was intense, yet warm, comforting, loving.  

"I love you," Stacy said.

Instead of saying "I love you" back, Pontius leapt out of bed.  "Be right back -- gotta pee."  He bounced to the bathroom.

 While listening to the pee-sounds  -- why was that *rotic?  -- Stacy looked around the room: New dresser, desk cluttered with books and headphones, a map of the world taped to the wall, drawings of car designs, a bookcase with mostly Matchbox car models, three dusty guitars that no one had ever used, a glowing neon P.  

Pontius had replaced a poster of a bikini babe with a muscleman because Stacy asked him to, and cleared a drawer for some shirts, socks, and underwear, but it was still his room, Pontius with capital P, in the house he shared with his brother. 

They met last July, when Stacy was shot in the Gator Farm Massacre, and Pontius visited him at the hospital.  Since they, they had hung out almost every day.  

There were movies, concerts, plays, Queer Youth Game Nights. dinner at Jason's Steakhouse after church, volunteer work, a Halloween Party, Thanksgiving with Stacy's family, Christmas with the Gemstones, New Year's Eve in Myrtle Beach -- yet whenever Stacy hinted at moving in together, or getting their own place, Pontius deflected, changed the subject, or bounced out of the room, and God forbid he say "I love you."  Did he think of Stacy as a boyfriend or a buddy? 

Sound of the water running, a towel being yanked, and then Pontius rushed out of the bathroom. "So, what we were talking about?"

"Me on my stomach, I think."

"No, on your back.  I want to look at you."

The full story is on  RG Beefcake and Boyfriends . Hint: there's kissing and stuff.

See also: Kelton Dumont's Hot Photos, Part 3: Birthday biceps, bare bottoms, ruggers, and brothers for life

Pontius Gemstone and the Boy Named Stacy

Johnny Berchtold: I have good news and bad news.  The good news is his junk