The Righteous Gemstones recap: Are you there, God? It’s me, Judy Gemstone

“No one likes your ass, Judy Gemstone,” a fresh-faced teenage Jesse pointedly reminds his sister near the top of this season’s traditional flashback episode. It’s easy to see why. When we step back and look at Judy from a few miles away, her faults shape into view. Her short temper, sense of entitlement, and fashion sense snap together like a middle-child Lego set. She is Jan Brady by way of The Exorcist, her insecurities manifesting through petty crime, a thirst for revenge, and a total disregard toward the Rogers High School band equipment.

Returning to the year 2000, “Interlude III” takes us on a half-hour tour through the high school experience of Judy and the family’s millennial heel turn. A time of bandana tops and raging hormones, Judy’s adolescence, like it was for many of us, is a prison of insecurity. Her “flakey” advances toward her crushes and outright dismissal of Jesse’s “poor” girlfriend show a young woman on the cusp of realizing that not everything will be handed to her. At the same time, her immense wealth will keep her from ever experiencing the kind of financial violence her family creates—explored in this episode through the Gemstone’s Y2K Survival Buckets that crater Peter’s finances.

That’s not to say Judy’s problems aren’t relatable. Her flashback finds the character at her most human. She may be the princess of the Gemstone kingdom, but at school, she’s a disruptive weirdo. She isn’t a popular Fubu-sporting freak on a leash like her brother, the platonic ideal of a Fred Durst-obsessed turn-of-the-century white boy, nor is her hair as beautiful as Amber’s. Judy’s unpleasantness makes her a pariah in school and at home. Her brothers hate her. Her parents diagnose her with unspecified “minor” mental issues behind her back. With long hair sprinkling dandruff on the desk of her crush Trent, she’s learning in real-time that money can’t prevent the open hand of reality from smacking her across the face every day until the sweet release of death frees her of her torment.

Like the other Gemstones, Judy transforms her rejection into aggressive unearned confidence, one of Jody Hill’s and Danny McBride’s favorite themes. As far as defense mechanisms go, there are worse. It’s done the Gemstones a lot of good. What’s more unearned than claiming their wealth is divine will to the congregants they exploit? It’s all part of God’s plan, which includes murder, blasphemy, and swindling their congregants and their brother-in-law.

When we catch up with Aimee-Leigh and Eli, they’re doing damage control, spinning a failed Y2K doomsday-prepper scheme in another miracle that Eli seems eager to sweep under the rug. Still, the line between past and present comes almost immediately as Eli and Aimee-Leigh’s doomsday infomercial recalls Amber’s “The System.” Though the topics differ, they’re still packaging and selling answers to questions that should be available in that book they’re always hocking. It’s a scam, and they know it. “So who was wrong, God or you?” a journalist asks Eli. Eli offers no answers.

Regarding Christian fundamentalism and American conservatism, people often wonder who is and isn’t a “true believer.” The hard truth is, the distinction doesn’t matter because the results are the same: Voters are tricked, and everyone’s lives are made worse. The Gemstones complicate this notion through Aimee-Leigh and Eli, two halves of the same coin, a marriage between a true-beliving Christian and a grifting revival-tent huckster. And yet, the former is a lens into how corruptible that faith is. She admits to Eli that she never believed the world would end but romanticized it as a return to “a simpler time,” a dream of life without all the things that gave her power.

It’s Aimee-Leigh’s version of Make America Great Again. All it requires is the end of the world, which she knows will not happen. However, no matter how bad or dishonest she feels, she agrees to keep Kayfabe and tells her church that this is what God wants. There are no consequences to her deception; she’s back in power by the episode’s end. Like last season, Aimee-Leigh’s late-stage moralizing rings false, and “Interlude III” director David Gordon Green doesn’t ignore her hypocrisy. As she expresses a modicum of regret over her victims, we see Jesse playing with the church’s latest purchases: The Redeemer, a monster truck purchased by the church for Jesse, who must use in at least one sermon.

Aimee-Leigh can tickle the ivories of her grand piano from the altar of her megachurch, where she and Eli enjoy a sitcom-style resolution about their fraudulence. Still, there’s no repentance or returning the money. It seems their personal feelings don’t matter if they’re earning. When confronted with the failure of the world’s end, the two pull out the shepherd’s crook and lead their disgruntled, protesting congregation back to their TV show church, their lies, and their collection plate. There will be no refunds.

The kindest read of Aimee-Leigh’s justification comes from a real “true believer,” Peter, who invested $25,000 in Y2K survival buckets and turned to crime when his wife refused Eli’s refund. Ironically, he and Aimee-Leigh both want what the other has: Peter wants the wealth to keep his house and send his boys to college; she fetishizes living out of a bucket in the woods. God delivers neither from evil, but at least Aimee-Leigh has money and influence. Peter isn’t so lucky. For him, God has chosen a life of snake handling and insecurity as he attempts to sort through his complicated feelings on the matter in a last-minute sermon. His sermonizing reflects a desire to provide for his family as Eli does, revealing human justification for how he ended up the head of a militia. On one shoulder, he has May-May telling him to reject greed; on the other, he has Karl admitting he wishes he was a Gemstone child.

Peter undergoes the most significant change. “Interlude III” presents him as a feckless provider, an honest preacher, and a man crushed under foolishness and debt. As in The White Lotus, Steve Zahn plays an excellent mascot for the emasculated middle age man. He can handle a snake because he believes what he preaches—the outside world is what confuses him. He believed Eli was also a true believer or, at least, hoped for some of that Gemstone prosperity. Caught between God’s will and the tangible consequences of bankruptcy, Peter turns to the devil and takes a bullet to the cheek for his trouble.

Throughout “Interlude III,” May-May reminds us that greed rots the soul, providing empty pleasures that become outward expressions of inner turmoil. That’s why she always chooses Fresca from home over the Gemstone’s sinful Sprite. But her warnings come to fruition through Judy’s kleptomania, anger, and jealousy. Like Peter, she takes what she can’t have, looking at Jesse like he has everything. Judy focuses on the superficial, coveting Amber’s hair and stealing her ring, an outgrowth of the shoplifting ventures she drags “baby-dick” Kelvin on. What Judy can’t have, she steals or destroys. Then, at the very least, someone will pay attention to her.

With B.J. still years away—my kingdom for a Pen15–style B.J.-centric interlude where Tim Baltz plays his younger version—Judy has nothing besides a trust fund and her brothers. But as the show reiterates time and again, family is there for you in ways wealth isn’t. Jesse’s Darkman routine rescues her from rejection in a surprisingly hilarious and heartfelt defense of his sister’s honor. He swoops in with a white ski mask and a fedora and smacks Trent’s little ass red. Spanking Trent isn’t going to solve Judy’s problems. The attack is another example of Jesse’s problem-solving techniques, the same kind he used on the Simkins and Eli’s driver earlier in the season.

No, the Gemstone’s greed is in their blood, and they’ll do whatever they must to keep their fortune. May-May is right. Money created a world where the keepers of God’s message become deceivers. This is the world we live in. A world of Jim Bakkers and Pat Robertsons. A world of Eli and Aimee-Leigh Gemstones. For them, redemption and salvation come in the form of a monster truck aptly named “Redeemer.” The Gemstones roll over their congregation as The Redeemer rolls over Judy’s old toys, leaving nothing but a hollering Gemstone. It doesn’t matter if Aimee-Leigh or Eli are true believers because the result is the same. Buyer beware: All sales on Salvation are final.

Aimee-Leigh’s desire to “return to a simpler time” is a hackneyed conservative pipedream. She “romanticized” living after the end of the world as a way to reconnect with her family, free of the monster trucks and arguments about pubes that plague her day-to-day. What is so romantic about the end of the world? Why do all these people think it will be so easy? Judy Gemstone can barely survive high school.

Stray observations:

• The casting on this show remains unparalleled. I’m always impressed by Emma Shannon and J. Gaven Wilde, who play Judy and Jesse, respectively, and more or less carry the episode. Both of whom do such convincing and hilarious younger versions of Patterson and McBride. Still, the young Montgomerys, particularly young Chuck, are spot-on. I was so shocked by how much this kid looked like Lukas Haas; I thought some digital trickery might be involved.
• Both Peter and May-May have a lot of Judy in them. Like Judy, with her brunette mop or hair, May-May is always talking that trash, afflicted by the Gemstone temper, expressing her fears through stubbornness and violence. Poor Peter mostly gets Judy’s insecurity.
• “Interlude III” provides much context to the first four episodes but also raises questions about the future. Namely, why was Peter’s investment in Eli’s doomsday grift such a secret? Most importantly, May-May attacks Aimee-Leigh in the season opener. Why does she blame her specifically?
• Judy found Amber’s ring “in the toilet.”
• The lipstick kisses on the pictures of Russell Crowe and Ryan Phillippe were a beautiful touch.
• “I couldn’t live without my TRL.”
• 17-year-old Jesse says the Redeemer is “coke white.”
• “This what you call a ‘moist maker.”
• “Face me! I’m trying to have a hardcore, come-to-Jesus talk with you right now, and you’re being very rude with your body positioning to me.”
• Judy describes her hair as luscious and perfumey.
• Lord knows Jesse doesn’t want to hear this “He said, She said bullshit” at dinner.
• Did anyone else spot the return of Sean Whalen as Eli’s driver?
• I have to send many shouts to costume designer Christina Flannery who transported me back to middle school through the Rogers High Y2K fashion.