Gemstones Episode 4.1: Elijah scoundrels, Winston dies, and Kelvin screams. With Bradley's bottom and Jackson's junk

Link to the n* de dudes

Previous: Gemstones Season 3 Finale: Kelvin and Keefe married?  Pontius a dark lord?  Peter redeemed through the Redeemer?

Title: "Prelude."  This is not really an episode of The Righteous Gemstones at all.  It's a full theatrical movie starring Bradley Cooper, who you know as Ben in Wet Hot American Summer and Rocket  Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy.  So I'll do a scene-by-scene.

Scene 1: A small country church in Virginia, 1862.  Pastor Adam Grieves (Josh McDermitt) preaches and takes an offering.  After the service, rogue Elijah Gemstone (Bradley Cooper) shoots him and steals the offering money and his gold-plated Bible (this will be important later).

Uh-oh, before he can escape, Confederate troops arrive at the church and, mistaking him for the pastor, announce that he's been drafted to be chaplain for their division, heading to Fredericksburg.  It pays $50 per month ($2000 in today's dollars), plus room and board.

Overjoyed, Elijah asks for a moment to gather his things.  He changes clothes with Pastor Grieves, bashes his face in so no one will recognize him, and writes a note: "This is the body of a crook who tried to rob me.  He was handsome.  His name was Elijah Gemstone."   He was handsome?  Got yourself some same-sex desire going on, buddy?

Scene 2: A battle, with lots of Confederate soldiers being killed. Their grim faces flash by.  A boy gets his leg blown off.  600,000 soldiers died, plus about 1,000,000 civilians. 6% of the young adult men from the North, and 18% from the South

Captain Cane (Jim Cummings) approaches Elijah with the rumor that he was gambling and drinking with the guys last night, inappropriate behavior for a Man of God.  He denies it, and further threatens the Captain with hellfire for spreading rumors. Does this remind you of Jesse's s*x-and-drugs party from Season 1?

Scene 3: Elijah is called to pray with the boy who got his leg blown off (Alex Saxon).  He is dying and afraid, but Elijah just pretends to pray.  

Cut to night, with Elijah is drinking and gambling with the guys.

Scene 4: Time to preach the Sunday sermon.  Elijah can't do it, so he just says "God doesn't expect us to be perfect.  We make mistakes, but we're trying to be good, and that's good enough."  In Baptist theology, you don't need to try: once you are saved, you are incapable of committing new sins. But Elijah doesn't know that.

Cut to more drinking and gambling, followed by trying to avoid praying with another dying soldier, Winston (Jackson Kelly).  This one is worried that he won't go to heaven, because he's killed people, but Elijah assures him that God has made an exception on his "Thou shalt not kill" policy for soldiers who are forced to fight. 

Scene 5: Elijah and the soldiers bathing in the river (blurry d*ck shot).  Afterwards Ned Rollins (Kimball Farley) announces that he recognizes Elijah from before the War. "It took me awhile, but I saw the way you shuffle the deck of cards, with your pinkie out like a woman."  So Elijah has some femme/gay characteristics? Does he remind you of Kelvin?

His cover blown, Elijah attacks, but Ned just wants to partner with him: Major McFall (James Landry Hebert) is coming to camp tomorrow.  He's starting a card game, and he is loaded.  They could take him.

Cut to the card game.  They take him.  Then, worried that he will say something, Elijah kills Ned and stuffs his body in one of the coffins. And now he's Judy

More after the break

Josh Jones #31: "Modern Family" clerk, Pentecostal prophet, Actor for Christ, Dracula. With Jones junk and Broderick backside

Link to the n*de dudes

We're watching Modern Family in order as a comfort show in trying times.  In Episode 4.12, "Mistery Date," (November 15, 2012), Phil rewires the house while everyone else is gone, and announces that he has been transported to the distant year 2025 (this year!).  

"Go back to 2012!" we both yell at the screen. 

Wasn't 2012 great?  The Middle (Axl in underwear -- sigh), Suburgatory, Raising Hope (Jimmy with his shirt off -- sigh).

Magic Mike, Pitch Perfect (Adam Devine, sigh), Paranorman (first gay character in a kids' movie).

I was teaching at a small private college with exquisite architecture and a view of the Susquehannah River, winning 5-k races, benching 185, going to gay parties, and publishing regularly. 

Barack Obama was elected to a second term.

Sigh.  Back to Modern Family:  Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) goes with his gruff, macho father Jay to buy a giant crib for the upcoming baby.  When the clerk (Josh Jones) asks if he wants to have it assembled, he says no, Dad is macho, and has to do everything himself.  

What about help getting it to the car?  No, Dad is too macho for that, also.  But the Clerk glances over and sees Jay asking for a hug from the store mascot, the Hug-a-Bunny.  Okaaay

That's all, three lines.  But Josh is cute (or was, in 2012), and shorter than Jesse Tyler Ferguson at 5'10", so a member of the Short Guy Brigade. 

In the other plotline, Phil works out at his brother-in-law Cam's gym and accidentally makes a hookup date with Dave (Matthew Broderick), who just had a bad breakup.  They go home and take their shirts off (for non-hookup reasons), but Dave decides that he isn't ready, kisses the still-oblivious Phil, and leaves.  Dude, you went to a gay gym.  What did you expect?

But everybody knows everything about Matthew Broderick already, and Josh Jones will present a research challenge: there are thousands of people named Josh Jones, including many actors, writers, and comedians (our Josh is #31 on the IMDB).

The IMDB: No biographical information, and only four acting roles:

The "Mistery Date" episode of Modern Family (2012).

The Ladder (2013), a short: a teenage boy "teeming with hormones" carries a ladder across town to reach The Girl's window..  Heteronormative! Yuck!  Josh plays a soccer player.

Film Permit Police (2015): I guess it's a tv series about policing people who film without a permit.  Corey Martin Craig (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) plays a Hipster Filmmaker.  Josh plays a permit violator.

We Live Baby (2020): "Summer is faking nice on Live."  I have no idea -- are those people or is a season faking on life?   Josh plays a Stranger.

Additional research led to a few dead ends (no, our Josh is not a British comedian, a rapper, the offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks, a professional fisherman, or a star of Dancing on the Ice).  But I finally found of some of our Josh's social media.

Facebook: Nine photos, all headshots, and no biographical information.  Posts are about his auditions; he didn't make The Book of Mormon, but he made it into Dracula. 

And a quote from Nehemiah 9.8.  Uh-oh, fundamentalist.  But why Nehemiah?  I don't think I ever heard the minor prophet used as sermon fodder in 20 years as a Nazarene.   

Backstage:

He attended Biola University (2005-2010), a fundamentalist college about 10 miles from Anaheim, California, and got his degree in music.  While in college, he sang Second Tenor in Carmina Burana and Bach's Magnificat (figures).

In addition to his tv and films, Josh has some theater credits: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Dracula, Willy Wonka, The Music Man, Inside the Box, Bridge of Blood, Carmen, and The Magic Flute.

Bridge of Blood is not what you think: it's about Jim Elliott being massacred...um, martyred..when he was trying to bring God's Word to the Auca Indians of Peru in 1973.

More after the break

Gavin Munn goes fishing. With Michael Rooker, Kelton Dumont, a gator, a cobb, and n*de fishermen

Link to the n*de dudes

It's been awhile since Righteous Gemstones wrapped its fourth and final season, but Gavin Munn, who played Abraham, continues to fill his social media with interesting pictures that I can spin into thematic posts. In this case, fishing.  

I was forced to go fishing when I was a kid.  It was awful:

You sit in a rickety boat or on a rickety dock, with only a thin veneer of wood separating you from 40 feet of gross, dank water, while the mosquitos eat you alive.  You bait a hook with gross, squishy worms, dunk them in the water, and wait. 

And wait and wait and wait.

Eventually a fish takes the bait, and you pull it onto the dock or the boat, where it struggles wildly and finally dies. Congratulations, you've suffocated an animal to death.

Then you have to scale it, gut it, and cook it.

And it's never as big as the 65-pound wahoo that Gavin caught.

But fishing has its perks: it's hot, so the shirts come off.  And sometimes the pants (n*de fishermen on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

More after the break. 

"Severance": Dystopian science fiction or realistic portrayal of corporate life? With a gay romance.

 

Severance, on Apple Plus (2022, 2025), begins with Mark (Adam Scott) sitting in his car outside the Lumen Corporation, crying.  I can relate -- during my office job, a horrible nine months at the Getty Consternation Institute, I cried a lot -- before work, after work, during lunch, while sitting at my desk.  But this job takes the humiliation and dehumanization, and takes it to a new level:

Mark has been severed, split into work and life selves.  The two selves, his innie and his outtie, have no memory of each other.  So he has no idea what goes on in that dark, sinister building.  But we do.

He takes an elevator to the sub-basement, the severance wing, endless corridors, painted white with no signs and no decor except for an occasional painting of Company Founder/Messiah Kier performing miracles or punishing sinners.

You're not supposed to wander around anyway, and trying to make a map is strictly forbidden.  Innies do not remember anything about their life outside, so from their point of view, the work day ends, they step into the elevator, and immediately step out again for the next work day.  

From the innies' point of view, they never leave.  Their lives consist entirely of endless white-walled corridors and harsh fluorescent lights. They never see or hear anything about the outside world. This is only a slight exaggeration of the real corporate world, where you aren't supposed to talk about or think about your life outside the office.

They eat Lumen-brand snacks from Lumen vending machines, paid for with Lumen tokens.

They have nothing to read except the multi-volume handbook, where the rules are written as Bible verses:

No outside reading material: "Be content in my words, and dally not in the scholastic pursuits of lesser men."

No sleeping on the job: "No workplace shall be repurposed for slumber."

Their purpose in life: "And I shall whisper to ye dutiful through the ages. In your noblest thoughts and epiphanies shall be my voice. You are my mouth, and through ye, I will whisper on when I am 10 centuries demised."

The outside world is no paradise, either.  It's always a gray, cloudy, drizzly late winter. Mark's house, provided by Lumen, is nearly empty, with only a few pieces of furniture and no decorations of any type.  He might as well be at work.

The job of the Macrodata Refinement Department is seemingly meaningless: rows of numbers slide by on a screen.  You must capture and dispose of those that produce emotions like disgust and fear. Workers have no idea what this is doing; finding errors in computer code, rating movies, murdering people?  

But they don't do a lot of searching anyway. They spend most of their time gossiping about office politics, receiving minor perks like finger-traps and waffles, going to the Wellness Center to be psychoanalyzed, or being sent to the Break Room to be broken by repeating a formal apology a thousand times. 

More after the break