Danny McBride came back this season for another TV series he created for HBO in The Righteous Gemstones. After tackling the crazy politics of high school with Vice Principals, this time McBride and his usual collaborators tackle the well-beaten path of hypocritical evangelicals. On paper, there’s not a lot here that’s new but under the surface it manages to go above and beyond the concept. Following a family of televangelists who run a multimillion dollar religion empire, The Righteous Gemstones not only taps into the well-trodden tropes of the hypocrisy behind modern Christianity but finds something more that perfectly shows the world these people now live in, one of eternal hypocrisy.
The Righteous Gemstones follows the Gemstone family members lead by Eli Gemstone (John Goodman), his two sons Jesse and Kelvin (played by Danny McBride and Adam DeVine, respectively) who each have their own roles in the Gemstone empire, and their sister Judi (Edi Patterson) who craves the same spotlight of her brothers as she works behind the scenes.
The Gemstones may be the most prominent Christians on the television, but as you can probably expect based on who was involved with the series creation, they are some of the most non-Christian people on Earth. Eli uses his religious empire to crush small local churches soullessly to further his own desire to expand, Edi steals money from the church and has premarital sex, and the series kicks off with Jesse being blackmailed for a wild night of cocaine use and sex workers with his friends. The closest one to Godliness is the youngest Gemstone, Kelvin, but even he gets caught up in his siblings’ many schemes.
But if you want to find your new favorite television character, it’s Walter Goggins playing Uncle Baby Billy. Billy is an old-school conman preacher with a perm and toothpaste-white teeth. He’s a vigorous hypocrite who shamelessly goes from holy man to womanizer to cruel business man, all while screwing over his in-law family whenever he can. Seriously, if there’s nothing else you should watch this show for, it’s Walter Goggins hamming it up as Baby Billy. I can’t think of a more entertaining performance this year.
The longform story involves a blackmail, Jesse’s estranged son and a whole lot of shenanigans to cover up past misdeeds. What’s interesting about the whole set up is how all of this exists within a world where everyone is a hypocrite, and everyone else knows it.
Kelvin anchors this theme the most of the cast. Though he has no terrible vices like his brother and sister, whenever he does get caught up in Jesse’s blackmail scheme and learns the truth about his brother’s misgivings, he still goes on with it as if nothing has changed. The family frequently curse at each other and act truly Godless in their frank discussions on sexual appetites, money grubbing and the poor saps they make their money off of. Most of this goes unacknowledged and shrugged off. Those misdeeds that do manage to shock are easily ‘forgiven’ and things move on fast.
Part of this is the short nature of the series (the first season is only 9 episodes) and McBride’s style of writing. Anyone who has seen Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals know that part of their charm is the quick, ball-busting dialogue filled with escalating harsh language. But there’s something more here that’s being channeled beyond snappy writing.
In the age of Trump, much has been written about white evangelicals and the hypocrisy of their undying support of him. It puzzles many and endless think pieces are written about it. But one of the things you’ll often notice about those articles is they often write as if the hypocrisy of evangelicals are something they don’t understand, something that exists in some kind of contradiction in this strange world they inhabit outside the one the rest of us live in. The great thing about The Righteous Gemstones is that there is no pretense that the demographic is somehow lost in a haze of ignorance. Even though the show doesn’t dive headfirst into politics, it shows that it’s not about the hypocrisy of the Gemstones, it’s about the fact that no one really cares.
In that way, The Righteous Gemstones captures the world of white evangelicals perfectly. They live in a state of never-ending hypocrisy, none of which matters anymore when the light does manage to shine on their misgivings. In the same way that the Gemstones’ vices are exposed, met with some mild disgust and shock, and then things go back to a relative normal state is a perfect representation of how evangelicals must live in a constant life of hypocrisy. It’s not a case of lacking self-awareness or telling themselves lies to make it all more palpable, it’s just a simple case of not caring that their core values are basically meaningless. It’s not that they don’t know they’re hypocrites at their core, like the Gemstones, they honestly just don’t care.
The Righteous Gemstones is worth watching for its performances, writing and great pacing. But its ability to distill the culture around a demographic that often puzzles those looking on the outside is what sets it apart. I have no idea if McBride and company have any direct experience with the people they’re satirizing, but as someone who has lived among white evangelicals most of his life, they nail it in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything else manage. And thankfully, the humor and whiplash pace of the whole thing really does make the depressing reality of these people and the power they wield seem funny, if only for thirty minute intervals.