‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Plays Its Recessional

The notion that televangelists are hypocrites more often than not was cemented in culture sometime in the late ‘80s, when Jimmy Swaggart was found to have used the services of a sex worker, and Jim Bakker (also an alleged sex criminal) was convicted of financial crimes. Such stories are less common in the post-monoculture era, but they do occur, like when a plumber at the Houston megachurch of celebrity pastor Joel Osteen found $600,000 worth of cash and checks in the building’s walls. At the time, reports on the incident called out the way it echoed events in The Righteous Gemstones, the sitcom about a family of megachurch moguls that had premiered a couple of years earlier. The foundational gag of Gemstones is the chasm between how the family presents itself to the public and the filthy truth of their venality and intra-family verbal abuse. But even amid the show’s famously raunchy humor, the real shock of The Righteous Gemstones — especially in its fourth and final season, premiering on HBO March 9th — is how sincere it can be.

For the entirely uninitiated, The Righteous Gemstones revolves around the titular preachers. Father Eli (John Goodman) comes from a long line of ministers, none as successful as he has been, alongside his late wife Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles). Together, the couple built a stadium-sized Salvation Center in Charleston, which later spun off several satellite locations. As Eli tires of the preaching grind, it should be an easy call for him to pass the organization down to his children — Jesse (Danny McBride, also a co-creator on the show), Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam DeVine) — all of whom have also established themselves as worship leaders. But the middle-aged Gemstone siblings are as erratic, impulsive, immature and spoiled as they are in the flashbacks we see to their youth, and their inability to exert any self-control delays their official elevation to co-heads of the church.

It does happen, eventually, and when we return to the Gemstone family for Season Four, Eli hasn’t just retired: he may be more retired than any person has ever been. He’s in Florida. He’s grown out his hair. He’s living, alone, on a tastefully small boat. He’s finding age-appropriate short-term company; we see him making fried eggs for his latest visitor before gently but firmly making sure she knows he isn’t ready to be serious with anyone. (Pulling herself together, she tells him that if he doesn’t like her he can just say so. Eli: “I don’t like you — sorry!”) He’s also been dodging contact from the kids about appearing on a telethon timed to what would have been Aimee-Leigh’s birthday, so it doesn’t take long for them to appear, self-consciously dressed for a nautical adventure.

The kids scream one of his least favorite obscenities at him until he cracks, so he’s in the building to watch the performance of Lori Milsap (Megan Mullally), a family friend and former songwriting partner of Aimee-Leigh’s with whom he’s fallen out of touch. “Love isn’t always on time,” she sings, seemingly straight to Eli’s soul. The Gemstones all reconnect with the Milsaps. When the two families used to hang out together in the early aughts, the kids were also friends with Lori’s son Corey (Seann William Scott), and he returns for wholesome lake house fun, along with his wife, Jana (Arden Myrin). But spending more time with the Milsaps reveals complications in their lives that the Gemstones may not be ready to take on. 

The characters we know are each dealing with their own challenges this season, too — some more intense than others. Judy’s empathy is tested when her husband BJ (Tim Baltz) experiences a health crisis. Kelvin, who came out as queer in Season Three, enjoys the success of his progressive new Bible study group, Prism, but his partner Keefe (Tony Cavalero) is hurt that Kelvin isn’t more open about their relationship. Jesse’s biggest problems are that rival megachurch preacher Vance Simkins (Stephen Dorff) keeps opening mini-mall churches in direct proximity to the Gemstones’; and that his eldest son Gideon (Skyler Gisondo) seems to prefer seeking advice from Eli instead of his own dad. Oh: Jesse’s also smarting because his new business venture — a small sanctuary for privacy in public places, which he’s dubbed the Prayer Pod — has run into an entirely predictable issue, which has led his clients to return them. No spoilers, but good luck to whichever professionals Jesse hires to sanitize them.

As Lori, Mullally is such a natural fit you might think she’s been here all along. She’s just bawdy enough to appeal to the Gemstone siblings’ sensibilities without putting off their father. In the traditional midseason flashback episode, we see the early aughts Lori and her long mullet interacting with the warm but pious Aimee-Leigh; it’s clear more from both actresses’ performances than from the spare writing what the characters enjoyed about their time together, particularly that Aimee-Leigh treasured Lori as her naughtiest friend. Without being too showy about it, the season is built to make us all fall in love with Lori, so that bad turns involving her character hit all the harder. Lori also sings in a variety of styles, all of which Mullally handles masterfully. Scott seems, in the early going, like he might not be on his screen mother’s level, but the end of the season puts his performance in a new light; if nothing else, it’s nice to see him being challenged by the material, since he certainly isn’t in his work on Shifting Gears. 

Among the returning stars, Walton Goggins remains the show’s MVP as Aimee-Leigh’s younger brother, known to the Gemstone siblings as Uncle Baby Billy, in reference to his time in a childhood singing double act with Aimee-Leigh. Back in the first season, Baby Billy was introduced to us in a nude scene, and if anything Goggins has gotten more fearless as the series has gone on. It turns out there are degrees of nudity I hadn’t really fathomed seeing on screen until this season. 

Forever looking to aggrandize himself, Baby Billy spent a lot of the previous season pitching his niece and nephews a game show called Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers, and its success has only inflamed his ambitions. The Jesus bio-series The Chosen has been a hit at The CW, but has anyone in our reality tried Teen Jesus? They might once they’ve seen Baby Billy’s interpretation. There is some grounded story to tell here, as Baby Billy’s wife Tiffany (Valyn Hall) gently tries to convince him it’s less important for him to work so hard than for him to spend time with her and their young children, but it does happen in between cocaine bumps from Baby Billy’s gigantic ring and a momentous wig snatch. Goggins remorselessly steals every scene he’s in, and even though I’ve seen the entire final season, I’m still not really prepared to say goodbye to him.

Incredibly, the show continues to find new ground to break when it comes to its hilarious vulgarity. To protect you from spoilers, I’ll just say there are laugh-out-loud moments in the fourth season involving such elements as a stripper pole, a jet pack, a blow dryer, a water ski, an acrobatic sling, a gator, a dance-off, a cigarette, a contaminated bourbon decanter, a too-thin pair of sweat pants and a remarkably attentive capuchin monkey. There are not one but two different fart jokes I’ll probably never forget. Winding down to the series finale doesn’t mean the show has lost its edge.

But the toughest trick The Righteous Gemstones pulls off — and has from the start — is convincingly portraying true love among characters who communicate primarily through insults. Eli spending less time preaching means he has more time to be aware of his loneliness. His children’s refusal to countenance him having any kind of relationship after Aimee-Leigh is one of the tenderest things about them (even if the way they express it is, for instance, Jesse confidently saying that Eli’s “loin desires” have disappeared, Judy adding that it’s because Aimee-Leigh has Eli’s balls with her up in heaven). But part of the Gemstone siblings’ evolution since the series began has been to learn how to be better partners in their own romantic relationships. This growth makes their capacity to respect Eli as a person with an existence separate from his fatherhood — as a person, full-stop — not just credible but strangely moving? I realize this sounds crazy to say about characters who refer to sex as “mashing pubes,” but here we are.

The show has a tendency to keep restating story points — like Jesse’s envy of Eli’s relationship with Gideon, or Kelvin’s internalized homophobia — without progressing them until the season’s nearly over. I had also hoped for a bigger finish for Gideon, the show’s conscience and its second-best character behind Baby Billy; I was, at least, satisfied that producers didn’t forget his origin as a stunt performer. Generally speaking, the characters get the endings they deserve — and, in a couple of cases, endings that are a notch or two better. 

God loves a sinner, but maybe not as much as The Righteous Gemstones does. Praise be.