Danny McBride finds meaning in Righteous Gemstones' most raunchy jokes

Even in a world where everyone seems full of shit, the Gemstone family manages to amaze. The fictional televangelical family at the heart of the HBO series The Righteous Gems are Olympic bullshit athletes who pose as a model Christian family in front of the altar of their mega-church while irritably torturing their way through the American South and engaging in all sorts of petty crimes.

You are a gonzo mirror for the Roy family successor, which similarly deals with the petty squabbles of the rich as a window into the American state, but with creator Danny McBride’s signature vulgar poetry rife with monologues about dicks and shit. They’re kinda cute too.

This paradox makes The Righteous Gems One of the most captivating shows on television. It’s easy to dismiss Reverend Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and the grown children who run his ministry as frauds who use organized religion to enrich themselves, but McBride and his writers are always clear: the Gemstones are deluded, gross and vulgar. but they are also sincere. It’s the classic McBride double whammy.

“Sometimes you can use something gross and lewd to get the audience laughing in a certain way,” says McBride, “and that then enables you to surprise them when you suddenly hit them with a little empathy, or do you see? that vulnerable moment.”

Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and his family enter the Gemstone Salvation Center, which looks like a school or hospital entrance, complete with security guards in the third season of The Righteous Gemstones.

In the new season, which is currently airing on HBO and streaming on Max, Eli Gemstone tries to take semi-retirement and leave the work at Gemstone to his kids. But they’re amazingly bad at it. As privileged children, the Gems have never lacked for anything, and in that lack of need they have spent their entire lives harboring childish rivalries and insecurities. That doesn’t mean they don’t want it attempt and be good stewards of the family church–it’s just that, like good, sensitive people, they just don’t have a clue how to start.

McBride, starring eldest son Jesse Gemstone, is the clearest example of this. In Jesse, McBride has created a character who is a marvel of improvisation and empathy, a man-child with distinctly insecurities, powered by a cold-fusion bullshit reactor capable of spending minutes blasting anyone who standing in front of him so that he never has to listen to a thing they say.

“Unfortunately for Jesse, all he has is bullshit,” says McBride. “He gets the spotlight and inherits that leadership position but doesn’t show any sense of leadership. He never had to earn anything. He never had to realize what difficult lessons it would take to amass so much power and wealth.”

Danny McBride as Jesse Gemstone walking away from a cabana pool deck in sunglasses and chinos in season three of The Righteous Gemstones.

The Righteous Gems While it’s a vulgar comedy about religious idiots who often fondle their idiots, it’s also extremely sensitive, and that’s what makes it such a wonderfully complex show. McBride and the writers never look down on the Gemstones and their buffoons, even when it’s a gross comedy with all three Gemstone siblings having vomit squirting out of their hoses, or when these grown adults are having a real food fight in a restaurant. Nor does it suggest that the gems are disingenuous about their beliefs – they are extremely hypocritical at all times, but they are also completely convinced that what they profess to believe is real.

“I think they’re definitely believers; I think it’s the whole family,” says McBride. “They started with a mission and I think the allure of money, wealth, power and expansion has overtaken their original goals. It’s the tragedy of gems, so to speak; They aimed at first in one direction, and with success they were taken in another direction. And I think they lie to themselves and justify their behavior because they think they’re ultimately doing good, but they turn a blind eye to things where that’s not the case.”

That is maybe The Righteous Gems‘greatest realization. It’s a very simple thing that thousands of words about the culture wars and expert opinion on the left and right couldn’t get through, but McBride and his associates have been doing it for three years now (during). Also I offer a master class in making cock jokes): It’s all too easy for bullshitters to berate themselves.