Thousands of real bugs and Family Feud combined for Righteous Gemstones’ chaotic finale

polygon.com:

If you’re looking to end your season of TV with a bang, you might as well go biblical with it.

For The Righteous Gemstones’ riotous third season finale, “Wonders That Cannot Be Fathomed, Miracles That Cannot Be Counted,” that meant a full production of the Family Feud-inspired Bible game show Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers… and a literal plague of locusts. Those presented significant challenges for production designer Richard Wright.

First up was the Bible Bonkers set, which was heavily inspired by both the Richard Dawson and Steve Harvey versions of Family Feud. Wright says they wanted to give it a “little bit of a Gemstones twist,” like the giant sign of Baby Billy’s head that lived on the back wall of the Bible Bonkers set, right beside the show’s name.

That sign would end up being crucial to the finale’s action, which saw the set completely and utterly destroyed. Wright says his team got the direction that the sign would fall down and explode, and worked with director of photography Paul Daley and director Jody Hill on scenarios to accomplish that challenge and make it look good. First, the lightbulbs around the sign would explode, through a series of small explosions rigged by the team. Then, one sign would collide into another, causing Billy Baby’s giant face to fall on the ground, collide with one of Baby Billy’s “Bible Bonkers” who worked on the show, and roll away.

But two days before the shoot, with everything built and the team going through full-speed rehearsals for the set and its apocalyptic destruction, Hill threw in another wrinkle: The falling sign was deadly.

“We’re showing Jody how the sign is going to work and how it’s going to start rolling,” Wright says. “And he’s like, Well, that doesn’t seem like it’s