Best Thing Danny McBride Ever Made Is A Hilarious Religious Dramedy, Stream Without Netflix
A lot of Danny McBride’s best, funniest work comes from smaller roles like the explosives expert in Tropic Thunder, or the duplicitous drug dealer Red in Pineapple Express. So while I’ve known about his religious dramedy The Righteous Gemstones for a while, I was skeptical. Once I gave it a shot, I burned right through all three seasons of the series, and learned it was one of the best things on HBO.
The Gemstones
The Righteous Gemstones revolves around the titular family whose megachurch affords the Gemstones no end of riches. Patriarch Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and his three children live on a sprawling compound guarded by armed security, with Eli and each of his kids getting their own huge mansion.
The eldest of the Gemstone children is Jesse (Danny McBride), whose sights are locked on his father’s place in the spotlight. Then there’s Judy (Edi Patterson), Eli’s spoiled and combative daughter, constantly jealous of the responsibilities afforded her brothers.
Finally there’s the youngest, Kelvin (Adam Devine), a youth pastor whose fierce determination to deny his sexuality leads him to more and more bizarre ideas.
The Threats To The Gemstones
From outside, the Gemstones face threats from blackmailers, mobsters, rival megachurches and smaller churches determined to paint the Righteous Gemstones as not quite righteous.
And there’s the always evolving machinations of Eli’s brother-in-law Baby Billy Freeman (Walton Goggins), whose bottomless hunger for money and fame always put him at odds with the family.
Of course the greatest threats to the Righteous Gemstones are usually from within. Jesse’s pride, Judy’s explosive rage, and Kelvin’s self-consciousness, the three siblings always turn the best situation into the absolute worst. It only takes few minutes into the first episode to realize the three can’t share the same space without hurling childish insults at each other.
The Ghost Of Aimee-Leigh
The most important character in The Righteous Gemstones is one who dies before the series begins. Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles) is Eli’s late wife, and her ghost hovers over everything in the series.
The loss of Aimee-Leigh is behind much of the siblings’ bad behavior, their father Eli’s growing impatience with both his children and the church, and the seemingly unfixable schism between Eli and Baby Billy.
There’s a powerful sense that Aimee-Leigh allowed for a kind of golden era to flourish, and what we’re witnessing is that happier age’s slow death.
In Spite of Everything, You’ll Love Them
The most impressive thing about The Righteous Gemstones is that we get plenty of the usual juvenile humor you’d expect from just about any Danny McBride project, but it doesn’t drown out the show’s heart. In spite of the raunch, Gemstones can be a deeply emotional show.
Even though The Righteous Gemstones follows a family of mostly lazy, spoiled, hypocritical, and obscenely rich jerks, you wind up caring about them and rooting for them to conquer all challengers.
Just like we did with Walter White in Breaking Bad or the eponymous crime family in The Sopranos, we root for the Gemstones to defeat their enemies, even though our heroes are just as morally bankrupt as everyone clashing with them.
Stream It Now
GFR SCORE
The Righteous Gemstones is a hilarious and disarmingly powerful religious dramedy from HBO. Stream it as soon as you can on Max.
