The Righteous Gemstones season 3 premiere: Succession comes to those who pray

Now that the reign of HBO’s most detestable set of siblings has ended, it’s time for the second coming. The Righteous Gemstones is back, and though this trio of siblings has much in common with Succession’s fail-children, the season premiere sees Jesse (Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam Devine) succeeding where the Roys failed, inheriting their father’s empire of megachurches, self-help programs, and the Zion resort. Unfortunately, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin are selfish and stupid as ever, and the episode spends considerable energy reminding us who they are and what’s at stake, carefully introducing us to new characters, histories, and mysteries that will shape the season. The show seems more self-aware than ever but not necessarily as fresh, returning to the well of Eli’s past and a feud with fellow mega-pastors. Though we are treading familiar ground, The Righteous Gemstones remains blessed with near-constant laughs from front to back. Whooweee, sucker! Let’s jump in.

Like last season, the premiere opens in flashback. Set on the night of one of Jesse’s earliest public ventures, the show quickly reestablishes its typical dynamic. As Jesse (Young Jesse, played by J. Gaven Wilde) sermonizes over the loudspeaker, proclaiming, “Through God’s teachings, we could be a monster truck,” his brother and sister try to poke holes in his grandstanding while Eli proudly watches his flock buy Bud Lites in Jesus’ name. His saintly wife, Aimee- Leigh (Jennifer Nettles), once again, gently expresses disgust over the family’s greed but does nothing to counter it. Hardly an innocent bystander, Aimee-Leigh sneaks off for a cigarette, and the show takes an early stylistic detour.

GRADE FOR SEASON 3, EPISODE 2, “BUT ESAU RAN TO MEET HIM”: A-

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As if trying to show collaborators Danny McBride and David Gordon Green that he, too, can do a Halloween, director Jody Hill mounts a chase straight out of a slasher, with Aimee-Leigh’s sister-in-law May-May (played by Kristen Johnson) hunting Aimee-Leigh through the fairgrounds with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees, before smacking the Gemstone matriarch with a wrench. The violence doesn’t end there; May-May sets up this season’s MacGuffin, yelling that Amiee-Leight ruined her family before a station wagon unceremoniously wallops her.

When we arrive at the present, the Gemstones we know and love are still the same. In quasi-retirement and celebrating with his secret society, the Cape and Pistol Society, Eli lives with his decision to hand the church to his kids. Despite receiving all the money, power, and responsibility in the world, the Gemstone kids haven’t changed, and episode writers John Carcieri and Danny McBride spend the next 10 minutes reminding us who they are and how little they’ve grown.

Always on the lookout for a new scheme so he can play grabass with old slow eyes, a.k.a. Keefe (Tony Cavalero), Kelvin (Adam Devine) launches “The Smut Busters,” a perverse project that does more to help the sex industry than hurt it. Kelvin and his youth group buy up stocks of dildos and butt plugs from local sex shops and bring them to the burn pit that will inevitably kill Keefe from toxic fume inhalation. Bravo, Kelvin, you’ve prevented truck drivers from procuring dick pills.

Meanwhile, as “main decider,” Jesse (McBride) spends his days playing Sopranos with his boys. In a sequence that lays out why Jesse is a terrible leader, the eldest son orders his crew of dingbats, Matthew (Troy Anthony Hogan), Gregory (J. LaRose), Chad (James DuMont), and Levi (Jody Hill), to take care of Walker (veteran character actor Sean Whalen), Eli’s father’s driver who leaked a lovely story about the family baking Christmas cookies to the press. Few things are more satisfying than Jesse ordering around his crew of paunchy middle-aged men who all look like they worked and slept at the same RadioShack. It’s nice to see them back.

However, as Jesse’s stock plummets, like Jesus, Judy’s has risen. Living up to her mother’s legacy, Judy has become a beloved singer in the Christian rock community, and it’s making her a star, at least in her own mind. When we see the three Gemstones in action, giving their megachurch sermon, Kelvin and Jesse bicker in pastor cadence. But Judy, who returned from her tour a veteran of the road, shows them up. She has something neither brother has: God-given talent. However, there is no harmony on stage, and Eli knows it.

At brunch, we learn that the church is suffering without Eli. The New Generation continues to finger-point over who’s at fault, who’s doing the most to fix it, and which parts of the service people leave to go shit. More concerning, race-car driver Dusty Daniels (Shea Whigham), one of the family’s wealthiest benefactors, has decided to invest with another church. Forced to grovel, the family heads out to see the Slick Bandit on his turf, where they meet Shea Whigham in all his prune-faced prosthetic glory. As great as he looks, Dusty doesn’t feel the love, deciding to side with a more upstanding family, The Simkins.

Things play out predictably. Dusty’s admiration for Simkins has less to do with looks (everyone’s looking great, but Craig is looking the best) and more about their tragedy. The Simkins didn’t have everything handed to them—they’re the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-type folks, Dusty mutters. When Dusty suggests Jesse race the oldest Simkins (Stephen Dorff), Jesse’s bluster, his history with monster trucks, and his own expensive fleet of cars get the best of him. Simkins smokes Jesse, who stalls out his stock car before driving directly into a wall.

The scene lightly establishes the professional rivalry that presumably will give Jesse, Kelvin, and Judy a reason to unite. However, it feels rushed and expository. No one even utters Stephen Dorff’s character name—a frustrating omission, particularly for review writers. Even the visual splendor of Jesse driving a stock car into a wall feels staid, reminiscent of Barry and, of course, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. It’s funny, no doubt. McBride’s titanium confidence can sell anything. But it does feel like we’ve driven down this road before.

As he so often does, Jesse returns to Amber (Cassidy Freeman) wounded. Though it looks like her weird little MLM self-help business is taking off, Jesse makes the situation all about his precious ego, complaining about the Gemstones’ lousy origin story. Amber’s pep talk doesn’t work, and Jesse ends the scene pondering the most horrible thought a person can have: “What if we’re not Leno? What if we’re just Conan?”

Rather than wait for a few episodes, Jesse decides the New Generation needs to get on the same page. He apologizes to Kelvin for, among other things, mocking the way Kelvin’s botox-infused, dented forehead. Kelvin reciprocates and apologizes for calling Jesse a “deformed Dracula.” Look, the insults don’t matter—even if they are the episode’s best part. What’s interesting about this is how quickly the siblings are working together. Within 24 minutes, Jesse went from harping on his family about being the main decider to recognizing they would need each other to beat the Simkins. The stakes feel low, but it’s reassuring how fast they’re plowing through this beat.

Thankfully, there’s always B.J. (Tim Baltz) to lean on. Dressed in a beautiful pink tweed suit with a matching ruffled shirt and his trademark earring, B.J. is crushing his welcome center duties, becoming one of the few to help solve the church’s problem by doing his job. But when Judy returns to him with gifts, obviously feeling guilty about her affair on the road, he can tell something is up. Those handful of kisses she shared with Stephen (Stephen Schneider) are eating her up, yet Edi Patterson plays her nervousness with a tinge of pride. She gets a charge out of sinning until she’s caught.

Though her brothers interrupt the perks of being a rockstar to continue Jesse’s apology tour, it’s nice to see Judy thriving and evolving. No longer a daddy’s girl, she’s a diva in the mold of Aimee-Leigh While she has a claim on the top spot within the family, the affair could jeopardize all that and more. Being bad is fun, but this sinful business could blow up everything she’s worked for.

Despite Jesse’s attempts at getting the family to hold hands, they reject his efforts. They’re not that family, and Jesse isn’t solving anything by trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. The New Generation will have to do things their way—hands in. And by the episode’s end, they’re back to their old tricks. Jesse has the gang assault Simkins; Kelvin and the Smut Busters bust smut; and Judy returns home to her sweet dancing idiot. Even Eli has seemingly patched things up with May-May. It’s almost as if they solved a season of Gemstone problems in one episode.

A reliable laugh machine, the episode spends too much time retreading ground, particularly about our villains of the week, May-May and the Simkins. After last season, in which the show brought its satire and style to another level, separating itself from McBride’s other HBO projects, the season three premiere skates by because the jokes and performances are still top-notch. It may just be Conan, but where I come from, that’s a good thing.

Let’s move onto episode two. HBO’s decision to package the first two episodes together was a smart call. While the premiere did a neat and orderly job introducing new characters and story arcs, its successor puts the pedal to the metal with a riotously funny 30 minutes, complete with action, intrigue, and a whole lot of swearing.

The cold open wastes no time establishing the installment’s aggressive tone. As Stephen (Stephen Schneider) sits enjoying his fancy new bread, his wife (Casey Wilson) asks him about work. When he tells her he was let go, leaving out the part about the affair, she assumes it’s because he’s back on cocaine and needs to go to rehab. (Love how quickly the show rounds out Stephen’s character.) As most lovers’ quarrels go, it spirals from there, peaking with Stephen telling his blushing bride, “I’m sorry I don’t like your hair. It looks fucking stupid,” before carpeting the kitchen in f-bombs. That is until, taking a page out of May-May’s book, Stephen’s wife smacks him upside the head with a glass blender in front of the kids. It’s there from the outset: This episode is all about familial rage. This is The Righteous Gemstones in the sweet spot.

Jody Hill returns to direct the second episode, which plays to his strengths. Few directors allow their actors to relish in swearing quite like him. Throughout their careers, the way he and McBride have wielded “fucks” and “shits,” from Foot Fist Way through Vice Principals, has been awe-inspiring for those who think a well-placed expletive is about the funniest thing in the world. Like listening to “Ode To Joy” or gazing upon the “Mona Lisa,” it’s sublime observing Jesse and Judy telling an audience of pastors to fuck off because they “fucking suck.” We’re watching masters at work.

The language is fast and loose because, in many ways, the episode is about people cutting out the filler and saying precisely what they mean and barely recognizing it. There’s blunt talk throughout, starting with Stephen’s crack about his wife’s hair, and reaches a fever pitch when the family visits Uncle Peter (Steve Zahn), who describes the Gemstones to a T.

Poor Gideon, though. When Amber and Jesse catch him smoking on the patio, they mock his injury and the depression it caused—again, there’s no sugar-coating their pleasure in his misfortune. Gideon, the most ordinary and empathetic person on the show, is within his rights to feel sad. After sustaining a severe neck injury, he’s out of work and may never perform again. In some ways, it mirrors the cold open, with the Gemstone parents sitting in for Stephen’s wife, telling their son to grow up and get a job—except Gideon isn’t hiding an immoral act. Her comments about her age-appropriate Karen Bob do bring to mind many of the men in the Gemstone orbit, including Jesse and Kelvin, who couch their arrested development in faux masculinity.

Coincidentally or not, the next scene involves a group of grown men playing army guys. Now his father’s new driver, Gideon—broken neck and all—drives Eli and the New Generation to their Uncle Peter’s compound that Jesse compares to Ruby Ridge and Waco. He’s on point. As they arrive, the family leaves The Righteous Gemstones and on to the set of Justified, where an army of Doomsday preppers trains to defend toilet paper. Aimee-Leigh’s brother-in-law, Peter, is a ruthless but mostly ineffectual leader, protected by Zahn’s energy but undone by his frame—his browline glasses and long gray hair make him look like Brent Spiner in Independence Day. But in his big speech railing against the Gemstones, he doesn’t lie. The Gemstones are charlatans and entertainers who care not for their followers or their God. Worse still, Eli commodified Aimee-Leigh’s gift, a sin Peter takes quite seriously.

Paired with the Simkins, Aimee-Leigh’s extended family provides another point of contrast for the Gemstones, giving viewers a group that’s even more detestable than they are. It’s an interesting dynamic because both rivalries are, essentially, snobs vs. slobs, with the Gemstones’ snob-to-slob ratio fluctuating depending on the circumstances. With the Simkins and, later, the group of pastors, the Gemstones are slobs. But against the militia, the family’s status elevates to a more rarified air. In a show based on a family of loathsome idiots, we’re given multiple points of view on them, altering our sympathies from scene to scene. It was a welcome complication following the cut-and-dry Simkins introduction.

Most importantly, Peter’s militia, The Brothers Of Tomorrow’s Fires, gives us a reason to root for the Gemstones, always a tall order. It is easy to get swept up in the Gemstones nonsense because compared to the Simkins and the Pastors, they’re more fun, and they thumb their nose at authority, pretending to be underdogs. The militia provides such an evident and present threat, an actual physical danger as opposed to humiliation or financial loss. We know that when it comes to the Simkins or the pastors, the Gemstones aren’t in mortal danger—unless one of those pastors was wearing a steel toe.

The Gemstones leave the militia with bruised egos, but for the kids, their problems are just starting. While it may be sick, it’s also awful news that all the pastors in their network want to meet with them. The shitty poll numbers are returning to haunt Jesse, whose reality distortion field was punctured by Simkins. Afraid he might be Conan, he and his siblings ruin their father’s chillaxing time on the lake by sucking their thumbs and begging for his help. He’ll solve their pastor problems.

Like Gideon ironically calling Amber “mommy” for some reason, the way the Gemstones weaponize Eli’s infantilization of his kin makes for some of the strangest and biggest laughs in the episode. Cutting out the subtext, the children on the show appeal to their parents’ sympathies by playacting as little babies. Jesse, meanwhile, is in his mid-40s and looks like a deformed Dracula with a bad dye job. Reiterating the core mission left over from the premiere this season, Eli tells them they’ll need to figure this out together, but he’ll still come smooth things over with the pastors if it means watching his adult children suck their thumbs.

First, they’ll have to get their house in order. After attempting to pay off Stephen, Judy tries to patch things up with B.J., who is unaware they are in a rough patch. Unlike the rest of the family, B.J. is stepping up and helping the family. He, like Peter, is correct in his assessment of the situation. Judy is gaslighting and emotionally abusing him, and it’s painful to watch. Tim Baltz is among the funniest people on television, and his B.J. is a naif trying to do what he thinks best. It’s hard to watch Judy railroad him like this. Ultimately, status changes quickly on this show. One second, Judy is on the receiving end of her family’s insults; the next, she’s manipulating B.J. for her self-interest. She takes her shots where we can get ’em.

This episode is heavy on rage, right from the jump, with the fight between Stephen and his wife, moving through the Militia’s chant, the compound raid. Violence can erupt at any moment, especially with Peter, a festering mop bucket of familial grievance. Peter is dangerous, volatile, and unhinged, a proper threat to the Gemstone empire. After the raid, Hill directs the hell out of an incredibly game Zahn, with the character’s Reservoir Dogs routine, cutting off the ear of his underling, creating an effective form of torture by playing to the sympathies of his large son Karl (played by strongman Robert Oberst). Much like the blunt talk in this episode, Righteous Gemstones hasn’t lost its stomach of violence. The bloodletting from that poor prepper’s ear turned up the tension, making the following moves unpredictable. But as the music swells, Karl and his unnamed brother (played by Lukas Haas) take out their father’s men and escape.

Everything’s breaking down. As Eli meets his nephews and May-May at the motel, the kids are left to figure out the pastor situation on their own. It goes about as well as anyone could’ve predicted. Despite Kelvin’s best efforts (“We, the three, and you”), the meeting ends with Jesse throwing a shoe at a pastor, and the meeting devolves into a shoe fight. Once again, rage wins the day.

The show’s final setpieces flowed into each other with precision. Hill and editor David Canseco confidently lead us from the safe house escape to the shoe war to the motel chase and it goes over like gangbusters. All told, Gideon was a good hire. As a stuntman unsure whether he’ll ever work again, he was calm under pressure and delivered Eli from danger without a scratch. And, not for nothing, working the neck injury into the climax is the cherry on top. When all its elements click together, The Righteous Gemstones can delight like no other show.

In retrospect, the second episode makes the intentions of the first all the more evident. The premiere episode reset the family, reminding us who they are and what they’ve been through, slowly introducing characters that will get shaded in later. But it’s episode two where the show really stakes its claim and takes over. This episode was all hellfire and brimstone as the unbridled anger of the Gemstones overtook the church, delivering us one of the funniest half-hours in the show’s history. It’s great to have the Gemstones back.

Stray observations

• Welcome to season three of The Righteous Gemstones. I’ve never been more excited about church. And while I was a bit mixed on the first episode, I was relieved by the second. I think the two benefit from being watched as a whole, with the second funnier and livelier installment balancing the premiere’s expository plotting. The pieces are set for what will hopefully be a very funny season of television.
• I find the idea of Jesse’s “shitty poll numbers” extremely funny. I’m sure they do have internal polling, but it’s always funny to think of Jesse as a character who is perpetually thinking of himself in different ways and through different professions.
• Jesse referring to Judy as “Baron Munchausen,” tells us everything we need to know about Jesse’s understanding of Munchausen syndrome.
• I desperately want this show to get back to the Sword and Cape stuff. There was simply not enough in these first two episodes.
• Stephen going to town on Judy’s finger is one of the most romantic things ever shown on the show. Well, until we got a glimpse of B.J.’s Meta Quest mambo. Judy really knows how to pick ’em.
• “No smut. No lust. No coconuts.”
• “Through the power of Christ’s love and Lasik surgery, we have restored sight to the blind or, at least, uh, the near-sighted.”
• “Real talk, y’all: I don’t get this race-car shit. A bunch of rednecks racing around, seeing who can go nowhere the fastest.”
• “Yeah, on shon tay, motherfucker.”
• I had to stop writing observations at the start of the second episode because every line was a certified banger, and I was just transcribing the script.
• “I’m tired of watching you sit around all day, pretending you’re Born On The Fourth Of July or something.”
• The speed with which Jesse and Amber go from belittling Gideon to saying, “We don’t want to belittle you,” is almost as fast as Judy goes from gaslighting B.J. to saying, “You gaslight yourself by acting crazy.”
• According to Judy Gemstones, the litmus test for a strong, healthy, and long-running relationship is defecating in front of one another. To be clear, Stephen is on board with that and is willing to murder his family.
• Jesse Karate chopping the shoes out of his orbit feels like a very Mac from It’s Always Sunny way to handle the situation.
• I lost it when Matthew let out a solitary “Ha!” at Jesse dunking on the pastor’s flavor saver.
• Frank’s last stand with Karl is every father’s nightmare. Standing before his 6’4” son with his hands on his hips, he yells, “Karl!” It does not work.