Righteous Gemstones Season 3 Review: The Drama Escalates

The Pitch: Three seasons in, the Gemstone family are on top of God’s Kingdom — Eli (John Goodman) is happily retired, and has passed the torch to his three children, Jesse (Danny McBride), Kelvin (Adam Devine), and Judy (Edi Patterson), who are drinking in the fame and fortune they’ve always dreamed of.

But as always, there’s trouble in paradise, as the family’s decades of hypocrisy and greed continue to rot it from the inside and out. Not only that, the shaky transition in leadership is leading to an exodus of worshippers, most notably racecar legend Dusty Daniels (Shea Whigham, pancaked with old-age makeup). And who’s this disheveled woman (Kristen Johnson) accosting Eli at a book signing, and how is she linked to the bitter, distant Gemstone cousin (Steve Zahn), who’s started a gun-toting militia just outside of town?

Whoo-whee, Sucker!: “Our origin story sucks,” laments Jesse early in the third (and hopefully not final) season of McBride’s dark comedy about the craven hypocrisy of the prosperity-gospel megachurch. Ever the most volatile, yet emotionally vulnerable of the family, he wonders aloud whether they’ll shake off the shaky early days of their reign, like Leno when he took over late night. “What if we’re not Leno?” he muses. “What if we’re just Conan?”

Gemstones, like McBride’s two other shows before it, Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals, delights in playing lines and moments this absurd with deadpan sincerity. That’s part of its charm, really; think Succession, if Logan used honey instead of vinegar to keep his three failkids under his thumb, and there were more scenes about shit getting absolutely wrecked by a monster truck. (The season opener introduces us to The Redeemer, a fire-breathing behemoth of a car whose appearances will set off as much of a primal thrill in the viewer as it does the Gemstones.)

We, the Three, And You: But much like the most recent season of that other show, Gemstones spends much of its time in Season 3 finding out what happens when the kids actually take the crown. Jesse bristles against his role as the eldest son, dying his muttonchops jet black (shades of Rudy Guiliani) and complaining about wife Amber’s (Cassidy Freeman) focus on her $500-a-pop Christian counseling system.

Meanwhile, Kelvin and his mulleted bestie Keefe (Tony Cavalero, one of the series’ MVPs) are busy sublimating their bone-deep lust for each other into Smut Busters, a church initiative in which they roll past freeway sex shops in their giant purple van and buy out their inventory to keep it out of the hands of sinners. (That they’re doing little but skyrocketing these establishments’ revenue is, of course, part of the grim joke.) And Judy’s navigating the complications of an affair she started with the “Sugar-Ray-looking” bandmate (Stephen Schneider) while on tour, with hapless husband B.J. (Tim Baltz) none the wiser.

The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)