The Gemstones prove they were always more committed to one another than their own petty grievances, and they get the happy ending they deserve.
Photo: Jake Giles Netter/HBO
“As much as we miss Momma, we think it’s pretty cool your dipstick still works. And I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say that we’re proud and, quite frankly, very impressed that you can still do comes.”
“And Daddy, whether it be with Ms. Lori or some other skibidi toilet come guzzler, we support you. I just can’t be responsible if you get an STD, man, because I am not gonna use a wet washrag to get maggots off your dick hole or whatever.”
So The Righteous Gemstones went with the sentimental ending — or at least what counts for a sentimental ending in a series so committed to the filthiest possible turns of phrase. Those are the touching words of Jesse and Judy Gemstone, who, along with Kelvin, approach their lovesick father with their long-withheld blessing over him seeing a woman other than their late mother. It is their version of a Hallmark card to encourage him to keep dipping his wick, having overcome their hang-ups over Aimee-Leigh and scrubbed the image of their dad and Lori 69-ing at Galilee Gulch. Eli doesn’t flinch at their graphic vulgarity but smiles warmly and appreciatively, as only John Goodman can smile.
That’s a long way from where this season started, perhaps longer than it should be. The audacious season premiere — still the strongest episode this year by a decent stretch — opened with the revelation of where the Gemstone ministry started, with a violent con man and criminal who faked his way into the Confederate Army and later faked his way out of execution. While there was an important sliver of redemption — the impostor did, in the end, stumble into some spiritual meaning that carried over to generations of Gemstones — the gold Bible had been a threat all season, representing the truth about a family tree with rotten roots. Having it fall into someone else’s hands was not just a big crisis of the sort that the Gemstones have faced in previous seasons but a more fundamental statement of who they really are.
Yet it mostly gets dropped. It’s easier for the characters — and the show that plainly loves them — just to forgive and forget.
The theme of the finale is acceptance and grace, which are tonally friendly notes to strike when trying to land a series at a happy ending. First, we finally see the last of that “flappity old vagina” Vance Simkins, who comes charging into the Cape & Pistols club and drops the yellow hankie to challenge Jesse to a duel. When the men get out on the lawn to draw pistols at ten paces, Eli tells his son the obvious: The by-laws forcing him into a high-noon conflict aren’t actually binding and he can just leave if he wants. (Jesse sees no way out: “They’re all drumming and lined up.”) But a badly misfired shot from Vance gives Jesse the opportunity to turn the other cheek: “I don’t need a secret society or a duel to prove that I’m an impressive person. Capes and pistols, that stuff doesn’t mean shit. Your actions make you an impressive man. So I quit. I give you mercy today, orphan.”
And so it goes. One scene after another follows the same basic pattern. In his now-completed tree-house rebuild, Kelvin confesses that he’s no longer scared of the “devil’s piss” of a rainstorm or anything else, and he asks Keefe to marry him. The Siegfried and Roy analogy that Kelvin had used to keep his relationship with Keefe in the realm of plausible deniability is now moot, especially after he triumphed at the Top Christ Following Man competition by being his queer self. (“Maybe it doesn’t matter if they stick around to see the tigers, Keefe.”) It’s a sweet moment, made sweeter by the show’s optimism that their marriage won’t lose the Gemstone church any followers. Then, in the scene after that, BJ and Judy are taking down the stripper pole that had been an obstacle in their marriage, as much for BJ’s need to feel “manly” as the unfortunate accident he had onstage. Dismantling the pole gives the writers one last run through a golden field of double entendres, but it’s another act of reconciliation, followed later by Judy seeking to reunite her husband with the monkey she despises.
Finally, even Baby Billy succumbs to the what’s-really-important theme, as he breaks down on the set of Teenjus just as production seems to be winding down on the great biblical opus. All season long, he’s been chasing the bag, ignoring his wife and children as he vacuums up cocaine and whatever money he can from a wobbling Gemstone empire. Finally, the montage gods have their way with him, haunting him with scenes from previous episodes where his wife has begged him fruitlessly to spend more time with his family. Peering up at a Golgatha that’s probably some repurposed local quarry, Billy finally quits, refusing to sacrifice himself for entertainment, regardless of the millions it will cost his nephews and niece. “I know what’s important to me now,” he says. “And it ain’t crawling up on a cross all day, realistically playing a teenager.”
The one final shoe to drop is poor, confused Corey, who hasn’t taken his father’s death well. With the Gemstones and the Milsaps at the lake for a family weekend to cheer him up, Corey ends a Michael Jackson routine with a demand for $7 million to buy his dad’s gator farm from the bank, a sum he feels is a fair price for saving his life. But when Kelvin discovers the gold Bible and a gun in Corey’s luggage, darker truths emerge, like Corey partnering with his father to pummel all of Lori’s ex-boyfriends, which is how Eli and Baby Billy discovered a delusional Big Dick Mitch in a soundproof dungeon at the gator farm. With the secret out, Corey feels he has no choice but to shoot all three Gemstone siblings, who happen to be the only ones not out on the boat.
The Righteous Gemstones ekes some laughs out of a wounded Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin crawling like worms across the floor like Leonardo DiCaprio on ’ludes in The Wolf of Wall Street. (“I can’t believe the Core-dog shot us,” laments Kelvin.) Jesse is able to hit Corey with a lethal head shot after Dr. Watson retrieves a handgun from his man-purse upstairs, but even in that moment, all four of them are able to pray together and ask for forgiveness. Jesse’s words, “We are imperfect beings trying to become something more,” could be a thesis for the series at large, which may have always been more sweet-natured than savage, despite the salty language and the satirical jabs at a culture that allows televangelist charlatans to thrive. In the end, the show wants the best for these flawed souls, and the finale, for better and worse, feeds it to them like a Communion wafer.
• Smart move for a bullet-less Simkins to take up the “Serpentine!” maneuver from The In-Laws.
• BJ on his pole: “Funny, I thought I needed this to prove how manly I was. Riding this sleek pole up only to drip down slow, my thighs squeezing it, showing my strength. The mustache adding an exclamation point to the fact. But where did it get me?”
• A blindfolded BJ guesses the special place that Judy has driven him: “Olive Garden? A Boost Mobile kiosk so I can get a new SIM card?”
• Judy apologizes for taking Dr. Watson from a wounded veteran: “Buddy, we support the troops, but you’re going to find somebody else to wipe your ass. This monkey’s coming home with us.”
• RIP Corey. He could not, in fact, rip with the best of them.
• Lori comes back touchingly in the final scene, but she can’t attend the gay wedding that brings all the other characters together, Rushmore style. Baby Billy speculates, “Well, I guess shit just got too complicated. I mean, her ex-husband trying to rape and kill us, and your kids killing her kid? That was just a bridge too far, I guess.” That wouldn’t be a bridge too far for the Gemstones, but they’re not like other families.
