Gemstones Episode 1.8: Kelvin's front, Jesse's rear, and ancient Philistines have ball problems

Link to the n*de photos

In the last episode, Scotty kidnapped Gideon and Jesse, forced them to open the church vault, and stole the Easter offering money, incidentally confessing that he had been in love with Gideon.  Judy and BJ had a breakup scene, but Kelvin and Keefe barely appeared.  In Episode 1.8,, their romance is centric. 

Title: "But the righteous will see their fall." Proverbs 26:19: "When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increases; But the righteous will see their fall"

An Old Man's Dick:  It's still Easter evening.  After dropping off Judy at her house, Tiffany goes down on Baby Billy hile they are driving down dark country roads near the estate.  Suddenly Scotty, driving away with the money he stole, runs a stop sign and crashes into their car!   They are unharmed, but Scotty is near death (Tiffany finishes the job by accidentally shooting him).  Then they steal the money.  An interesting call-back here: earlier Scotty implies that he forced Gideon, and he dies while interrupting a consensual act, an ironic punishment of the sort you would see in 1950s horror comics. 

Top five young ministers:  Gideon admits to being Scotty's partner in the offering-theft plan, and is rejected by Eli and Amber.  But he doesn't mention his part in the blackmail plan!  We cut to Jesse telling his siblings that they are in the clear. But how do they know he won't tell later, and implicate them in the assault?   Worried that he'll be arrested, Kelvin is having anxiety attacks and "sharp shit pains in my stomach" (hemorrhoids?).   Even if he wasn't convicted, the scandal would destroy his career.   "I was in the Top Five Young Ministers to watch last year -- I got a reputation -- a following."  Wait -- if he's so famous, why is his whole plot arc about proving his worth?

Denim brings lunch:  We cut to scenes where Baby Billy and Tiffany leave town with the offering money, Eli worries that the whole enterprise is corrupt, and Jesse apologizes to Gideon for pushing him away and starting the whole mess. Eli admits, for the only time in the series, that the church's finances are not entirely above-board.

 Next, Judy tries to mend her relationship with BJ by bringing him lunch at the optometrist office.  Whoops, his coworker Denim already picked up lunch.  "So you're dating with BJ?"  No, she's a lesbian -- she has a wife.  This does not convince Judy, who calls her: "One of those benevolent lesbians, out to meet a hot guy, make friends with him, so you can date him."  BJ's nonchalance about LGBT people, plus Judy's sort-of nonchalance, will become important later.

He refuses to take Judy back, so she storms into the parking lot and starts destroying cars, finally getting arrested.

Hemorrhoids and Testicular Tumors: Keefe is swimming while Kelvin tries not to look at the body that is giving him so many unwelcome desires.   He wants to know how he can rid the world of darkness, when he's surrounded by it: his mother died, Eli was assaulted, the church was robbed. Not to mention Jesse committing assault and probably vehicular homicide.  He concludes that God is punishing the family for "not being who we say we are."  

But Kelvin had nothing to do with those things. He was in the car with his siblings when they ran over the blackmailers, but he didn't assault anyone.  At most he failed to tell anyone.  How does "not being who we say we are" apply to him?  Unless he is talking about being gay.

"Don't you think God is being a little harsh?" Keefe asks.  We all wear masks; we hide things even from ourselves.  

Kelvin laugh/cries and says "I think we're getting off easy...when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant, God punished them with hemorhhoids and testicle tumors."  

He's referring to an obscure story in 1 Samuel 4-5, where the Philistine thieves were punished with opalim. The King James Bible translates the Hebrew word as "emeroids" (now "hemorrhoids") and the NIV as "tumors."  An article in Biblical Archaeology Review suggests impotence   No one mentions testicles; apparently Kelvin invented it, to correspond to the glimpse of Keefe's testicle that began his recognition of his homoerotic desire.

Next: "You should go, Keefe."  Keefe doesn't understand: "You want me to make a store run?"  Kelvin becomes angrier and angrier: "Go.  Leave.  Get out. I am no longer fit to lead you!" 

Kelvin scratches his rear as he says this.  Apparently he has hemorrhoids, and thinks that God is punishing him -- an ironic punishment for doing things with Keefe? 

Keefe disagrees: "There's no one more worthy than you."

 "Get the fuck out of here! Now! Do I need to call security, motherfucker?"  This is shockingly aggressive. Besides, if Keefe has been living there for several months, you have to give him 30 days notice.

More after the break

Pluribus: When the hive mind takes over, lesbian romance novelist Carol gets mad. With n*de guys from Paraguay and Mauretania

  

Link to the d*cks

Apple Plus has a good track record of quirky puzzle-shows, like Severance, Shrinking, and now Pluribus (2025): An alien virus transmitted from a world 600 light years away transforms all of humanity into a hive mind, a single consciousness.  Well, except the 886 million who died during the Joining, including romance novelist Carol Sturka's girlfriend.  

The Survivor: Carol is one of the 12 individuals in the world who didn't join.  As the Others work round the clock to find out why and develop a cure, they flash crazy Stepford Wife smiles, speak in unison, and give her anything she asks for.  Bring a hand grenade, no problem.  They have emptied out all of the stores for more efficient resource distribution, but when she wants to shop at her favorite supermarket, they re-stock it. 

Maybe they are so accommodating because when Carol gets angry, they start to cry.  Every body in the world.  When she yells, they have a seizure, and thousands of bodies die. So it's best to keep her calm.

About Them: The Others send Zosia, a body that looks like a female version of Carol's romance novel hero, to help her understand the new reality:

1. They have complete memories of everyone who was alive at the Joining, including details that no one would remember: "A waiter who served you on March 12, 2015 remembers that you liked this dish."  

2. Because the Others have every memory, every training, any available body can performs any necessary task.  Don't some task need muscle memory, too?  The first time Carol flies, the body of a donut girl is her pilot.  Later, to to make her more comfortable, they find the bodies of former pilots.

3. The Others cannot hurt living beings, including plants, so they are surviving on the stocks that already existed at the Joining, windfall fruit, and protein derived from dead bodies.  Well, the bodies aren't performing useful functions anymore, so why not use them?  How did they survive on their home planet?

4. They cannot lie, but when Carol asks "is there a way to reverse the process?", they get so upset that they vacate Albuquerque, and will only communicate via recordings and drones: "Our feelings for you haven't changed, but we need some space."

Mr. Diabaté:  Most of the individuals who didn't Join (and survived) are anxious for the Others to devise a cure, and criticize Carol's efforts to "save the world."   Mr. Diabaté, from Mauretania, has adopted a sybaritic lifestyle, flying around in Air Force One, pretending to playhigh-stakes poker games ("Stay in character!"), and inviting the bodies of former supermodels into his hot tub.

He's from Mauretania because actor Samba Schutte (top photo and left) was born in Noaukchott to a Mauretanian mother and a Dutch father.  Samba grew up in Ethiopia, studied at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands, and moved to the U.S. in 2011.  You may recall him as Roach in Our Flag Meets Death.  

Straight in real life.

Mauretania is an Islamic Republic, formerly part of French West Africa, mostly desert, and rather repressive: converting to another religion, or promoting atheism, is a capital crime.  You don't want to know the official attitude toward LGBT people, so let's just look at a Mauretanian guy (d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Manousos:  Survivor Manousos, from Paraguay, refuses any help from the Others.  They bring food everyday, and he throws it out.  He prefers to scavenge from neighboring apartments, always leaving payment for what he takes.  When he discovers that Carol is looking for a way to "save the world," he sets out to visit her in Albuquerque, Estados Unidos.  The Others offer to fly him, but he insists on driving himself -- leaving payment for the cars he commandeers.  

There are no roads in the 60-mile Darien Gap, between Colombia and Panama, so he walks, and is severely injured by the bacteria-laced spikes of a chunga palm tree.  They provide emergency medical care, but the moment he awakens in the hospital, he insists on paying for his treatment, commandeers an ambulance, and sets out again.

More after the break

Merrick Hanna: The Deity of Boy-Girl Romance has 345 billion social media followers. Do they like his dancing, his acting, or his other stuff?

   

Link to the not fully clothed photos

I don't know who Merrick Hanna is, but he has 6,000 photos on the teen idol site, including some shirtless.  Obviously straight: 90% of the photos show him with a girl.  Usually he's just standing there, grinning with delight at being the object of worship, while the girl hugs, kisses, fondles, and gazes at him, or pretends to be a beaked bird to demonstrate that she's much better than the rest of us poor mortals, the girlfriend of a deity.

Left: In addition to words about body parts, end-of-the-date activities, the Supreme Being, and being not alive, the censors have suddenly started to disapprove of the word for this beaked bird, I guess because it sounds too much like another word.

But it's not just worship: the girl takes the initiative, forcing him to b*lly dance and bake a cake.  They appear together at formal events, spin for Christmas, eat hamburgers, fight monsters, claim to be serial k*llers, go on rides at Disneyland. 

Here they appear to be having dinner with a gay couple.

Here he's alone.  The girlfriend must be taking the picture.

I should have dropped him as a potential profile right away, but I was fascinated.  Usually there are only a few photos with the girlfriend, or at most half of the collection.  Here they go on and on and on.  Why go through the trouble of having someone take and post hundreds of photos of your girlfriend? 

If I go back about a year on his Instagram, I run into a period of photos of Merrick alone or with guys, but then it's back to being hugged, kissed, and licked by a previous girlfriend.  Or maybe the same one?

What is this guy famous for?  I mean, you can't just worship someone out of nowhere.  He's got to turn water into wine or feed 5,000 people, or at least be big where it counts, right?

Google says that he's "a talented dancer known for his robot style," which he showcased on TikTok beginning when he was 12 (so in 2017).   Currently he has 32 million followers and 718 million TikTok likes.

According to the IMDB, he's competed on AGT, SYTYCD, Das Supertalent, and Lip Sync Battle Shorties.  I imagine that if I was in his main audience, I would know what those shows or competitions are.

He began acting in summer productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Winter's Tale with the Intrepid Theatre Company in Victoria, British Columbia (2014, 2016), and moved on screen with music videos and short films in 2017.

Some teencoms followed, like Sydney to the Max and Team Kaylie.

More after the break

Free Bert: A chunk comedian, a hot model boyfriend, and gay-friendly actors. What could go wrong? With what to do when you're missing a ___

 

Link to the n*de photos

I'm following Braxton Alexander on Instagram because he appeared in two scenes in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones, and I thought his character was queer coded.  Also he never posts any photos of him with a girlfriend, ever, so probably gay, right?  

He's been pushing his fans to watch Free Bert (2026), a Netflix series based on the comedy routines of Bert Kreischer.  Bert is known for ripping off his shirt (I like that) and getting fully n*de (I like that, too).  And here he appears to be pretending that his popsicle is a d*ck.

Bert's d*ck and backside are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Several of the cast members have played gay characters or appeared in gay-friendly projects, so doubtless there will be some LGBTQ representation. 

 Plus episodes are set at a pool party and during a "boys' weekend," so there are bound to be some hunks in Speedos (maybe even Braxton, who has never yet appeared shirtless on screen or in a modeling shoot).  

I binged the whole series in two days, so I'll review it by plot thread, not by episode.

Bert Takes His Shirt Off: We begin with Bert performing at the birthday party of frequently n*de hunk Rob Lowe.  The guests don't care about his comedy set; they just want him to take off his shirt, over and over. "It's comedy gold," Lowe assures him, but Bert feels like an object.  What about his clever observations? I don't get it.  Why would you want to see a guy with his shirt off unless you found him attractive? 

Back home, Bert's wife LeAnn (Arden Myrin of The Righteous Gemstones) suggests that he tone down the f* word , put a shirt on, and try to be respectable, since they are sending their daughters Georgia and Ila (Ava Ryan, Lilou Lang) to an upscale private school.  It has a Learning Disability Department, which Ila needs.  

A Certain Act: Trouble begins when daughter Georgia is ignored at school, so Bert plays her up on a podcast. The host asks if the 14-year old has engaged in a certain act.  "No, she's a good girl."

The next day, campus Mean Girl Kiersten has told everyone Georgia's shocking secret.  She is despondent: "My life is over.  What boy will look at me now?"  So not doing this act is  disgraceful for a girl?

Bert gets revenge during his act by criticizing the d*ck size of the Mean Girl's Dad, ultra-rich Landon Vanderthal (not Reggie Van Snoot?).  The bit goes viral, and the Headmaster calls both sets of parents to a conference.  Landon insists that his d*ck is very big, and he's willing to whip it out right there as proof.  Things escalate; Georgia is suspended, and Bert banned from the campus.

Left: Landon is played by Chris Witaske, straight but the creator of the gay-friendly Chicago Party Aunt.

A Missing Body Part:  Back at school, Georgia steals the Mean Girl's boyfriend, Zac (Braxton).  Bert goes berserk.  He's banned from the campus, but he sends his wife to flirt with the security guard, marches into the locker room, and threatens to hurt the boy.  But then he discovers that Zac has a missing body part so he can't have s*x. 

Nonsense.  If you don't have that body part, you get testosterone replacement therapy. and everything works fine.  How does he think transmen do it?

More after the break.