Succession may be over, but thanks to The Righteous Gemstones, HBO isn’t quite finished with conniving cutthroat relatives intent on bickering and backstabbing their way to the top of the family empire. Danny McBride’s riotous religious comedy is the network’s remedy for viewers’ post-Roy blues, and in its third season (which premieres June 18), it’s as gloriously ridiculous as ever: a cocktail of holy hypocrisy, profane nastiness, and juvenile machismo that’s as unhinged as the psycho tantrums its evangelical preachers habitually throw.
“Flying off the handle won’t help,” admonishes Gemstones patriarch Eli (John Goodman) to his adult children Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam DeVine), and rarely has advice been more appropriate—or gone less heeded. The Righteous Gemstones is a show about megachurch maniacs losing their minds at the drop of a hat while striving to keep what’s theirs by any inane means possible, and that hasn’t changed one iota in its return engagement.
Though they’re now the proud owners of Florida’s pious-themed resort Zion’s Landing—where their uncle Baby Billy (Walton Goggins) performs daily by the pool to an indifferent vacation crowd—the Gemstones are far from content. Central to their problems: Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin took the reins of the business from Eli, but can’t figure out how to work together, thanks to their individual desires to be king of the hill (or, as Jesse puts it, the “main decider”).
That’s not the Gemstones’ only challenge. Back from a concert tour, Judy struggles to keep her distance frosted-tipped guitarist Steven (Stephen Schneider)—something that requires carefully managing her cartoonishly emasculated husband BJ (Tim Baltz), as well as her nosy siblings. Steven is a persistently funny thorn in Judy’s side, and he proves just as vexing to his wife (Casey Wilson), who lustily reciprocates his antipathy.
At the same time, in the wake of Eli stepping aside, the Gemstones ministry is facing declining attendance and revenue, along with the loss of one of its most prized benefactors: race car legend Dusty Daniels (HBO MVP Shea Whigham), aka “The Slick Bandit,” who’s leaning toward throwing his money behind the rival Simkins clan (led by Stephen Dorff’s villain), who—unlike the nepo-baby Gemstones—became self-made successes in the wake of their parents’ tragic demise.
As if that weren’t enough, Kelvin is working with bizarre reformed-Satanist acolyte Keefe (Tony Cavalero) to rid the community of X-rated material via a Smut Busters teen youth group that cleans out local porn shops, and Eli’s retirement is interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious individual from his past: May-May Montgomery (Kristen Johnston).
Living in a dilapidated church, May-May reluctantly turns to Eli for help in rescuing her sons Chuck (Lukas Haas) and Carl (Robert Oberst) from their father Peter (Steve Zahn), who’s now running an Oath Keepers-style militia. Chuck and Carl eventually seek refuge in the Gemstones mansion, but betrayals are omnipresent in The Righteous Gemstones, threatening to destroy not only these clownish individuals and their plans, but Eli’s hope for the family unity that will allow them—and their empire—to flourish.
In numerous respects, The Righteous Gemstones continues to parallel Succession, and yet there’s not a moment in the series that doesn’t feel like a manifestation of McBride’s (and directors Jody Hill and David Gordon Green’s) idiosyncratic furious-southern-man-child insanity.
In a season rife with highlights, there may be nothing funnier than Gemstones uncle Baby Billy attempting to reverse his fortunes by having Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin finance his crazy showbiz-spotlight dream. His character lying and scheming through his shiny white teeth (beneath a head of matching snowy hair), and generating hilarity from his affected pronunciation of “daddy” and an impromptu scene-ending dance routine, Goggins is in a class by himself. He deserves every Emmy in existence for his performance as the has-been huckster, and his rapport with McBride is a thing of inspired angry-lunatic beauty.
Everyone is half-cocked (or showing their cocks) in The Righteous Gemstones, whose story also involves Jesse’s son Gideon (Skyler Gisondo), now injured and incapable of continuing his stuntman career, working as Eli’s driver—and getaway driver, once violent adversaries come calling.
There’s also a fantastically funny flashback episode to the Gemstones kids’ youth (featuring J. Gaven Wilde’s pitch-perfect McBride impersonation), a secret society called The Cape and the Gun, a biblical plague, a conflict born from Y2K, and a running thread concerning Jesse’s beloved monster truck “The Redeemer,” which gets multiple wacko workouts. That vehicle is the epitome of the Gemstones and the series itself, all supersized aggro bluster and uninhibited destructiveness, and like every other plot element, it’s put to ideal use throughout the course of these nine episodes.
The Righteous Gemstones has always spotlighted its phenomenal stars and yet generously made room for its supporting players, and this time around, Johnston, Zahn, Whigham, Dorff, and Haas all get their moments in the stupendously silly spotlight. McBride and company treat the series as a true ensemble, and as such there’s rarely a moment when things aren’t flying off in daft directions, be it Patterson insulting people in explicit (and explicitly masculine) terms, McBride constantly adding an unnecessary “s” to the end of words (“That’s how you win in the game of mens;” “In Memoriums”), or BJ acting like the weirdest weirdo who ever weirded.
Whether staging sequences of mounting immaturity or simply allowing its actors to trade moronic X-rated barbs, The Righteous Gemstones crazily skewers the charlatan faithful while still locating the pious sincerity and goodness—or, at least, less-badness—lurking beneath their extravagant silk-suited, gold lamé-dressed exteriors. Greed and God are cozy bedfellows in McBride’s series, and so too are hate and love, sanity and psychosis. It’s a stew of such demented goofiness that its only comedic equals are McBride’s prior HBO efforts Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals, and its third season suggests that it’s just hitting its stride. Consequently, it elicits a reaction best summed up by Dusty’s catchphrase: WhooWee Sucker!
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