Even in a world where everyone seems full of shit, the Gemstone family knows how to amaze. The fictional televangelist family at the center of HBOs The righteous gems are Olympic athletes in the sport of bullshit, posing as a model Christian family at their megachurch altar as they sulkily make their way across the American South and get caught up in all sorts of petty crimes.
They are a gonzo mirror to the Roy family of Succession, similarly concerned with the petty squabbles of the wealthy as a window into the American plight, but with creator Danny McBride’s signature vulgar poetry, full of monologues about dicks and shit. They are also a bit sweet.
This paradox makes The righteous gems one of the most compelling shows on television. It’s easy to write off Reverend Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and the grown kids who run his ministry as con artists who use organized religion to enrich themselves, but McBride and his writers are always clear: The Gems are misleading, crass and vulgar. but they are also sincere. It’s the classic McBride one-two punch.
“Sometimes you can use something crass and tacky to get the audience to laugh in a way,” says McBride, “and then you’re going to surprise them when you suddenly hit them with a little bit of empathy, or you see this vulnerable moment. ”
Photo: Jake Giles Netter/HBO
In the new season, currently airing on HBO and streaming on Max, Eli Gemstone attempts to enter semi-retirement and leave the Gemstone ministry to his children. But they are amazingly bad at it. Privileged children, the Gemstones have never wanted anything, and in that lack of want they have nurtured childish rivalries and insecurities all their lives. This doesn’t mean they don’t want to attempt and be good stewards of the family church – it’s just that, like good, empathetic people, they just have no idea how to start doing that.
McBride, in the lead role of eldest son Jesse Gemstone, is the clearest example of this. In Jesse, McBride has created a character who is a marvel of improvisation and empathy, a man-child with clearly marked insecurities, fueled by a cold fusion nonsense reactor, capable of insulting anyone in front of him for minutes at a time, so that he never has to listen to something they say.
“Unfortunately for Jesse, everything he has is rubbish,” says McBride. “He is put in the spotlight and inherits this position of leadership, while showing no sense of leadership. He never had to earn anything. He never had to come up with the hard lessons it takes for someone to amass so much power and wealth.
Photo: Jake Giles Netter/HBO
The righteous gems is a vulgar comedy about religious dicks who often mess with their cocks, that’s true, but it’s also hugely empathetic, which is what makes it such a wonderfully complex show. McBride and the writers never look down on the Gemstones and their buffoonery, even with brutal comedy like a fire hose of vomit erupting from all three Gemstone siblings, or when these grown adults have a real food fight in a diner. Likewise, it never suggests that the Gems are being disingenuous about their beliefs – they are hugely hypocritical at every turn, but they are also utterly convinced that what they claim to believe is real.
“I think they are certainly believers; I think the whole family is,” says McBride. “They started with a mission, and I think the lure of money and wealth and power and expansion has overtaken their original goals. It’s kind of the tragedy of the gems; they started aiming in one direction and successfully got them in another direction. And I think they lie to themselves and justify their behavior because they think they ultimately serve what is right, but they turn a blind eye to all the ways that they aren’t.”
This is maybe The righteous gemsgreatest insight. It’s very simple that thousands of words about the culture wars and experts on the left and right haven’t gotten to, but McBride and his associates have been doing that for three years now (while Also offering a masterclass in making dick jokes): it’s all too easy for bullshitters to bullshit themselves.