Oh My God, They Killed Kenny! Beyond the Gates Two Scoops for the week of July 14, 2025

Beyond the Gates: Hey sister, soul sister – wait, June's got a sister?

Are y'all ready to go Beyond the Gates? This week, June got a sister and Bill got a dad, while Ashley is the only one to realize that Hayley's oven doesn't have a bun in it. Elsewhere in our fictional D.C., Vanessa might like Joey's bite, but she sure folded after his bark. Martin finally told Smitty about the hate crime he'd been hiding, which got him booted out, and Nicole lost it when she realized that secrets were truly her family's style. Oh – and there's one less “Kenneth” in the world! Let's fill up those Two Scoops and find out what happened inside and outside the gates of Fairmont Crest!

U.N.I.T.Y.

I hope Chelsea likes stewed rabbit, because Allison is about to serve up the Fatal Attraction meal for two! As I've said before, Chelsea and Madison are too new a couple to really require any kind of interloper or circumstance trying to separate them. They just don't have the rooting value yet. Also, wasn't it enough for Allison to re-emerge having all the feels? Why did we have to accessorize her with psychosis?

Perhaps this is an object lesson in “watch out who you hook up with.” What might look good in a bedroom might actually belong in a padded room! Allison took that turn as this week started out – she claimed she was at Uptown at the same time as Chelsea and Madison because of the food, but when Ally produced the entrée of a hair clip Chelsea had left behind, there was no longer just cuisine on the table.

Allison bragged to Madison about the hot sex she and Chelsea never had, forcing Chels to go back and pave over Allison's lies with her truths. Madison didn't seem terribly bothered that Chelsea had a past with Allison, but she became very worried about Allison's increasing instability. Could it be a matter of “it takes one to know one?” Maddy is still sugary perfect and wants to know too much about Chelsea. She's got more than neurology on the brain, I'm tellin' ya!

Another Garland Hospital employee, Ashley, ran into Jacob and wondered if the reason she hadn't seen much of him and Naomi was because they had taken Derek's side in the breakup. Ashley, girl, you are so insecure. And this week I realized that's a feature, not a bug! For all of her anxieties and immaturities, Ashley is actually written as a very real person. She doesn't have all her ish together like soap characters are typically supposed to.

And what is it they say about “when you point the finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you?” Lots of us GATES viewers, me included, find Ashley annoying – and that's because she's a mirror. Her flaws are out there on the surface and remind us of our own...and who wants that? I see a bunch of myself in Ashley, and if she's on our nerves, it's probably because her writers – and portrayer Jen Jacob – are doing something right.

Here's one right thing Ashley did: She saw Hayley coming into Orphey Gene's ordering enough contrasting dishes to feed a horse (a horse soon in need of an industrial-sized bottle of Pepto) and realized that pregnant women don't get bizarro cravings until their second trimester. Barring in utero SORAS (it happens; Y&R's Billy only gestated four months in real time), Hayley is only in Trimester #1.

Dani might suspect Hayley of faking being in the family way, but Ashley actually has information about it that she could substantiate if she dug a little further. Will quiet “little baby deer finding its footing in the forest” Ashley, as Dani calls her, be the one to blow up Hayley's world? Ashley's actually pretty smart when she's not around men, for some reason. (I've been guilty of that, too.) Put her on the case, GATES!

In all the big to-do about Martin this week, one rather major detail might have slipped through the cracks, and that is Naomi once again calling the phone number on homeless June's mysterious kiddie photo – thanks to Jacob's encouragement. Naomi got hung up on a second time, but Jacob didn't let his wife give up – and Naomi's persistence got the voice on the other line to spit, “Don't call here! My sister is dead to me.”

So June's got a sister! And, though Naomi rightfully wondered if “June” was our spunky sprite's real name, it seems to be so, because the woman Naomi talked to indirectly confirmed it by not expressing confusion over the moniker. The question now is, do those immortalized kiddos in the pic belong to June, or are they her niece and nephew via this uncovered sister? You know Naomi's not gonna let this go. Good!

Black steel in the hour of chaos

Vernon might have been a little extra grumpy with Anita out of town for weeks on end – does it really take that long to rehearse for one concert? – but when the former senator found out that Martin's tormentor, “Kenneth” (I'm still using quotes because we never have gotten verification that that is/was his real name), had nearly been gunned down, Sir Dupree blew a gasket like we've never seen before.

Bill shrugged it off, saying he didn't really care because he had essentially been trained by Vernon not to care how Dupree messes got cleaned up. To Bill, money hadn't worked on “Kenneth,” and there was only one other logical way to get the man out of Martin's life. Vernon didn't want to hear it and ordered Bill to order Joey to “pull his squad.” Hey, Randy's already pulled; since he was supposed to go to Disneyland, he's probably working as a life-sized Goofy or Pluto by now.

Little did Vern and Billy know that the Dupree mess in question was getting bigger by the minute. Martin found “Kenneth” chatting up Samantha in the park (great to see GATES outside again, but I expected this “park” to have a lot more green than concrete, not the other way around) and punched his lights out. In broad daylight. In front of a witness (Samantha), as “Kenneth” pointed out.

Yeah, not the wisest move, Martin. I'm surprised “Kenneth” didn't add that to his blackmail package. He just wanted more money, and it sounds like Samantha was lucky that “Kenneth” didn't touch her “beautiful brown skin.” Super creepy. And it was supposed to be. After “Kenneth” hailed Martin, “Your Highness,” and scampered off, Samantha realized that the adversaries knew each other somehow.

Attagirl, Sammy! Of course, Martin wouldn't tell his daughter anything beyond that, nor would he elucidate for Smitty's sake when he arrived home on the warpath from learning that Martin had recruited Marcel, of all people, to provide their family police protection. Martin wanted to run off and deal with something, and Smitty said that was fine...but if Martin bolted without 'fessing up, he could just as well not come back.

Attaboy, Smitty! He'd put up with Martin's crap for too long (read: the length of this soap so far), and it was high time he put his foot down. Martin split anyway, and Smitty managed to find “Kenneth” still lurking around the park, though I don't know how. “Kenneth” wouldn't tell Smitty anything except that Martin was the villain in their combined story, not him. And that certainly didn't make Smitty feel any better.

Meanwhile, Samantha and Tyrell tried to figure out who the vilified chess player was to Martin. Some kind of political enemy? An ex-boyfriend? That was Tyrell's guess, and not far from what I had originally been thinking. Remember what I said about hookups gone wrong. I liked that GATES' youngest had so much screen time this week, and that they were participating in the story, not just commenting on it.

Martin might not have been in the space to confess to his family, but he was sure ready to spill his gallons of tea for the press – though we were purposely led to believe the congressman might commit another act of violence against “Kenneth,” Martin decided that the microphone was mightier than the sword. A microphone Vernon and Bill very much wanted Martin to put away!

Who'd'a thunk it – Martin inspired the former in-laws to agree on something. Vernon got nowhere trying to convince Martin that coming forward would take the power out of “Kenneth”'s ammunition – actually a compelling argument – so Bill gave it a shot, working reverse psychology on Martin and lumbering up to the podium himself to deliver a glowing but meandering introductory screed meant to stall Martin's efforts.

It didn't work, though. And in a sequence that ended up being pretty suspenseful, Martin set up his confession while Vernon caught a glimpse of Marcel holding “Kenneth” at gunpoint outside of Orphey Gene's pulled blinds. Those turned out to be “Kenneth's" final moments, because moments later, Bill received a text from Marcel himself, which included a snap of “Kenneth's" dead body on the grass.

And talk about a showstopper! Martin was just getting to the good part of his speech when Bill showed him the photo – and after that, Martin had no more words. Bill had to tell the assembled press that there had been a family emergency...but the shrewd fourth estate knew there was a lot more going down. They weren't going to hear it from Martin, though. Not with “Kenneth” joining his brother in hell!

None of your business

Bill called it game over, but Vernon of the nonviolent protests of the civil rights era could barely hide his fury that Bill, Joey, and Marcel had made it possible for “Kenneth” to take a dirt nap. He ripped Bill a new one and reminded Bill that he, and only he, had the power – a charged scene, but one I wasn't sure was necessary. It kind of felt like filler on the heels of “Kenneth's" death and Martin leaving to presumably tell Smitty everything.

Still, Bill was all butt-hurt and nursed his bruised ego at the country club, where Dani came strolling in. He wasn't about to tell her anything, but when she heard there'd been a kerfuffle with Vernon, Dani told Bill that she'd always known Vernon to find Bill intelligent and ambitious. Bill became strangely vulnerable and revealed that even today, he wanted Vernon's approval. Dani said that was because Bill's own dad had never provided it!

Ooh! That was the first we heard of there being any other Hamilton relatives. I wonder if that might have been the first stone set on the path to meeting Bill's father? It may have just been a casual mention, like when Tomás told Eva about his own derogatory dad; we certainly haven't made Papa Navarro's acquaintance yet. But these are the minute details that I take notice of and hang on to. So you don't have to!

There was also a quick but neat moment where Dani told Vanessa about Pamela's idea to have her model again and expressed mega doubts about working the runway as a woman the industry considered past her prime. Van-Van remarked that the mere act of Dani strutting down the catwalk could raise that glass ceiling and let mature people everywhere give ageism a well-deserved kick in the ass. Maybe I just loved it because, as a recently turned 56-year-old, that's more and more becoming a hill I'm willing to die on. Down with ageism!

Vanessa may be lucky if she lives another year, because Joey turned out to be a honeybear that she poked one too many times. She showed her smarts as she figured out that Joey had installed her at the presser as an alibi, and she even got Joey to admit that, because of him, a very bad man had gone bye-bye. But Vanessa got cocky and lackadaisical about Marcel's part in it, and that was a line Joey wouldn't let Vanessa cross.

He shouted her down, coming right out and saying the night would end very badly for her if she kept pushing him. Vanessa instantly looked meek and browbeaten, which made it particularly unsettling when Joey soon pulled her into a kiss as if he just hadn't threatened to put her six feet under along with “Kenneth.” It was quite the paradigm shift, and suddenly I felt like we were watching a relationship between the abused and her abuser. Not sure this already controversial couple can come back from that.

Making of a vigilante

July 16, 2025 is a day that will live in Beyond the Gates infamy, because that's when we finally got the real and total scoop about what happened between Martin and “Kenneth” on that dark road “two years ago” (presumably 2023). Oh, we've gotten clues and flashes and implications all along, but on that Wednesday, we were treated to the full and unprocessed sequence of events from beginning to blood-soaked end.

Tyrell, and Samantha, especially, were already freaking out because Smitty had packed up Martin's stuff – which is more than I would have done. When Martin finally did deign to show himself (I thought Smitty told him not to come back?), Smitty refused Martin's request to leave the teens out of his unburdening...but, for some reason, Samantha, who had wanted to know the truth as much as anybody, co-signed Martin's grownups-only confab. Huh?

Eh, details. The suspense was over – what played out across the next few minutes was Martin and Vernon laughing over a canine response to a speech and Martin's SUV getting a flat tire. As Martin tried to change it, a pick-up drove in nearby, with its two occupants approaching. All seemed fine until a pre-surgery “Kenneth” snarked to the man confirmed to be his brother that “spooks” didn't know anything about automobiles.

Harsh – but the uncomfortable slur just served to remind us of the denigration Black people still have to put up with, treatment that is surging back up as racism has been given license in our current political climate. The brothers offered to help – for a fee – and that's when then-”Kenneth” uttered his now-infamous “Let's see what color's your money” line. He wasn't referring to greenbacks, though. He was referring to skin color.

Vernon took a punch in the face, and Martin reacted with the tire iron he happened to be holding in his hand. As “Kenneth's" brother pulled out a gun, Martin clocked him with the tool. He fell to the ground, and “Kenneth's" battering was stopped with a metal rod to the cheek. After “Kenneth” went down, Martin kept punching him (I don't know where the tire iron went); Vernon had to pull his grandson off the man.

When it was over, “Kenneth” lay disfigured, and his brother was dead. As Anita filled in later, the road onto which the politicians had turned ran through a notoriously racist rural neighborhood (I would have liked to have had that information before the flashback, just for added context). Martin was only defending himself, but the police in that area were more likely to side with “Kenneth” and make Martin the criminal.

And that's why Vernon went into clean-up mode and brought Marcel and Elon to the scene while the shell-shocked Martin was down for the count; clearly the cops got rid of the body while Vernon saw to it that Ted brought “Kenneth” to his clinic and took care of his marred face. Smitty reeled as he tried to process the fact that his husband had killed someone, even if unintentionally, while trying to save Vernon.

You know, something occurs to me as all the pieces have been laid out in this puzzle. “Kenneth,” the reconstructed busboy and extortionist, only mentioned his nameless brother once. Knowing what I know now, I'm a bit incredulous that “Kenneth's" motivation only ever seemed to be in squeezing money out of Martin – never once did it appear that “Kenneth” had returned to avenge the death of his own brother.

Maybe his doing so would have given away the major detail that Martin had ultimately snuffed out his sibling, a detail we weren't supposed to be privy to until now? But, in hindsight, it does rather make “Kenneth” out to be someone who only cared about cash and didn't give two hoots about his brother being killed. Unless the implication is that “Kenneth” really was that much of an a**hole. How did all that come across to you?

Later, Martin gave Samantha and Tyrell a kind of PG-13 version of the story; no death or maiming came up. Tyrell understood why Smitty was pissed to have been kept out of the loop the whole time, while Samantha felt that Martin should be forgiven for hiding the heinousness of the hate crime. Smitty didn't care that Martin had been trying to give him “plausible deniability”; he found Martin's endangering lies of omission unacceptable, so Martin took his suitcases and left!

If it didn't involve getting up, I would have cheered! I found it incredibly gratifying that Smitty finally stood up and refused to take any more from the guy. If there's any forgiveness to be had, it's in Martin having acted in self-defense. But I'd be just as happy if Smitty called his marriage quits. Sorry, Ty. Sorry, Sam. It's not just the “Kenneth” secret. Look how Martin lied so that Smitty wouldn't know he'd been offered a job! Kat was right a while back when she said Martin didn't deserve Smitty!

Three sides to a story

And Anita thought she had problems with the Articulettes. The trio's reunion-wrecking squabbles seem even more petty compared to what Anita ended up coming home to. First, Vernon tried to take a page out of Martin's playbook again and play off Anita's concerns, but it must have been National Not Taking Any More S**t Day. Because Anita wanted to hear it all, and she wanted to hear it now.

Vernon likely prefers to sleep outside, so he told Anita the whole ugly story, from the wrong turn to “Kenneth” lying dead earlier that evening. Anita needed assurance that Vernon hadn't ordered “Kenneth”'s offing, and she got it – but she made the good point of asking just how the press was supposed to be handled. Not because of an un-ID'd stiff in the park, but because of the bizarre way Martin's presser had ended...and the fact that Martin had called it in the first place.

Perhaps those answers are still to come. And it's an astute question with Martin being in the public eye probably even more than the Duprees proper. Another interesting twist quietly came when it was established that Martin had wanted to come clean so he wouldn't be in Joey's debt...and now Martin and Joey were forever intertwined. This can only be a harbinger of gooey soap doings in our immediate future.

For sheer drama's sake, I had been hoping that Martin's justified, but violent acts (this guy really needs anger management – he was ready to take pieces out of both Bill and Leslie; I hope the show doesn't skip this step!) would end up being revealed to our pretend public, with all the fallout that would entail. But we may not be getting that. Because the Duprees let us know in no uncertain terms that Martin confessing is no longer an option!

And that, my Scoopers, is because Joey would undoubtedly be implicated, and the casino owning mobster would undoubtedly retaliate. I feel kind of robbed, yet impressed that the writers came up with this story point. It's an undeniable one with Mr. Armstrong in the mix! Anita and Vernon may have ended up feeling as if they'd rather face Joey's wrath, because they were about to learn that Nicole was ready for some beatdowns.

Vanessa – who looked no worse for wear, considering Joey threatened to kill her that same evening – went to Nicole to find out what the deal was with this family emergency Martin had talked about during his press conference. And, oh, dear, Nicole really was the last to know. She hadn't been made aware of any of it, and when Dr. R took Vanessa's advice and attempted to get the 411 from Martin, she ran into stone-faced Smitty instead.

Smitty might have been able to toe the water-muddying line, but as soon as Nicole caught sight of Samantha's sullen expression, the shrink knew it had hit the fan. When Smitty would only say Nicole needed to have a convo with her son, she ran to the Dupree mansion and found Martin there with his Samsonite. And she wasn't going anywhere until someone told her what the hell was going on!

Martin could barely get a word out at that point, so Anita sent him and Vernon to the country club; Martin needed to unwind and probably have his first meal of the day. That left La Dupree the one designated to tell Nicole everything...and she did. I'm not gonna lie – it felt like filler. I'm sure the scene was for the benefit of anybody who missed Wednesday's flashback reveal, but did we really need to hear Anita, who didn't even personally witness the events, rehashing it all to Nicole?

Not that Nicole didn't need to be told. Martin is her son, and she was beside herself that her parents had prevented her from helping her son through the trauma of killing one man and mutilating another – to say nothing of the ordeal of “Kenneth” coming back for revenge. It's a wonder she didn't press harder a month or so ago when she learned Martin had been suffering nightmares. She's rather been written as being steeped in her own turmoil over Ted's betrayal, and not much else.

She's also been crafted as resentful that nobody trusts her with the truth. When Nicole pitched a fit to Vanessa about Martin's press conference not having been mentioned to her, I found Nicole rather childish – but as she raged over being kept in the dark about her own child, it was hard not to cut her generous amounts of slack. Anita proceeded to make Nicole wrong, which I thought was a misstep.

Yes, Anita had lived a harder life than Nicole, and she knew that Martin would likely be the one demonized regarding his attacks on “Kenneth” and his brother, even if he had only acted to protect Vernon and himself from a hate crime. Yes, Martin's grandparents had made a decision in the moment that they were ultimately stuck with. But to invalidate Nicole's anger and her need to come to the aid of her child? Anita sure wasn't there for her own child this time!

Sidebar: Martin's involvement almost overshadowed it, but it was not lost on Nicole that Ted had once more kept a giant secret from her, this time about reshaping “Kenneth's" face in preparation for Vernon sending the attacker away. I think this is going to be more than the proverbial last straw for our Nic. Get ready, Carleton...Nicole is going to be single and ready to mingle faster than you can say “divorce lawyer!”

Shook ones

Jacob was still in full detective mode when a botched robbery left an anonymous cadaver lying around...and was amazed that Elon wasn't. I mean, Pop's only the chief of police, but he didn't seem fazed in the least that a man had been left as future compost in the park. Nah. He was way more interested in checking out YouTube footage of Martin's on-again-off-again press conference!

Now you guys know why, right? Elon wanted to make sure he and Marcel weren't mentioned! We didn't get that in dialogue, but the M.O. was obvious. Jacob wasn't having a good night, however. First, Elon told him to stop nosing around in Marcel's business or risk getting hurt, then Jacob went to Smitty to talk about the presser, only to have the usually talkative reporter act as if he'd signed his own personal non-disclosure agreement!

Detective Hawthorne was frustrated and ready to stick his head through the wall over the contradiction of Smitty going quiet after having been so vocal about what was rotten in the state of Marcel, but the gumshoe missed a vital, vital clue, at least at first. Smitty's silence wasn't surprising – he outright told Jacob that, if Martin was incriminated in anything, he was going to make like Elmer Fudd and be “vewy vewy quiet.”

Unfortunately for Smitty, his move was “vewy vewy” obvious. How should he have handled Jacob's inquiries differently? I don't know, but that he didn't realize that shutting down on a cop whose job it is to pick up on sudden shifts in the story wasn't the best way to go baffled me. Of course, Jacob's radar eventually switched on, and of course, Jacob intuited that Smitty shutting his trap had something to do with Martin.

Unfortunately for Samantha, she heard this exchange, and, to her way of thinking, it only solidified Tyrell's earlier assertion that their parents had slipped them an edited-for-television installment of events. I think it'd be a kick if the Richardson-Smith teens pulled a Spy Kids and got the full scoop on their own! They're certainly smart enough, and they're fan faves; time to give them a more proactive role in these proceedings!

Speaking of scoops, this brings us to the end of another Two Scoops, D.C. Edition. “Don't kick the baby” – kick it in the comments below and tell us every single thought you have about this soap. And, if you want us to be doing more articles on GATES, tell us that, too! Until next we meet, Scoopers, live your life beyond!

Purchase Adam-Michael James' "Bewitched” books on Amazon, and listen to isletunes, AMJ's podcast featuring nothing but music from the artists of Prince Edward Island, Canada.