The men of Righteous Gemstones are becoming their true ugly selves

polygon.com:

Both Successionand The Righteous Gemstones, which just debuted its second season, make a promise to the viewer: this is how the world really works. In Succession, this is pretty straightforward as the audience watches the super-rich attack each other while smiling at the occasional stockholder’s meeting.

With “I Speak in the Tongues of Men and Angels” and “After I Leave, Savage Wolves Will Come,” Gemstones solidified what creator Danny McBride established in season 1: a show where the jokes and the plot stand side-by-side, where singing and prayer can cover up murder and blackmail. Which world is the real one? For the Gemstones, they both are.

The merging of entertainment and violence came straight into focus in season 2, which starts off with exploring family patriarch Dr. Eli Gemstone’s (John Goodman) past as an outlaw wrestler known as Maniac Kid. One question that emerged over the first season of Gemstones was surely, how on Earth did a kindly old televangelist like Eli raise kids like Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin?

Season 2 begins to answer that question by suggesting that Eli has been acting along with all the rest of them. After a vintage flashback to Memphis where Eli is a thumb-breaking thug working on the side for a wrestling boos, the past catches up with him in the form of Junior (Eric Roberts), that boss’s son who was kind of a jerk back then. But now he’s been humbled by his own father’s abandonment, and comes to Eli in memory of old times.

Junior has an ability that none of the Gemstone children seemingly posses: he can make Eli smile. After they emerge victorious from a parking lot brawl, Junior quickly becomes Eli personal confidante, coming even closer when he tells Eli that he wants to pray.

But for Jesse