Review: In Season Two, The Righteous Gemstones Digs Into Its Fanatical Foundation

Dysfunctional dynasties are all the rage on TV today. And while HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones hasn’t quite garnered the same fanatical devotion as the network’s similarly themed Succession, Danny McBride’s impressively methodical family dramedy continues to thrive in its second season. It’s bigger, broader, more bombastic, mirroring the rising ambitions of the blasphemy-shouting evangelicals at its center, but it thankfully doesn’t display those characters’ lack of self-awareness.

Filled with even more sensationalized personalities and storylines than the show’s inaugural season, The Righteous Gemstones continues to bask in McBride’s love for outspoken, immature characters. They gallivant as titans of their industry despite their inability to process their inherent intellectual and emotional shortcomings. Perhaps even more so than Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals, the series allows its characters to indulge in their seemingly undying glibness and relish the spoils of their familial wealth while never accepting the calls for humble spiritual divinity that they preach to millions of churchgoers every week.

Unlike his prior shows, though, Righteous Gemstones benefits from McBride’s unsuspecting mix of compassion and contempt for these deeply hypocritical religious fanatics, allowing this lavish satire to never become too sneering or spiteful of them. While there’s an abundance of cynicism in the show’s depiction of how flagrantly its ostensibly God-fearing, holier-than-thou televangelists flaunt their power and wealth, McBride allows room for some unexpected introspection. This is particularly true of John Goodman’s towering, emotionally weary patriarch Eli, as the Gemstones’ troubled past and family history constantly haunts them, particularly when some looming threats endanger their livelihoods.

Goodman’s gravelly performance continues to be The Righteous Gamestones’s moral center of gravity. As we learn more about his troubled, all-powerful pastor, it’s clear that the man’s murky righteousness remains the key to the show’s emotional foundation. Jesse (McBride) and his equally overzealous siblings, Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam Devine), retain an inherent goofiness, as their petty, pubescent squabbles are always enjoyably nonsensical. Yet even these nepotistic caricatures are given more nuanced complexity and sometimes even nobility than, say, Kenny Powers or Neal Gamby.

The generational divide between the influential Eli and his overbearing children is full of comedic tension: The former is imposing in his influence and hard-earned wisdom—which is more richly developed this season thanks, in part, to additional flashbacks—while the latter are zanily aggressive in overcompensating ways. While The Righteous Gamestones grows increasingly violent, with more criminality, destruction, and scheming than in the past, it’s also more content to explore the strife within this increasingly unstable family.

Indeed, as seen in the first episode of the season, directed by David Gordon Green, this tantrum-prone brood continues their boisterous practice of self-sabotage and immature in-house bickering, particularly as Jesse remains confident that he’ll inherent Eli’s vast fortune. Partnering with Lyle Lissons, a charismatic Southern pastor, Lyle Lissons (Eric Andre), who serves as something of Jesse’s spiritual (and far wealthier) doppelganger, Jesse believes that he has the fortitude to live up to and even expand upon his father’s decades-spanning, stadium-filling legacy. Such pompous, self-serving behavior is a common trope in McBride’s acidic brand of comedy, but The Righteous Gemstones showcases a depth and maturity by spending more time excavating the foundation of this ever-expanding evangelical empire.