Season 2 of ‘The Righteous Gemstones’ was well worth the wait.
The Righteous Gemstones fans must have the patience of a saint because the raunchy comedy hasn’t shown on HBO in nearly two years. When Danny McBride’s show first aired in August of this year, it became an instant cult hit.
The drama revolved around a lustful trio of adult siblings who were all vying for control of their father’s affluent self-made empire. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of celebrity preachers and megachurches built on the feeble gospel of pyramid schemes, The Righteous Gemstones stood out because it gnawed at the evident hypocrisy of celebrity preachers and megachurches founded on the flimsy gospel of pyramid schemes.
The Righteous Gemstones, on the other hand, degraded its subjects by portraying them as petty, foolish, shallow husks of sincere believers.
The Righteous Gemstones was a perfect satire from the outset, with insightful observations couched in humor and an insane Walton Goggins performance.
The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 comes tonight on HBO, which is a huge relief. We are in desperate need of its help.
Season 1 of The Righteous Gemstones introduced viewers to the Gemstone family, a televangelist family that had commodified faith through spectacle, megachurches, and other means.
Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) is a businessman, but he isn’t as greedy as his three children, Jesse (Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Kevin Smith) (Adam Devine). The three Gemstone children, like the Roy children, compete for their father’s attention out of a desire for love and the hope of being declared his primary successor.
One of the first season’s primary narratives follows the Gemstone siblings as they fight a trio of blackmailers who threaten to expose a video showing Jesse and his pals behaving badly at a party. Indeed, the Gemstones’ duplicity — and the prospect of being exposed — is a recurring motif throughout the series.
The characters were also plagued by the ghost of the family’s deceased matriarch, the lovely and earnest Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles), who had to balance her love for her increasingly selfish family with her duty to her wastrel of a brother, Walton Goggin’s Baby Billy, during Season 1.
Season 2 of The Righteous Gemstones premieres tonight, and it introduces a new specter to the family: Eli’s history. The new season begins with a flashback to Eli’s very unusual childhood, when he was a small-town wrestler who moonlighted as a loan shark’s heavy.
The appearance of an old buddy from that time, represented by Eric Roberts, threatens to shake the Gemstone clan’s kingdom to its foundations. The Righteous Gemstones’ second season also includes a new televangelical power couple, Eric Andre and Jessica Lowe, who appear to be teaming up with Jesse and his wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman).
In essence, The Righteous Gemstones’ second season will focus on the show’s emotional drama, biting satire, and bizarre humor.
This season was well worth the wait, thanks to the addition of manic comedic force Eric Andre. It’s pushed over the brink by the fact that Walton Goggins is reprising his role as Baby Billy.
(Also, the fact that The Righteous Gemstones appears to be one of the few shows to realistically address the pandemic in its plot — with a Gemstone streaming service, sermons about pestilence, and Eli wary of further change — is a welcome relief from a landscape of programming that either ignores how much the world changed or pats itself on the back for dramatizing the event.)
Now is the moment to dive into The Righteous Gemstones if you haven’t already. The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is well worth the wait if you’re one of the legions of devoted fans who knows “Misbehavin'” by heart.
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