Gemstones Episode 2.3 Review, Continued: the darkness of roller coasters, club-bulges, hookups, and apples. With nude musclement.

  

   This is a continuation of Episode 2.3: Kelvin topples, Keefe cuddles, and Titus is caged.  With bonus s* loads

We're not finished with Kelvin's descent into the Darkness, but first an interlude with Eli answers some questions about his past.  

Link to the NSFW version

Eli's Past: Gideon is clearing out stuff, in preparation for moving into Roy Gemstone's old house on the estate, when he comes across a suitcase full of Eli's wrestling memorabilia.  Plus some newspaper articles about Glendon Marsh, Junior's father, who gave Eli a job as a loan enforcer. He had a whole crime syndicate; he ordered the murders of some police officers who were snooping around -- like Thaniel Block!  So maybe Eli didn't just break thumbs -- maybe he and Junior were  full-fledged hit men!

Jesse concludes that Eli brought Junior to town to kill Thaniel!  He rushes to tell Judy.  

While they are talking, Judy's husband BJ comes in with even more evidence: He was out rollerblading in the amusement park on the estate, and came across Eli riding the rollercoaster by himself, over and over.  (wait -- don't you need someone to turn it and off for you?).

"Funny -- Daddy always hated that rollercoaster," Judy muses.  Maybe he's using it to work himself into a murderous frenzy, so he can kill more people!

The Amusement Park: Jesse and Judy go to the park to investigate. Suddenly Kelvin appears, having tracked them down (or BJ told him where they were)

Notice that he's trying to dilute the raw homoerotic power of his usual outfits.  He still wears a power-inducing lion t-shirt and a club-bulge (or is that his real package?), but he's hiding it with a granny sweater and a cap.  

And what's with the wedding ring?  It's been a few days since the dressing room scene. Did he and Keefe solve the "buddies or boyfriends" dilemma by getting married?

Kelvin pocketed Eli's cell phone after "grow up" speech, so they can search it for clues.  After a bit where they try to think of the passcode -- it's Eli's birthday, but when is his birthday? --they find a text to Martin from the night of the murders: "Went out with Junior. Things went sideways. Need your help here."  Then "Thanks for cleaning up my mess." Uh-oh. proof positive!

A Symbolic Castration: The siblings confront Eli, who tells them what really happened on the night of the murders: he and Junior go bowling. Four ladies sitting beneath a "Hot Snacks" sign spread their legs,  Junior picks the one with the biggest breasts, and Eli picks the Asian.  She takes him back to her place and purrs, growls, smooches at him, takes off things -- why did she go bowling dressed in an evening gown that looks like it should be worn to the Academy Awards?

Eli is enthusiastic about hooking up, but for some reason he decides to go to the bathroom and shave off his pubic hair first. Dude, a lady is waiting with her legs spread.  Isn't that, like, a heterosexual mating signal?   He accidentally cuts himself on the testicle, starts bleeding, and calls Martin to help.  So, are you going to see her again?

In the Medieval Arthurian epics written by Chrétien de Troyes and others; the Fisher King suffers from a wound in his groin or hip, symbols for his genitals, often as punishment for sexual infidelity.  As a result, he is impotent, and his land is infertile.  Here Eli suffers from a symbolic castration, maybe as punishment for "two-timing" Aimee-Leigh: in this universe, true love lasts forever, even behind the grave, and betraying that love is worse than murder: "Why couldn't you have just killed someone?" Kelvin yells.  

The siblings stomp out.

More after the break

"I will do the coming": It's time for homoerotic shirtless Bible study.  Kelvin begins with a reference to Eli: "The world is full of people who will fail you, betray you, let you down."

Muscleman Titus refuses to sit crosslegged with the others, or even "take a knee."  Gay joke: Keefe explains that Kelvin meant "get on your knees."  He's an expert on being on his knees, as we will discover in Episode 2.6 .   

Titus has been in the steam showers with Kelvin and Keefe. I wonder if his closeness to the Messiah’s cock makes him feel privileged, free to defy orders.  But next he goes too far:  he doesn't have time "to sit around for story time like a fucking toddler. » Kelvin hits the roof.  Wait -- doesn't Titus believe that the Bible is the Word of God?  If some non-religious guys were drawn in by the homoeroticism, and some straight guys were drawn in by the fundamentalism, we might have a problem.

Interpreting Titus' back-talk as a formal challenge to his authority, Kelvin tells the men to put on their formal robes -- shiny black, but still displaying their chests and abs -- and gather for judgement.  Titus tries to smooth things over, but the increasingly unstable cult leader screams "I am the leader!  I am the alpha, not you!" before challenging Titus to carry a heavy stone cross twenty feet. If he succeeds, Kelvin will step down. 

Titus is swayed by the promise of taking an inside-the-house bed instead of sleeping in a yurt, so he tries -- and fails.  Struggling and screaming "No, no!", the "traitor" is placed in a tiger cage to serve a seven-day sentence.  Involuntary confinement in a tiny cage where he can't even stand up? In the hot South Carolina sun?  That is brutal, Kelv Baby!  Not to mention a felony.  You've gone full-on Darth Vader.

 Titus yells: "Destruction will come unto thee, and I will do the coming!"  

Kelvin (grinning): "That's nasty."

This is the third reference to jizz this season.  Anyone want to write a scholarly article?

Junior doesn't take rejection well:  Junior appears in Eli's car in the empty parking garage (doesn't the megachurch emperor have his own assigned parking spot?).  Hulking in the back seat, he eats an apple with a knife, which he waves menacingly, and asks why Eli is ghosting him.  

 "We're not in the same world now.  I'm not a thug no more. I met Aimee-Leigh, and she changed me.  I don't want to be your friend."

So Eli didn't murder Thaniel and the other men, or order their murders.  Maybe Junior did it, performing what he thought was an act of love, and now he feels betrayed.  He rushes from the car, but stops to tell Eli,  "If we ain't friends, we enemies."

Eli was saved from his wilding youth, his days of carousing, breaking things, and "playing with little muscle boys," through heterosexual romance, or more precisely through finding a woman who loved him unconditionally.  Kelvin has fallen just as far into the darkness with his God Squad cult, if not farther.   Heterosexual romance is out of the question, of course, but maybe he could be saved by the unconditional love of a man.  Say, perhaps, Keefe?  The end.

There are some nude musclemen on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends