The Righteous Gemstones Recap: The Mouth of God, My Dude

“What the hell are you doing here?” 

“Me? I’m merely shitting.” 

“You came all the way to Kelvin’s house to take a shit?”  

“Yeah, dude. I was driving near here and I started turtle-heading. What do you want me to do?”

There are levels to the comedy in The Righteous Gemstones. This exchange between Jesse and Judy on tonight’s episode is obviously hilarious on the surface. The two of them have gone to Kelvin’s house on their own, and they’re each scrambling to come up with a good excuse for why they’re there. For Judy to settle on “shitting” as an excuse is funny enough, but it’s the word “turtle-heading” that gives it the lowbrow poetry that’s long been the show’s stock-in-trade. Yet their desperation to come up with a reason other than the one they share — that they actually care about Kelvin and want to make sure he’s okay — speaks to the strong and complex familial bond that keeps the Gemstones together. And that’s what this fitfully sweet episode is often about.

As all three Gemstone siblings have struggled to find their footing since their father stepped away from the ministry, Kelvin’s success with Prism and his Top Christ Following Man of the Year award nomination has made him a natural target, not least because he’s been rubbing it in their faces at every opportunity. (Side note: The show’s frequent repetition of “Top Christ Following Man” has become a great running joke on its own.) So when he failed at “the most dangerous threat of all,” the roundtable discussion, Jesse and Judy had reason to feel a bit of Schadenfreude about it. Now Kelvin had experienced a level of public humiliation on par with Jesse’s Prayer Pods, and his entire Prism project, which had become a glittering monument to himself, would have to be mothballed, too. When Kelvin opts to retreat to his treehouse and retract the ladder, surely part of it was to avoid the inevitable ripping of his siblings.

But there was a small moment in the episode two weeks ago that suggested the response might be different. When Jesse turns off the roundtable discussion at home, his expression reads as exasperation and disappointment, not glee over the humbling of a sibling rival. Part of it may have to do with Jesse’s larger beef with Vance Simkins, who is the guy dismantling Kelvin so viciously on TV, but most of it is that no amount of ripping can keep the Gemstones permanently estranged from each other. Jesse and Judy may roll their eyes at Kelvin’s success, but they don’t revel in each other’s catastrophes for long and always find some way to reconcile, especially in the face of outside threats. They enjoy denigrating Kelvin for sport, but they’ll be damned if they’re going to let Vance Simkins get in on the action. Jesse saying, “Ding-dong, bitch” as he and Judy float up to the treehouse door in their telethon jet packs is the show’s version of a hard-earned tearjerking moment.

The sibling-reconciliation theme in tonight’s episode extends to Gideon and Pontius, too, as they try to patch up their broken relationship. We know from the first season of The Righteous Gemstones that Gideon once strayed from the virtuous path even more than Pontius, whose snotty rebelliousness is much more garden variety than his big brother’s violent blackmail scheme. In fact, Gideon has looked notably uncomfortable on the righteous path, having inherited none of his father’s preaching skills, much less his boorish bluster. He seems like he wants to be a genuinely decent person, which makes him an awkward fit as a Gemstone, and he’s been turning to his grandfather for mentorship, perhaps because he’s at least quieter than his dad. For Jesse, Gideon’s virtue is an annoying turn of events because it exposes his flaws like a blacklight on by-the-hour motel linens.

When Pontius is caught doing whippets with his skateboarding buddies, Gideon’s plea to bring all of them into church looks like something out of an ’80s comedy where he’s trying to save the community center. If he can prove to these boys that he’s totally radical by pulling tricks in his Sunday best, then they’ll have to admit that he’s not the square they assumed him to be and that the tackiest, most mercenary form of Christianity is, in fact, cool. Even Pontius seems to have dropped his petulant glare for the time being. We’ll see where all of this goes — the youngest generation of Gemstones embracing a humbler relationship to God would be a twist — but the silliness of the Pontius subplot minimizes its importance quite a bit.

Yet the Gideon-Pontius reconciliation fits into the overall tone of the episode, which is as optimistic as the show has gotten this season. If anything, the episode is too optimistic: When Kelvin dusts himself off and comes out in a triumphant speech at “The Night of Testimonies,” the final event in the Top Christ Following Man competition, he walks out of the auditorium in the expectation that he just blew his shot at the award. For voters to give it to him anyway feels like the type of phony Hollywood uplift that’s anathema to a series like The Righteous Gemstones, however much it obviously loves these characters. Just Kelvin’s decision to be up front about who he is, consequences be damned, would be meaningful enough without the rest of the Evangelical world celebrating him for it.

On the other hand, the next Prism luncheon stands to be a rager.

Uncut Gemstones

• Cobb Milsap emerges in the cold open as perhaps the season’s biggest threat to the Gemstone empire, getting the edge on Simkins, who presides over a ministry with dwindling finances and a firebombed worship center and has lost the Top Christ Following Man crown to a rival. Cobb has all he needs for revenge: The gold Bible and a giant alligator.

• The funniest material this week was all in the B- and C-plots. The rivalry between Judy and Dr. Watson, BJ’s scheming helper monkey, is completely inspired, never more so than when Watson starts pelting her with prepackaged fajita meat. Just as good is Baby Billy’s production troubles with Teenjus, which threatens to become for the Gemstone ministry what Heaven’s Gate was for United Artists.

• BJ on smooching Dr. Watson: “His primate cognition is off the charts. I’m fairly certain his love language is physical touch, so it’s important he gets wats of wob.”

• It’s clear that the problem with Teenjus isn’t the script, e.g., “Man should not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, my dude.” It’s a casting problem. So a massively coked-up Billy has opted to throw on a wig and play the role himself, which will require $2 million for reshoots and an eight-ball of cocaine.

• Billy on 29 percent budget cuts for Teenjus: “I can’t make this show epic on a shoestring. You got me shooting at a cement factory out in Goose Creek. We should be shooting this motherfucker internationally. We should be in Jordan right now in some Muslim tombs doing this shit for real, now. I wrote this fucker to be big! This is Teenjus!”

• BJ on offering reciprocal care for his monkey by washing his asshole: “YouTube said to dab it with a wet washcloth. Capuchins have a problem with anal leakage.”