The Righteous Gemstones Knows America Too Well

by Colleen Secaur

The Righteous Gemstones (season 2, 2022), created by Danny McBride

There seems to be a common understanding of how a particular type of American man acts when he stumbles upon success: he talks a lot about his dick, equates money to sex, uses colorful language to get his point across, and does all of this simply because he can. Writer and actor Danny McBride has made a living off closely analyzing and then playing such men. However, in The Righteous Gemstones, McBride’s newest comedy series on HBO, the character study of the obnoxious man he’s made a living off of runs deeper. How does this man, with all his crude xenophobia, reconcile this behavior with his claims of Christian faith? What happens to the women caught up in his hurricane of posturing machismo? Does anyone actually buy what they’re selling?

The Righteous Gemstones has answers, and they’re surprisingly insightful for a show that moves between tones and comedic styles with startling velocity. The plot focuses on an uber-wealthy televangelist family, the titular Gemstones, and the children’s petty fights in their quest for acceptance and/or power from their father, Eli (John Goodman). There’s Jesse (McBride), the eldest son who believes in his God-given right to wrest the family business from his father sooner or later, despite his shocking ineptitude. Likewise, Kelvin Gemstone (Adam DeVine), seeks a way out of his youth ministry niche and into a more “serious” role in the church. And lastly, there’s Judy (Edi Patterson), the middle child and only daughter of the family, who perfectly encapsulates the moral decay at the center of the Gemstone Christian enterprise. 

Judy has only ever known power and wealth as something to be attained by aggression and masculine force. As a result, Patterson plays her outbursts as a source of shocked laughter for the audience and deep internal sorrow for the character. She’s told she won’t be taken seriously until she’s married, and so she does, only to be harangued by her brothers about the more effeminate traits of her husband. When she’s offered a chance to grab the spotlight by her uncle, Baby Billy (Walton Goggins), it’s a scam wherein she is the pawn for her uncle to thumb his nose at her father. It’s a true testament to the strong writing of Gemstones and Patterson’s performance, that one feels genuine sympathy for Judy in one scene when in the next, she graphically mocks her sister-in-law’s genitalia at a post-church family lunch. 

The deft play between tones is perhaps the show’s greatest strength. When Jesse and Judy find out their father has fallen into a coma, they react with nearly a minute’s worth of vomiting, each successive retch more ludicrous than the previous one. And when the Gemstone siblings seek to threaten a journalist who’s writing an expose on their family and find his dead body instead, an exemplary piece of physical comedy ensues as Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin slip and slide in a pool of blood and make a haphazard getaway in a Tesla they don’t entirely know how to drive. The way the Gemstones react to tragedy is inherently comedic. Yet, even then, it’s a darker, more grim style of comedy that reflects the brokenness of the environment they inhabit. Despite their preaching, they don’t know it’s wrong to lie, cheat, and even kill because that’s the only way they know how to get ahead.

In today’s cultural environment, liberal-minded media consumers are rightly fed up with stories centered around aggro masculine antics. Yet McBride’s portrayal and writing of several such characters is not only done alarmingly well but even convinces the audience to empathize with them. Yes, the Gemstones are scamming, greedy, xenophobic, and pompous people. However, McBride’s writing never goes for the easy target, which in this case would be that his sole use of evangelism is for profit. Much more interestingly, he suggests that the Gemstones genuinely do believe in their faith and that the simple role of paternal approval and love, or lack thereof, has led the Gemstones astray, even head pastor Eli. Because of this humanizing flaw,  when the Gemstones reach the outer limits of what could feasibly be socially acceptable, even in the world of an HBO comedy series, we can still see something of ourselves in them. When a group of neon-tinged motorcycle assassins, rendered in a stylistic homage to Akira, come after Eli in the hospital, and Jesse laughably turns away security due to the sheer force of his noxious personality, we can see that on some level, this is because Jesse wants to tell his father that he was the one that saved him.

In the last two episodes, the audience can see a marked improvement in the Gemstone children’s behavior directly resulting from their father’s newfound approval. Jesse permits his oldest son to pursue a non-Christian career (“We still want to be parents and child with you” is a brilliant line), Judy takes in her pregnant aunt (long story) and cares for her, and Kelvin finally sees the value in youth ministering. Despite this, they’re still a money-hungry, morally gray, selfish family. By making the Gemstone clan people who are hyperbolically flawed and yet driven by the human urge for love from their parents, the cast and crew are pulling off an exceedingly difficult balance that is much easier said than done, especially given the indignation so many people feel towards Gemstone-esque public figures. (i.e. Joel Osteen)  To quote a recent soundbite from McBride himself, “It’s easy to write someone who sucks, right, but it’s harder to write someone who sucks and then have someone who doesn’t suck identify with that person.”