Danny McBride’s brand is outrageous by nature. He’s carved out a path in pop culture playing boorish, narcissistic, stupid, vengeful, sometimes downright sociopathic characters. The American comedic actor has a special gift for turning up the ridiculous qualities of usually Southern outsiders (McBride was raised in Fredericksburg, Virginia) to a deliriously high pitch. It’s not who McBride is in real life. But it has earned him a devoted cult audience, from his role as Kenny Powers on the HBO Original Eastbound & Down to a strikingly sadistic supporting performance in Seth Rogen’s This Is the End to McBride’s newer HBO Original series The Righteous Gemstones.
Now in season 3 (which premiered June 18 and is available to stream on Max), The Righteous Gemstones centers on the oldest son in a family of rich, eccentric televangelists, Jesse Gemstone (McBride), who struggles to carry on the legacy built by his father Eli (John Goodman), while infighting with his siblings (Edi Patterson and Adam DeVine). The latest batch of episodes sees the Gemstones challenged by rival siblings the Simkins, led by Stephen Dorff’s delightfully unhinged Vance. The buffoonish antics on display are matched only by the opulence of McBride’s sendup of Southern culture, masculinity, and for-profit preaching. From an injurious baptism after-party to a militia made up of doomsday preppers, these are the wildest, most good-taste-averse episodes of The Righteous Gemstones to prepare for more madness to come.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead from all three seasons.]
“And Yet One of You Is a Devil” (season 1, episode 7)
Once the audience is comfortably acquainted with the greedy, conflict-prone, two-faced Gemstones, who have been lavishly living off church donations, McBride escalates the extravagance and criminality. As the Gemstone church’s grand Easter telecast approaches, patriarch Eli asks two of his kids, Jesse and Judy (Patterson), to take on important new duties in the affair, while snubbed Kelvin (DeVine) is left to stew. But Judy defects with Baby Billy (standout character actor Walton Goggins) for their own service. It all leads to a vault theft by the Gemstones’ blackmailer, and Jesse tied up, at his lowest point yet.
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“After I Leave, Savage Wolves Will Come” (season 2, episode 2)
The Gemstones are threatened yet again by a new antagonist, and McBride’s talent for stunt casting shows: The arrogant, coke-fueled journalist Thaniel Block is played by none other than Jason Schwartzman, who probably doesn’t need the supporting player money but is marvelous here as an investigative reporter sniffing out the hypocrisy of Eli’s clan. (Eric André in a recurring role this season as prominent Texas televangelist Lyle Lissons is equally brilliant.) The action climaxes with a murder, and the whole trio of Gemstone siblings showered in blood.
“As to How They Might Destroy Him” (season 2, episode 4)
This episode kicks off with one of the show’s infamous flashbacks: In 1993, Baby Billy abandons his family in a mall. Meanwhile, in the present day, the Gemstones throw a no-expense-spared baptism service and after-party for BJ (Tim Baltz), who’s simply trying to please Gemstone daughter Judy. (Kelvin, meanwhile, sits on the sidelines in anger.) Needless to say, all goes haywire when BJ’s agnostic family shows up, igniting a physical fight in front of wealthy onlookers, and a party bus commandeered by Jesse is held up by masked gunmen. If only every baptism was this entertaining.
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“I Will Tell of All Your Deeds” (season 2, episode 9)
The season 2 finale wraps up with the Gemstones elaborately celebrating their Zion’s Landing, a Christian beachside timeshare resort. It’s this kind of specific excess, which feels rooted in current lurid headlines about megachurches, that makes McBride’s show so wickedly funny. The stakes are raised when Joe Jonas — playing… Joe Jonas in an admirable act of self-mockery — gets involved, leading to this gem of a punchline: “Hey, where’s Joe Jonas? Get your Christian ass up here!”
“But Esau Ran to Meet Him” (season 3, episode 2)
The Righteous Gemstones’ latest season brings out the artillery early on, quite literally. In this episode, the Gemstones’ visit to Peter Montgomery (Steve Zahn, not holding back one bit as a crazed zealot) goes all kinds of wrong when it’s revealed that Montgomery runs a militia of doomsday preppers, whose compound gets raided by the FBI. The final escape sequence is as jaw-dropping as anything you might encounter on cable news, but so much funnier for being fiction.
Subscribe to Max to stream all three seasons of The Righteous Gemstones.
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