Danny McBride filled The Righteous Gemstones with love and bullshit because he cares
Even in a world where everyone seems full of shit, the Gemstone family manages to astonish. The fictional televangelist family at the center of HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones are Olympic athletes in the sport of bullshit, posing as a model Christian family at their megachurch altar while petulantly cussin’ their way across the American South and getting entangled in all manner of petty crimes.
They’re a gonzo mirror to the Roy family of Succession, similarly concerned with the petty squabbles of the wealthy as a window into the American condition, but with creator Danny McBride’s signature vulgar poetry, full of soliloquies about dicks and shit. They’re also kind of sweet.
This paradox makes The Righteous Gemstones one of the most compelling shows on television. It’s easy to write off the Reverend Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and the adult children that run his ministry as scam artists using organized religion to enrich themselves, but McBride and his writers are always clear: The Gemstones are deluded, crass, and vulgar, but they’re also sincere. It’s the classic McBride one-two punch.
“Sometimes, you can use something crass and raunchy to get the audience laughing one way,” McBride says, “and then that sets you up to surprise them when you punch them with a little bit of empathy all of a sudden, or you see this vulnerable moment.”
In the new season, currently airing on HBO and streaming on Max, Eli Gemstone is attempting to enter semi-retirement and leave the Gemstone ministry to his children. But they are astonishingly bad at it. Children of privilege, the Gemstones have never wanted for anything, and in that lack of want, have spent their whole lives nursing childish rivalries and insecurities. This doesn’t mean they
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