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 sex orgies with his stable of muscle boys." Ulp.
More after the break
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?
A Proper Erection: The siblings meet at the Aimee-Leigh memorial to discuss who will be in charge of the church after Eli steps down. Certainly not Kelvin, Jesse jibes: "All you care about is muscles," and it's not about God, "it's about being self-centered and popping boners." Jesse just stated that Kelvin gets a boner when he looks at muscular guys, and he doesn't deny it. He doesn't get the least defensive. How out can you get?
Kelvin counters that it's about being healthy. But, he concedes, "If you're healthy, you do maintain a proper erection."
Judy agrees with him. Their stories run parallel, so obviously they have both been having sex with their partners. Fans who claim that Kelvin is not sexually active tend to ignore this scene, and actually the entire season.
Next, Jesse goes to work on his son's masturbation. He actually doesn't think that there's anything wrong with masturbation, but in order to convince Abraham to stop leaving secretions, he says that when you do it, all of your dead relatives, even your distant ancestors, swoop down to watch and judge you: "When people see you do something bad, it's hard for them to look at you in any other way." In sociology it's called a stigma, a "spoiled identity." I wonder if other people around have spoiled identities due to the bad behavior in their past. Maybe Eli?
Back to Eli and Junior: Outside the restaurant, the guys run into Randall the Thug saying goodbye to his girlfriend. "Bet you two queefs haven't seen action like that in years!" he jokes. Eli doesn't want to engage, but Junior gets riled: "How dare you talk to us like that! We're from Memphis, asshole. We stuff twinks like you full of rocks and sink you in the Misssi-fucking-sippi." Only gay men use the expression "twink." Junior knows his way around gay culture.
Things escalate. Randall punches Junior, then Eli The old wrestling training kicks in, and Eli punches, kicks, and head-butts him, and as he screams for mercy, breaks his thumbs! The end. Dang! These boys are obviously being presented as ex-lovers, and Junior is openly bi in the present!
Examples of proper erections on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends
No comments:
Post a Comment
No offensive, insulting, racist, or homophobic comments are permitted.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.