Gemstones Episode 1.1: Kelvin is in love with a Goth, and Gideon with the Devil. Plus Chengdu dudes, Scott Wolf, and a stunt c*ck

In the new year, let's go back to where it all began, or at least to 2019, with Righteous Gemstones Episode 1.1

Link to the NSFW Review

Who is More of a Man?: Chengdu, in southwestern China. Beneath an advertisement for "24 Hours of Saved Souls," a woman is singing in Mandarin, while hundreds of people file into a swimming pool to be baptized by missionary Eli Gemstone (Dan Conner of Roseanne) or his adult children.  Jesse, the oldest (Danny McBride of Vice Principals), complains that his brother Kelvin (Adam Devine of Workaholics) is dipping the converts too far, getting water in their noses. Kelvin disgrees. Suddenly someone turns on waves and disco music, people lose their footing, it's chaos!

The Gemstones return home, and are greeted by Martin, Eli's chief accountant and right-hand man, and his secretary Judy, the third Gemstone child, who complains that she didn't get to go, even though she learned "Ni hao" (Hello).  Jesse argues that missionary work is for only men, and she counters: "I'm more of a man than Kelvin is."  Jesse agrees. Is this a gay reference? 

The three men are chauffeured, in three identical cars, through a huge estate with a golf course, amusement park, and private police force.  Ok, Eli is not a missionary; he has a televangelism empire like Jimmy Swaggart's

They are dropped off at their houses. First  Eli, greeted by a staff of 15 women. Then Jesse, greeted by his wife, Amber, and children, Pontius and Abraham.  Then Kelvin, greeted by no one. So his plot arc will be about finding someone. 

Kelvin and the Vampire:  Kelvin walks into his game room, and starts sorting his mail.  Suddenly a man appears in the doorway, lowering from a sit-up bench like a vampire rising from his coffin -- next to an Egyptian mummy case. This is the Land of the Dead. 

He says "Hello, friend," more threat than greeting. 

Kelvin: "You scared the ___ out of me!"  

The Vampire: "I'm sorry, man.  I'd like to keep your ___ in." 

Kelvin didn't like China: "Jesse was riding me the whole time, fully up my ___"  Second reference to that thing that I can't mention here..

He continues to criticize Jesse for not "letting me be me." 

Is this a reference to Kelvin being gay?  Will he come out during this season, or is he already out?

After a bro fist-bump, Kelvin asks (his friend has not yet been named, but we'll call him Keefe) how the housesitting went.

It went fine.  Keefe slept in Kelvin's room one night, "But it felt odd, so I slept the rest of the time here on the couch." The huge house must have a dozen guest rooms.   Why the couch?

Kelvin: "Hey, man, you do not need to feel odd sleeping in my bed.  I told you you could."   Is he easing Keefe into the idea of sleeping with him?

Keefe didn't like being in Kelvin's room: "The energy in there is just unsettling.  It's lonely"   Very insightful.  He can sense Kelvin's loneliness.  There's no one in his life, no friends, no romantic partner.  He doesn't realize it yet, but he is, in the words of Dag Hammarskjold, "screaming for love." .

Kelvin thanks him for looking after the place: "Home-run friendship." Keefe is appreciative: "I know not everybody wanted me here."  House-sitting?  Why would the family care?

Timeline problem: Keefe was a Satanist before he and Kelvin met. Maybe Kelvin even brought him to Christ.  How long have they known each other?  In a future episode, Keefe's Satanist friends wonder why he hasn't been around lately, so just a few weeks.  But there's a faded 666 tattoo on Keefe's chest. Laser tattoo removal takes 6-10 sessions, scheduled 6-8 weeks apart.  Did Keefe start the removal long before he met Kelvin, or did the writers goof? .  

Keefe decides to return to his apartment: "I'm pretty bushed. Gonna go soak in a tub. " It's the middle of the day! You haven't seen your friend in a week or so.  Why don't you want to stick around? Are you worried about things heading in a direction you're not ready for?

"No, man!" Kelvin pleads. "Let's stay up late, play some video games, smash some Pixie Sticks."  Staying up past your bedtime?  Eating sugar?  Are you planning a romantic encounter or a junior high sleepover?

Keefe refuses politely. "That sounds good, but I really need a soak...I like to turn it up real hot."  A double-entendre. 

Kelvin asks for a hug. Keefe reluctantly approaches. "So happy you're home," he whispers.

As the hug ends, Kelvin looks devastated.  He is desperate for some kind of physical connection, but Keefe is leaving.   He's so flustered that he can't even return Keefe's "Night-night" properly.

Kelvin seems to be pushing for a relationship, but Keefe isn't sure.  He's been saved (converted) for only a few weeks.  He might find Kelvin attractive, but the power differential is enormous, and maybe he's been abused by clergy before.  It's best to reject romantic overtures, play it cool, and see what happens. 

I have gay friends:  Night.  Jesse goes into hs son Pontius's room and kisses him on the forehead. You've been home for hours, so why wait until he's asleep to kiss him?  Wouldn't a father generally do that as his son is going to bed?  I think someone goofed with the continuity, and thinks that Jesse just got home.

Pontius calls him a "f*ggot."  The first and only homophobic slur of the season.

Jesse counters that he's just doing a father-son thing, and chastises Pontius: "I got friends who are gay." Pontius takes this as additional evidence that his father is gay.  Since Danny McBride's previous characters have been homophobic, it is important that he demonstrate that Jesse is a gay ally.  But why now, directly after the first Kelvin/Keefe meeting?  Doubtless he means "a gay brother." 

Next, Pontius lays on the bad boy routine: he doesn't believe in God; as soon as he's 18, he'll run away to California "like Gideon" and never talk to his parent again.  Jesse  warns him to never mention Gideon's name. 

This has been a lot to digest.  Who would expect a show from Danny McBride, producer of Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down,  would have a major gay character?  And played by Adam Devine, who played a horny dudebro on Workaholics and fell in love with a girl in Modern Family?  

But wait a minute: if you want Kelvin to be gay, why not say so?  Say the word "gay," or have the guys kiss.  Other tv shows with gay characters do the word or the kiss in the first scene.  If you don't, the "they can't be gay!" camp is going to argue and argue to the bitter end. 

Plus, in an interview during Season 2, Adam envisions that in ten years, Kelvin will be married to a woman.  In another interview, he says that he wants to play a gay guy who doesn't go through a long, painful coming-out process, but has regular adventures with his boyfriend. It sounds very much like he perceives his character as straight. Or is he dissimulating to keep viewers guessing?

Things are going to get even crazier after the break.  And don't forget the n*de Chengdu dudes, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

 

Hate-watching "The Task": FBI Agent and Burglar face lost loved ones, drugs, and gang war, with a lot of n*de dudes and egregious queerbaiting

 Link to the n*de dudes

I want to start the new year by hate-watching Task (2025) on HBO MAX, because:

1. It has one of those dumb one-word titles that don't tell you anything.

2. It's about a "family  man," a trope that suggests that men who have reproduced are not only a thousand times more valuable than those who haven't, they are innately virtuous.   When a "family man" commits a crime, everyone is shocked. 

3. The "family man" is Tom Pelphrey, who showed his "big red dog" in A Man in Full.  It had to be a prosthetic, of course, but a red dog is a red dog.

4. The focus character is Mark Ruffalo.  I only knew him from The Normal Heart, where he plays a gay guy, and this photo, with a swishy femme expression and a guy hugging him, made me think that he was gay in real life.  Turns out that's actually a woman, his wife.  Nothing wrong with liking masculine women, but why the swish, unless you're deliberately trying to make people think that you're a gay couple?

Ready for the hate?

Scene 1: Juxtaposed scenes of Mark and Tom's day, not only scene by scene but shot by shot, so sometimes it's hard to tell who is doing what.  Both get up in an empty bed (dead partner!), are alcoholics, and live with a teenage girl, who hates them, plus one or more toddlers.  

The difference: Mark is respectably dressed, while Tom is extremely sleazy-looking.

They head to work:

Hey,  Tom has a picture of a guy hanging from his rear view mirror as he listens to a podcast about "learning to love again."  Dude is gay!

Mark goes to college job fairs to recruit for the FBI.  Do they need to recruit?  Being an FBI agent is the dream job for criminal justice majors; they must get 1,000 applications for every opening.

Tom and his Buddy work as garbage collectors, and on the side they pick up bagsful of loot from a scary-looking guy sitting on the steps at various houses.  They must run a burglary operation.

They stop for lunch, and discuss moving to an island in Canada together (gay couple!), and then internet dating.  Buddy has tried it, but "people" google him, find out about his criminal past, and aren't interested.  People, not ladies. Non-gender-specific terms. A standard practice for staying closeted.  Dude is gay..

Tom is planning to get into it; he's lonely, and wants a  "life partner"  It's been a year since his wife left; he's ready to "find someone."  More non-gender-specific terms!  hese guys are both gay.  That must be why the wife left.  

Queerbaiting after the break

Pilot Bunch: Unbreakable boyfriend, zombie boyfriend, teen Jesus manager. With n*de dudes from New Orleans and Hawaii

Link to the n*de dudes

I may have met Pilot Bunch, who played the best friend of the teenage Jesus on The Righteous Gemstones, at a Halloween party a few years ago.

Today he looks very much like my niece before she began transitioning. And, coincidentally, their boyfriends look similar, too.

Pilot was born in Kazakhstan, but grew up in Atlanta, where he will graduate from the Woodward Academy in 2025.   His first acting role was in The Lion King, performed at his elementary school.  He got an agent at age 11, and began appearing on tv at age 14.  To date he has twelve on-screen credits  listed on the IMDB, including:

Four episodes of Drama Club (2021), a Nickelodeon mockumentary about a middle school drama club recruitng a football player (Chase Vacnin).  Sounds like "High School Musical."

Pilot plays Colin, the chem-class lab partner of focus character Mack (a girl).  In an interview in TresA, he says that he loved the character: "witty, sarcastic, and always messing with Curtis (Reyn Doi).  Reyn Doi usually plays gay characters, so we can assume that Colin is gay-subtext or gay-vague.

In 2021, Pilot played Vincent, a resident of the Alexandria Safe Zone, in  the post-apocalyptic Walking Dead.  "A reckless, immature bully," he and his friends play "chicken" with a child zombie (Augustus Morgan, son of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays antagonist Negan).  He says that the role was fun because he got to hang out with Augustus in his zombie makeup. 

He also has roles on The Wonder Years, 115 Grains, The Hill, and Red One, and some theater, including Shenandoah.  He plays Robert, who is kidnapped by Union soldiers during the Civil War (right, with Caleb Baumann as Gabriel)  Robert isn't dead; Gabriel is his best friend, not an angel.

More after the break

The Golden Girls: Homophobic Gay Favorite?

When I was livingin West Hollywood,  Saturday night meant picking up tangerine chicken to eat on tv trays while watching Throb, Mama's Family and The Golden Girls, then heading out to the bars.

The Golden Girls' theme song "Thank You for Being a Friend" still brings back memories of those Saturday nights of lights and music, checking out the musclemen, searching for Mr. Right (or Mr. Right Now), and schmoozing with friends.

It featured four senior citizens who live together in a Miami:

1.Former Southern Belle Blanche (Rue McClanihan), the s*xually active one.

2. Dimwitted Rose (Betty White), who is from St. Olaf, Minnesota.

3. Sensible Dorothy (Bea Arthur).

4. Her mother, the sarcastic Sophia (Estelle Getty).

(Their kitchen table could only seat three, so Sophia had to find some excuse to hover around instead of sitting).

The real Miami has a population of 500,000, 2.8 million in the metro area, but on The Golden Girls, it was a small town where everybody knows everybody and you run into friends on the street.

The real Miami is 70% Hispanic, but on The Golden Girls it is exclusively white.

The real Miami was the site of Anita Bryant's homophobic Save the Children campaign in the 1970s, and in spite of the generally gay-friendly cast,  The Golden Girls could be quite homophobic:

1. In 1986, Dorothy's lesbian friend Jean visits after her partner Pat dies.  Everyone assumes that Pat was a guy.  Then Jean develops a crush on Rose, who is unaware that LGBT people exist.  When she is apprised, she is shocked and horrified. 

2. In 1988, as Sophia prepares to marry Max Weinstock (Jack Gilford), Blanche cannot restrain her disgust at a feminine caterer (Raye Birk, left, photo cropping his limp wrist)

"You're about to fly right out of here, aren't you?" she asks, alluding to the stereotype of gay men as "fairies."  

"Well, excuse me for living, Anita Bryant," he snaps back, before revealing that he has an ex wife, to gales of audience laughter.  Those wacky fairies!  

He returned in 1991 to cater Dorothy's wedding.

Raye Birk, a retired professor of theater at USC, is straight in real life.  He played played a mailman on Cheers, the assistant principal on Wonder Years,  a terrorist on Due South, one of Tim's grunting, sweating buddies on Home Improvement, and a fairy.

More after the break