The Righteous Gemstones think they’re in an action movie. They’re right

Jesse Gemstone (Danny McBride) thinks he’s in a movie. On HBO’s prosperity gospel action-comedy The Righteous Gemstones, Jesse’s every deed, every word, feels like he’s punching up his own life on the fly. He stumbles over his one-liners in hopes of leaving the room on the perfect note: “Bye, Felicia.” Among his televangelist family, Jesse fancies himself a Vin Diesel surrounded by Tyreses, rising to the occasion and cracking the case as firstborns have done since “olden fairy tale times.”

Except Jesse isn’t that. He’s an incompetent weirdo with Reed Richards’ tips and Ric Flair’s bluster. The most significant difference between him and every QAnon LARPer with an alarming amount of zip-ties: Jesse Gemstone is rich as hell.

McBride is no stranger to portraying and writing Call Of Duty veterans who see their lives as grand narratives unfolding for the world around them. He and frequent collaborators Jody Hill and David Gordon Green love to parody this type of modern American man, who thinks every problem needs a Van Damme to solve it: First there was Foot Fist Way’s Fred, then Pineapple Express’ Red, followed by Eastbound & Down’s Kenny Powers.

“A lot of the comedy started coming from the idea that [Kenny Powers] sees himself as this humongous hero when he has none of the qualities of any of that shit,” McBride told Grantland in 2013. “We’d come into something dramatic and try to figure out, ‘What movie does Kenny think he’s in right now?’”

McBride’s characters believe they’re Rambo at the beginning of First Blood Part II, waiting for a Colonel Trautman to call them into action. Emotionally, though, they stopped developing around, say, age 8 (if we’re being generous). When a blackmailer threatens his image in season one of The Righteous Gemstones, Jesse holds an “Avengers assemble” moment with his younger brother Kelvin (Adam Devine) in the Jason’s Steakhouse bathroom. “Don’t you remember when we were kids, and we wanted to be Double Dragons? We said we were gonna grow up and fight crime.” Jesse pleads: “Kelvin, you really don’t care if this cocaine sex party tape destroys the Gemstones once and for all?”

“Maybe it’s time for the Gemstones to be done,” Kelvin says with the pomp and circumstance of Captain America breaking up with Iron Man in Civil War.

This scene perfectly depicts the worldview McBride and company are satirizing, one that’s hypocritical to the values vocally espoused by the church. After all, the hyper-masculine perspective that fetishizes violence, weaponry, and grand moral wars isn’t exactly Christian. (Let alone a “cocaine sex party.”) And yet, it’s how the Gemstones solve almost every problem thrown their way. Aggression has become a default for the Christian right in America, why should the Gemstones be any different?

The Gemstones seem to take the cliche “on steroids” to heart. Everything in their world must be bigger, more explosive, and more representative of the 24-inch pythons they seem to think they have. The more Jesse and his siblings pose as capable humans, the more the show indulges and deflates them in equal measure. In season two’s “After I Leave, Savage Wolves Will Come,” the Gemstone kids roll up in their Tesla at the Airbnb of journalist Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who, as in the prior season, has dirt on the Gemstones and threatens to destroy them once and for all. It’s as if someone finds out the truth about the Gemstones, they’d lose their bond with God and more importantly their cash flow.

Set to an electronic Tangerine Dreamy score to hammer home the scene’s Michael Mann-liness, the Gemstones may arrive in style to “crack the case” and find out who’s gunning for them, but they can’t nail the dismount. Once they discover that they’ve stepped into an actual action movie—with Block in a pool of blood inside the rental and a melted man out front—they panic and try to escape. Unfortunately, running away isn’t in the Schwarzenegger guide to taking out dirty journalists, and the Tesla thwarts their exit.

The writing and editing highlight how foolish they look, cutting between the car’s interior, where Jesse and his sister Judy (Edi Patterson) panic and futz with the car’s touchscreen, and exterior shots of the car’s automatic, aluminum wings flapping and spreading and refusing to close. The Gemstones would choose to drive a vehicle designed to look like it’s from a movie rather than one that can handle the job. They’re the Gemstones. They’re not showing up in a Sebring.

When you act like the world is one large Waterworld stunt spectacular, you’re going to need money. So the Gemstone patriarch Eli (John Goodman) picks up the bill for his kids. Eli pinpoints his eldest son’s worldview after the attempted murder of Jesse and his wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman) in the season two episode “Never Avenge Yourselves, But Leave It To The Wrath Of God.” “You think this is a fucking movie or something,” Eli says, dismissing the idea that the family is under attack from a roving gang of motorcycle assassins, whom Jesse christens “the cycle ninjas.”

But Jesse isn’t the only one guilty of this behavior. Most ineffectual, sad, and pathetic men on Gemstones act this way, like Chad and Levi (James DuMont and Jody Hill, respectively), who leave their everyday lives and cellphone belt clips at home to playact in Jesse’s David vs. Goliath reboot. Eli’s observation echoes a back-and-forth between Jesse’s son Gideon (Skyler Gisondo) and his season-one cohorts Scotty (Scott MacArthur) and Lucy (Virginia Gardner) as they attempt to rebuild their collapsing blackmail scheme. While filming a threat to Jesse, Scotty adopts an affected growl, but Lucy and Gideon accuse him of “trying to be a movie.” “It’s becoming a parody of itself,” Gideon says.

Gideon and Eli have a lot in common. They can spot a poser because they’ve spent a lot of time convincing people they’re violent. Gideon, a stuntman, and Eli, a former pro wrestler, embody the type of man that Jesse thinks he is. Gideon’s precision on the dirt bike fulfills Jesse’s dream of shoving a cattle prod through the spoke of a cycle ninja’s ride. And Eli is the heavyweight champion of Jesse’s world, providing for and protecting his family at all costs. Unfortunately, Jesse’s masculine ideal envelops him, and all he can do is nervously showboat. He lives in the “fake it” phase of “fake it until you make it.”

And yet, that’s the secret sauce of the show. The more Jesse presses the gas, hits the NOS, and tries to enter Beast Mode, the funnier his failures become. The narcissism that he and his siblings exhibit results from their father’s obscene wealth. “I’ve been very fortunate in this world to be born a Gemstone,” Jesse says in season one’s “But The Righteous Will See Their Fall,” just before he ruins his friends’ lives by coming clean about their video-taped sexploits. “It’s about as close to God as one can get.” (Ironically, Tyrese’s Fast And Furious character comes to a similar realization in F9, reflecting on the family’s failure to get killed across nine movies of dramatically escalating stakes.)

Jesse’s attitude reflects someone who wreaks havoc but rarely, if ever, pays the price for it. And yet, around him, an actual action movie is playing out. Through his ruthlessly efficient right-hand man Martin (Gregory Alan Williams), Jesse’s father has a private army at his disposal. But Eli’s willing to get his hands dirty if pushed. He viciously breaks his son’s thumbs at the hint of dissidence and has a secret criminal history that makes him Tony Soprano by way of Jim Bakker.

Eli’s on a closed loop of violence. Riding a rollercoaster ironically named “Exodus,” he weighs his options as the grave of his former manager and enemy lay beneath him. The outstretched arm of the Lord won’t free Eli from bondage. He is doomed to ride the peaks and valleys between killings.

In a world where conspiracy theorists attempt insurrections, the market on grown-men playing army guys is skyrocketing. But Jesse’s macho posturing wasn’t born in a vacuum. He does it to prove he’s ready to lead the Gemstone ministry—it’s just not time yet. Eli must be a predator and preacher to keep his prosperity gospel grift going. So from his compound, he runs schemes that enrich himself, overwhelming those who try to stop him with money or mercenaries. It turns out that the righteous Gemstones are in an action movie. They just don’t know they’re the bad guys.