Anyone following Danny McBride’s long-running relationship with HBO knows that The Righteous Gemstones is more than your average sacrilegious adult comedy. The pinnacle of a tight-knit group of actors, writers, directors, and producers, The Righteous Gemstones builds off McBride’s energy from Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals to funnel the same profanity-laden approach into a genuinely touching onscreen family. Unsurprisingly, the third season upheld the Gemstone values for maximum laughs and sentiment.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin’s Time to Shine
The Righteous Gemstones, the third HBO comedy series from actor/comedy extraordinaire Danny McBride, follows a family-run mega-church and their difficulties dealing with wealth, persecution, faith, sin, and each other. The beauty is that, despite the subject matter, the main characters are as foul-mouthed, self-centered, and arrogant as in all of McBride’s other endeavors, so he and the game cast fit their roles perfectly, with central roles played by alums from Workaholics and Booksmart. The straight man to the wild characters is the legendary John Goodman, playing the patriarch of the Gemstone church and family who has raised his trouble-prone children since their mother’s death.
In Season 3, Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam Devine) take over as equal co-leaders of the church, but of course, none of these spoiled adult Gemstone children wants to listen to their sibling. In an established trope for this Max series, poor decision-making, family drama, and a dastardly outside plot (this time enacted by a doomsday cult run by the Gemstone’s uncle-in-law, played by a captivating Steve Zahn) ensue with twisty, over-the-top thrills.
McBride and Co. Return to Win Our Sympathy
How does an adult comedy about televangelists work beyond simply laughing at disreputable hypocrites? Initiated fans holding onto The Righteous Gemstones in 2023 likely already know the answer. By now, McBride’s productions are the careful work of longtime friends who want more than a simple hatchet job out of their comedic art. Director Jody Hill and co-writer John Carcieri, also from Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals, evidently share McBride’s vision to paint the Gemstones as a flawed but ultimately sympathetic group of humans much like his past characters. In a way, this is his most effortless trajectory yet: everyone here is a sinner who maybe does not deserve their status in life but, most important, still deserves the love of his equally flawed family.
Adam Devine, Danny McBride, and Edi Patterson in ‘The Righteous Gemstones’
Praise for The Righteous GemstonesSeason 3
With the best reviews earned yet for the Max series, Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones received acclaim from critics thanks to a pitch-perfect distillation of its formula, with audiences responding further to remark on the series’ consistency for hilarity. Though the main villain arc of the series falters somewhat in an uneven distribution of representation and cohesion, many agree that the conflicted, frustrated Peter (Zahn) was the best-written antagonist for the series yet. Zahn’s intensity and a solid foundation for his character made Peter an easy non-Gemstone highlight of this batch of episodes.
The common criticism for any McBride series will never change: this is not for everyone, and those without tolerance for strong language, graphic nudity, violence, and tomfoolery of the highest order will likely never come around on The Righteous Gemstones. However, a tender emotional core below the surface, present in Season 3 more than ever, makes for some of the best comedy TV of 2023, so there is no better time than now to stream this ridiculous madness.
All episodes of The Righteous Gemstones are streaming now on Max.