Gemstones Episode 3.8: Is Peter a woman? Are Kelvin and Keefe boyfriends? With tender bits, an exploding van, soldiers, and the Kiss

  

Link to the n*de dudes

Episode 3.7 was the worst in the series due to its chronological disaster, plot incongruity, annoying misdirections, and assertion that the guys were just good buddies.  Maybe that was intentional,  to disorient the viewers so they would not be expecting Episode 3.8 : It is intricately plotted, and gives us a huge number of queer codes, including one that most fans consider definitive.

Title: "I Will Take You by the Hand and Keep You."  Isaiah 42.6, ESV: "I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you."  We'll see who gets to hold hands.

Reunited with the Loved Ones: After their rescue, the siblings are taken to Rogers Regional Medical Center to be examined.  Gideon must have finally phoned the family, because the partners and kids burst in, coincidentally in the order they need to be in to reach their loved ones without bumping into each other.  

Notice the difference in response:  When they last saw each other, Jesse and Amber were having a marital spat, but they were still together, so they just hug.  

BJ was deciding whether to stay with Judy or not, so he acknowledges her with a forehead-press.  

Kelvin and Keefe had not only broken up, they had a major post-breakup fight.  When Keefe exclaims "Buddy!," indicating that he wants to stay in Kelvin's life in spite of their problems, it comes as a profound relief.  Kelvin buries his head in Keefe's bicep and sobs, mirroring the Isolation Tank Rescue in Episode 1.9.  Keefe didn't actually rescue Kelvin here, but he is bringing him back from the dead.  

We cut to the siblings being interviewed by the police.  BJ and Gideon stand in front of them.  Amber is not present. Keefe waits by the door, still not included in the family; but he does get a bit where he knocks over a trash can and yells "I hate what you had to endure."   They all hate Eli, who left them to suffer and possibly be killed. 

Next, having established that May-May wasn't in on the kidnapping plot, she and Eli bond.  

Which of you is a woman?:  With the marital problem plotlines nearly over, we have time for a deep-dive into the Militia. 

Peter and Chuck are driving a U-Haul full of explosives, followed by a ragtag caravan of militia men. Marshall and Dakota (Sturgill Simpson, Quinn Dunn-Baker) complain that they don't know where he's going.  

Does Peter know?  Two compounds have been destroyed.  The kidnapping scheme has been foiled. Everyone has forgotten the first scheme, which required the truckload of explosives.

They stop at Dodge's Fried Chicken, a real fast-food place on Savannah Highway in Charleston (next to a KFC, har har).  Marshall continues to grumble. Peter asserts that complaining is "like a woman," and Marshall retorts that he drives "like a woman."  They continue to call each other women until Chuck gets tired of it and tells them to focus on the new plan.  Whatever it is.

Peter re-asserts his authority: if they rebel against him, they are rebelling against God, because he is the Keeper of the Word. Uh-oh, another Messiah.

We see again parallels between the Militia and Kelvin's God Squad in Season 2: both societies devoted to the masculine, suspicious of women, informed by homoerotic or homosocial desire. run by a messianic figure. 

The militia is the dark side of Kelvin's God Squad  We can go even farther and juxtapose Kelvin's bodybuilder fetish with the militia's fetishization of the soldier.  

Seasons 1 and 2 featured gay-subtext friendships to counterbalance the development of the Kelvin-Keefe romance.  I was surprised to not find one in Season 3, but maybe it's here, in Peter and Marshall's bickering.

Bedroom Time:  With almost no sleep, almost nothing to eat, and only a bucket to poop in for 36 hours or several days (depending on the chronology), I'd be interested in dinner and bed rather than bedroom time, but after two militia scenes, we cut to the two couples doing stuff.

First, BJ and Judy take a bath together. BJ: "The whole time you were in captivity, I would light candles and just cry."  It sounds like they were held for longer than a day.  Also, his eye, puffed out from his fight with Stephen, is almost healed. Maybe a week? 

He continues: "The best way to reset is with a really good, deep fucking."  They play a game of helicopter-d*ck.  You can sort of see it,  actually a prosthetic, in the swirling water.

Next it's Kelvin and Keefe's turn.  Keefe has changed into a sleeveless leather top with gold studs from the Jim Morrison Mr. Mojo collection.  The Doors' song "Mr. Mojo Risin'" may be relevant here:

I see your hair is burnin' / Hills are full of fire.

If they say I never loved you/ You know they are a liar.

Kelvin has showered and restored his top wave.  After keeping his body under wraps all season, he displays his backside, again becoming an object of homoerotic desire.  Keefe pretends to give him a massage, but slides right past his shoulders to concentrate on his backside.

Like BJ and Judy's bath, this is a prelude to "a really good, deep fucking" -- notice that Keefe is thrusting during their conversation, behaving as if the bedroom activity has already begun. 

After being invited to fondle an ex-boyfriend's backside, most people would assume that he wanted to get back together, but Keefe has received so many mixed signals in the past that he has to be very careful.  His questions are skillfully designed to push Kelvin to a decision: are they going to be post-breakup pals, good buddies with benefits, or lovers?

First he eliminates the post-breakup pal option by asking if Kelvin and Taryn are dating.  Immediately after asking, he has Kelvin spread his legs, feels up his inner thighs, and starts"taking liberties," as Adam Devine reveals.  The actor needed to have a semi so he would look bigger.  In-universe, Keefe is answering his own question.

Kelvin: "Nah. She ain't my type." I've heard gay men say "You're not my type" to reject a flirtatious woman without coming out, but why would Kelvin feel the need to be closeted with his ex-boyfriend?  This must be a structural ploy to avoid having him say "gay."  

He continues: "I hated all the forced claps and laughter and fun times.  I like doing claps and laughters with you."  I've analyzed this scene in detail, and I still can't think of an in-universe reason for bringing up Taryn's work performance. That wasn't the question, and besides, Kelvin quit his youth minister job, so he's in no position to hire Keefe back.  

But Keefe assumes that he's talking about the assistant youth pastor job, and responds in kind: "I love getting the children zazzed up and excited to learn about Jesus with you." 

Now Kelvin clarifies that he was answering the "Are you and Taryn dating" question, not "Can I have my old job back?"    "I mean, Taryn was nice and all, but she's not you." She was nice, but you can't build a romance from niceness.  You need passion. 

Keefe understands:  "She tried to replace me, but it was a failed try." They're going to be romantic partners, combining eros and phileo, trying to "build something" for the future., reguardless of its impact on Kelvin's career.  Which shouldn't be a problem.  He's not working for the church anymore.  They can move to Atlanta and march in Pride Parades. 

Protesting People who Protest Statues: The militia stops under a highway overpass to grumble about the small portions of fried chicken that they received and ask again, what's the plan?  Peter wants to do something with the explosives in the U-Haul, but the guys want to protest people who are protesting statues, a reference to the attempts to remove some of the Confederate monuments in the South. To date, 44 monuments have been removed, but 771 remain.  

I thought these guys were Doomsday Preppers.  Have they switched to being Christian Nationalists or neo-Nazis?  But where's the racism?  No one in the militia has made a single racist comment.

Back at the mansion, Chuck sneaks a phone call to his brother Karl, to complain that escaping put him and his dad in a bad spot with the militia. Oh, was not wanting to be murdered inconsiderate?  Terribly sorry, Bro.  He insists that he wouldn't really have killed his cousins. Everybody's got excuses.

I can be true to myself:  The siblings meet for lunch at Jason's Steak House, and discuss how the kidnapping ordeal has changed them.

 Judy: "Things are better than before the kidnapping." You and BJ having a second honeymoon?  

Kelvin: "Makes everything snap into focus, that's for sure." You and Keefe having a second honeymoon?  

Jesse: "I can be more honest, true to myself." He's stopped dying his sideburns, letting the natural gray appear.

Jesse asks them to return to their jobs at the church, and they agree. They don't mention Keefe returning as assistant youth minister, but it's implied: everyone has apparently forgotten about the Smut Busters scandal. Then they hold hands.  In this season, holding hands has been awkward and uncomfortable for the siblings, so this is an important milestone in their relationship.  

Not much left in the episode, but what's left includes most important scene in the series. 

More after the break

Reid Miller: Femme boy plays mostly gay characters, closets his partner's gender. With Marky Mark's underwear and Tyler Gray's abs

 

Have you noticed that muscular actors rarely have hairy chests?  I guess they shave so you can see their muscles better.   So seeing Reid Miller with a bare hairy chest was something of a treat.

He sort of has to, since without a bare chest he looks like a girl.  Especially when he wears dresses. 

There are many photos of Reid with his partner on his social media.  He is shown doing the usual couples things with them: they hug, kiss, duck lips, stick out tongues, tell viewers to "stick it", pretend to strangle each other.  But I can't tell the partner's gender.  They have a boy's haircut and usually wear masculine clothes, with makeup and girls' dangling earrings.

Reid describes them extensively as "the most wonderful person in the universe, the love of my life, my reason for living, the person who gives my life meaning, the person who makes me ecstatically happy every moment of every day."

You'd think that somewhere in all of that gushing, he'd give a name or a pronoun.  Maybe they're nonbinary.

Wait -- in one of the posts, he gushes about "my incredibly amazing, wonderful, beautiful, incredibly gorgeous wife!!!!!!!!!"  So she must identify as female.  

He genders her once, at the end of 16,000 superlatives. Why so circumspect?  Does he not want his followers to know that he's involved in a boy-girl romance?

 

Pop quiz: Is this Reid or his partner?  Feminine face, girl's haircut, masculine physique. 

Gender is a continuum, anyway.  Let's go on to see if Reid has any gay roles.

He was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and grew up in small town-Texas, where he appeared in local theater.  A femme drama kid in small town Texas?  It must have been hell.

He was homeschooled from 4th grade on (no wonder), and then moved to L.A. to pursue his acting career.  The IMDB list begins with shorts, around 2014-15, and episodes of two tv shows with gay content, The Fosters and Mr. Student Body President (2016).  

Wait -- that's the one about the gay teen who wants to become student body president as a stepping stone to a career in politics, so he pretends to be straight, right?

Update: No, I was thinking of The Politician, starring Ben Platt and Russell Posner.

Next Reid got a starring role in A Girl Named Jo (2018-2019), one of those interconnected Brat Network shows.  Dad (John Charles Meyer) goes to prison (for a crime he didn't commit), which results in his son Allen (Reid) being verbally abused and beat up, and his house set on fire.  The family moves away to avoid the harassment, but ten years later, when Mom can no longer take care of him, Allen is sent to live with his recently-released Dad.  Then Dad shoots himself.  Dang I thought this was a teencom

Another starring role in Play By Play (2017-2019), with adult sportscaster Peter Hickey (Reid) giving us a play-by-play of his adolescence. Here he snoops with Max Amor, whose Instagram shows a girl with purple hair giving her followers the finger.

He wrote, directed, and stars in Flikker (2018),  a 9-minute short about a teenage boy being overcome by a malevolent force.  While n*ked.  (Don't worry, in 2018 Reid was 18 or 19).

More after the break

"Vladimir": Pretentious English profs have affairs with students and each other. And talk. And talk. With some prof d*cks and backsides

  

Link to the n*de dudes

Vladimir, on Netflix, has a man and a woman both gawking at a hunk as he dives into the pool and climbs out, so there are obviously gay characters.  Maybe the hunk is himself gay: he's played by Leo Woodall of Vampire Academy and White Lotus 

And some of the episodes are named after literary classics:  "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," "The Awakening," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," "Against Interpretation."   

I got a M.A. in English and started on a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature before switching to the social sciences, so I'm getting a tinge of nostalgia.  Let's go.

Scene 1: A rustic cabin.  A lady in her pajamas puts Toni Morrison's Beloved back on the bookshelf and tells us that she will never again have power over another human being.  Her students think she's out-of-touch; her daughter dislikes her; and she is no longer able to give men ___.  

As she tells us all this, we see that the unconscious Hunk is chained to a chair.  He awakens and starts yelling.  Well, if you can't give men ___  just by looking at them, this is your next best option.

Scene 2: Six weeks earlier.  The lady is buying greens for a salad to take to the faculty retreat -- her 30th.  She's been at the college for 30 years!  She isn't named on the IMDB or the Episode Cast, so I'll call her Madame X

She notices the Hunk chivalrously getting something from a high shelf for a lady shopper.  He glances at her a few times and gets an instant erection, then walks away.  Hey, I thought she couldn't do that anymore.

Scene 3: Madame X in her car outside the faculty retreat.  She tells us that this one will be fun, because there will be a scandal: a professor (her husband John) caught with students.  He texts to ask how f*ked he is. 

Inside, they faculty is discussing the situation.  Andre (Milton Barnes, bottom photo) reports that there are six accusers now (all female), and over a thousand signatures on the petition demanding Husband John's removal.  He'll be suspended until the hearing, and David (Matt Walsh, left) has stepped up as department chair.  

Matt Walsh, a founding member of the Uptight Citizens Brigade, has 190 acting credits listed on the IMDB.  I've only seen him in animated shows like Rick and Morty.

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: he pulls out his d*ck so Will Ferrell can get busy in Get Hard (2015).  Will is too disgusted to go through with it. .

Scene 4: 1:30 pm, time to go in and apologize for being late.  There are no chairs left, but the Hunk from the supermarket -- a new assistant professor named Vladimir -- offers his.  While the meeting drones on (I know all about that!), she zeroes in on his knees and neck.  

Scene 5: After the meeting, Madame X is eating Frito pie when the Hunk dismisses the other flirty female profs and zeroes in on her.  They discuss how sitting is a lethal habit, so everyone should stand at their desks; it's good for the quads. 

Just as he moves on to the shoulder-touching, his wife appears.  Ulp, competition!  Small talk: she's teaching as an adjunct,  she loves Madame X's novel, and she's late because their daughter pooped in her dress. Too much information, girl!  

Madame X tries to save face by inviting them "both" over for cocktails. The Wife refuses -- she doesn't drink.  Maybe the Hunk could go by himself?  Are you pushing them together?

Then David the Department Chair whisks them away.  She growls.

Scene 6: Stomping out, Madame X runs into Andre (who reported on the inquest earlier), and asks for a copy of the report on her suspended-and-soon-to-be-fired husband. 

She reads it in the car.  Pictures of all the complainants, including one with the girl sitting on his lap.  "Scandalous!" she tells us.

Scene 7: As husband John (John Slattery) grills steaks, Madame X sets the table outdoors, and asks us why people are scandalized by prof-student affairs.  They're fun because of the power differential.  The girls who complained are just sad, miserable losers.  So you're going to get even with them?  

John is the one who gawks at the Hunk in the opening sequence, but I think it's just a tease: he only references hetero interest in this episode.

John's backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Later, John swims and complains that there are no rules against profs dating students, and his wife Madame X is fine with it, so what's the problem?  Then they discuss compost and growing lettuce (someone actually scripted dialogue about lettuce, yawn), what they hate about the new professors, and not telling their adult daughter Sid about the scandal.

John Slattery, who has been nominated for 4 Primetime Emmys, has 94 acting credits listed on the IMDB.  I've seen him in an episode of What We Do in the Shadows and...um...

More after the break

Harrison Houde: It's Bowie! Plus gay-adjacent tv, synth-wave music, and a pink Ford. With Diego, Harrison backsides and Nemo d*ck

Link to the n*de photos 

 School Spirits features a high school girl named Maddie Near, who becomes a "ghost" when her spirit is dislocated from her body.  In Episode 2.3 (2025), we meet Diego (Zack Calderon), the older brother of Maddie's friend, n the best possible way -- wearing just a towel. 

Well, maybe not the absolute best possible way...

And we learn that Maddie's body is now occupied by Janet,  the ghost of a high school girl who died in 1958. She goes on the run, bringing a satchel-full of stolen cash. When she stops for supplies, we met Carl (Harrison Houde), a clerk at the superstore.  He has long hair and femme multicolored bracelets, pinging my gaydar.  And he's 5'5".  

Which should I profile?

Sorry, Zack.

You may remember Harrison Houde from Some Assembly Required (2014-16), the Canadian teencom about a boy (Kolton Stewart) who sues his way into owning a toy company,   Harrison plays Bowie, his cute, quirky best bud, who is put in charge of the Jokes and Pranks Division.  (He's pictured with Dylan Playfair as the dimwitted hunk.)  

Although the gay-vague fashion plate of the series is Aster (Travis Turner), until he gets a queerbait girlfriend, Bowie only expresses heterosexual interest in one or two episodes. 

Harrison began his on-screen career as Darren Walsh, who becomes an outcast for touching cheese, in Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010).  

Next came three episodes of Spooksville (2013-14), about teenage ghost-hunters.

42 episodes of the "how it works" series Finding Stuff Out (2012-14)

And the movie Pants on Fire (2014), with Bradley Steven Perry as a chronic liar who wins The Girl of His Dreams (not by lying).

More after the break.