‘The Righteous Gems’, HBO’s ‘Gleely Unholy’ Succession, ‘Back and More Desolated Than Ever

Replace boardrooms with super churches, private jets, and limousines with horn-adorned Cadillacs and party buses, and dapper suits and designer dresses with leopard shoes and cowboy hats. White, Righteous Gems is a variant of the insane Southern television house on Heir.

Returning to HBO for a second season on January 9, Danny McBride’s alternating absurdism and sincerity in favor of for-profit religious peddlers is a boon for the dramatic powerhouse of the cable network, rife with toxic masculinity dysfunction and hostile tensions. rivalry between rightful sons who want to inherit their father’s empire (and earn their love) while establishing their own independence. Same circuit as McBride’s East & Down and Vice-president, it’s a portrait of maddening men, pathetically narcissistic, and women striving unable to resist them, and in its latest appearance it empowers the most every aspect.

As evidenced by the opening scene of the second season, Righteous Gems nor lose interest in the full frontal nudity and the fact that the first shot of her penis is accompanied by someone commenting, “Hey, that’s a nice dick!” shows that it is very excited about its beauty. Such glee is part of the fun of McBride’s show, which (produced and directed by longtime collaborators David Gordon Green and Jody Hill) embodies a desire to do the craziest thing there is. possible at any time. That involves the numerous humorous twists throughout this nine-episode saga, but it also holds true for its dialogue, brimming with obscene insults that appear to have been staged by lunatic individuals. legally remember. That is of course the case, at least fictitiously, as the Gems and many of their friends and foes are all cut from the same fabric.

A short prologue to the premiere episode reveals that Gemstone’s patriarch Eli (John Goodman) first made a living out of a Memphis wrestler known as the Maniac Kid, and that during his breaks he used to be. snap the fingers of his promotion boss Glendon (Wayne Duvall) with the help of that man’s son Junior. In the present, Junior (now played by Eric Roberts with the charm of a snake oil salesman) reappears in Eli’s life and quickly re-enacts his more violently dismembered side, thereby reinforcing his sense of power and making him give up any thought of giving the keys of his kingdom to his children. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t sit well with his eldest son Jesse (McBride), who along with his scheming loyal wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman) are intent on wresting control of the family office. family. To prove he’s worthy, Jesse teamed up with Texas Gospel broadcaster Lyle Lissons (Eric Andre) to build a tropical Christian resort called Zion’s Landing. The problem is, he needs $10 million to do it, and he doesn’t have the cash, and he can’t convince his father to lend him a loan, because he claims he’s dealing with the loan. This business alone.

An inferior and less talented buffalo herder than his father, Jesse’s dilemma is that he wants to get Eli out into the pasture but desperately needs his help and covet, and that compulsion is precisely is the blood vessel of Righteous Gems, whose new story is rife with additional discord between parent and child. Jesse’s brother, Kelvin (Adam Devine) is still trying to prove his masculinity to Eli through violent homosexual means, this time through God’s Squad of super muscular minions overseen by BFF Keefe (Tony Cavalero). ). Sister Judy (Edi Patterson) falls into her own tumultuous scene with Tiffany (Valyn Hall), Baby Billy’s pregnant wife (Walton Goggins, stealing every scene), he himself has a dark history with his father’s abandonment. Junior has long been estranged from abuse by pop musician Glendon. And like Jesse, Lyle is a “firstborn” who pushed his biological father out of the way of taking over his religious organization.

Everyone in Righteous Gems having a nasty father who won’t provide the love and support it needs, thereby spawning self-loathing, bitterness, and psychotic behavior — and when that’s not the case, the show is placing the His characters as clowns are completely hung up because of their masculinity. Nowhere in the series about masculine attitudes is more humorous than with Judy’s smart, gentle husband, BJ (Tim Baltz), whose name is a sarcastic remark about the calculating nature of him, and who wishes to demonstrate his loyalty to the Gem family by being baptized against the wishes of his own agnostic family. That culminated in a lavish ceremony and party in which BJ wore the most delightfully bizarre outfit in recent memory, and it reinforced the notion that he was the Tom Wambsgans of this clan. , if Tom was a funny mean idiot obsessed with expressing his Y-chromosome-values ​​while at the same time making sure he spoke and acted on gender-respecting terms.

The appearance of inquisitive New York reporter Thaniel (Jason Schwartzman) is a catalyst for further chaos, though Righteous Gems really thrive on the selected single-layer bushing system; repeating any of them here would be counter-climatic, for the beauty of McBride, Green and Hill’s small-screen triumph is the way it injects its outrageous exclamations into the scripts suitable lewd and absurd. McBride’s Jesse is the corrupt soul of these proceedings, his arrogant greed and ambition almost as great as his pathetic desire for validation from both his father and co-workers. (whom he mocks). He’s complemented by one of the best cast on television, especially as Patterson proves more than willing to compare with her male counterparts in my first vulgar division. Her Judy is just as terrifyingly disturbing as her dodgy swinging friends, which keeps her attached to the BJ that is often the show’s best source of comedy.

Gems can be terrible people but Righteous Gems however, sympathize with their pitifulness, seeing them as less like hateful villains than idiots who are manipulated and/or bred to stomp on competition to get what they want , and use Christ (and the goodness of devotees) as a means to their own ends. It’s hard to imagine pious Americans — the kind who attend the arenas every Sunday to hear the word of God, or watch Joel Osteen and his lover on TV preach to the masses — being satisfied with this model. This description of the church is so flattering. That said, they might even find some fun in McBride and company’s brand of unbridled humor, in which everyone is a walking puncher destined to last. get a punch — or, as in the most hilarious underage case of the season, an explosion of kids in the face.