Season 2 of Righteous Gemstones is going to be downright sequel-ish

Both successor and The Righteous Gems, which has just entered its second season, make a promise to viewers: this is how the world really works. In successor, that’s pretty easy when the audience watches the super-rich attack each other while smiling at the occasional shareholders’ meeting.

Featuring “I Speak in the Tongues of Men and Angels” and “After I Leave, Savage Wolves Will Come” gems solidified what creator Danny McBride established in Season 1: a show where the jokes and the plot coexist, where song and prayer can cover up murder and extortion. Which world is the real one? For the gems, they both are.

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The fusion of entertainment and violence took center stage in Season 2, which begins with exploring the past of family patriarch Dr. Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) begins as an outlaw wrestler named Maniac Kid. A question that came up in the first season of gems was certainly how on earth did a kind old TV preacher like Eli raise kids like Jesse, Judy and Kelvin?

Season 2 begins to answer that question by suggesting that Eli acted in tandem with everyone else. After a retro flashback to Memphis, where Eli is a thumb-smashing thug who works part-time for a wrestling boo, the past catches up with him in the form of Junior (Eric Roberts), the boss’s son who was kind of an idiot at the time. But now, humbled by his own father’s abandonment, he comes to Eli to remember old times.

Junior has an ability that none of the Gemstone kids seem to have: he can make Eli smile. After emerging victorious from a parking lot fight, Junior quickly becomes Eli’s personal confidant, growing even closer to him when he tells Eli he wants to pray.

But for Jesse (McBride), his father’s sympathies are just further proof that the old man’s days are over. The Gemstones are slowly entering the 21st century thanks to their new streaming service, GODD, but things aren’t moving fast enough for Jesse. His relationship with Amber (Cassidy Freeman) has healed in that they now lead a church group dedicated to giving marriages a second chance. They’re a Christian power couple looking for someone to match their energy, and they think they’ve found some partners in Lyle and Lindy Lissons (Eric Andre and Jessica Lowe).

Like Junior with Eli, the Lissons quickly stepped into Jesse and Amber’s lives, promising to make them feel who they really are, deep down. Eli is a thug who loves to fight and Jesse is itching for his rise and they just can’t help it. Matching McBride’s energy perfectly (as does Freeman), Andre seduces the two Easterners with a rocking church, line dancing led by Joe Jonas, and ownership of an expensive Christian timeshare, Zion’s Landing.

But Zion’s Landing will cost them $10 million. While Jesse and Amber are rich, they’re not as rich as them successor Children. They need their father’s help in this case, and not even Amber’s green dress can convince Eli to help. As Eli tours the potential property, which is still under federal protection, he finds Jesse’s ambitions appalling and finds just the right moment to humiliate him. The cruelty he first used on Junior is found again.

He focuses more on curious New York reporter (Jason Schwartzman) Thaniel Block. The death of Aimee-Leigh, the only saint among the gems, weighs heavily on Eli. Asking about her is a strong provocation, asked by a reporter who enjoys poking the bear.

The ending of Season 2’s second episode leads to more intrigue regarding Block, but it’s clear the gems aren’t out of the woods. Fair Gems builds a world that is as profound as it is funny. Kelvin’s (Adam DeVine) muscular God Squad, Judy’s (Edi Patterson) repeated request to make Block “hungry,” and the sheer brilliance of putting another D on the word God are all delivered in rapid fire.

“I feel like the Gemstones honestly have more in common with corporations than the average Christian,” McBride said recently FastCompany. But unlike driving money successor, Faith is not something that can be measured in any quantifiable way. It is invisible and can appear at any moment. It can be squeezed out of you at exactly the same time as you are squeezing it out of someone else. It is very easy to see the gems as hypocrites because most of the time they are exactly that. But this hypocrisy does not mean that they lack faith.

Watching them try to balance hypocrisy with genuine belief is fascinating no matter how much they fail or succeed, but chances are they will fail a lot more.

New episodes of The Righteous Gems Season 2 premieres Sunday.