The Righteous Gemstones Recap: Masters of Rips

After the storm that opens this week’s episode of The Righteous Gemstones — and prompts a Keefe monologue on the devil’s “evil rain piss” that requires its own space to unpack — we discover that Kelvin’s childhood treehouse has been so damaged that the Gemstones’ head groundskeeper has set to work demolishing it. Kelvin orders the workers to stop and later visits the treehouse with Keefe, where he laments life’s cruel twists of fate (“We’re all so powerless. Anything can happen.”) and reminiscences about this hideout as a refuge from whatever upset him as a child. “This place made me feel safe,” he says, not quite acknowledging that it’s on the verge of collapse.

In the writing game, we call this a metaphor.

Season four will be the last for The Righteous Gemstones, and there are signs in this mournful (and vulgar/hilarious) episode that this extremely American empire may be going the way of Kelvin’s treehouse. Just like poor Kelvin, the Gemstone children are slow to realize what’s happening and still occupy a once-resplendent house that’s losing its foundation. Denial is a powerful religious tool, after all, and a human instinct, too. There’s always going to be a money-making Telethon to fill the empty coffers or some splashy business enterprise like Prism or the Prayer Pods to bring the Gemstones back to solvency. But with Eli backing away from the church and no one with the “rizz,” much less the intelligence or savvy, to beat back challengers like Vance Simkins, the congregation seems likely to drift away. The temple is becoming a “squirt yurt.”

Granted, the Gemstones have gotten out of sticky situations before — a “sticky situation” that’s now literal thanks to Jesse’s short-lived masturbation huts — and it’s possible the Lord will see them through another fiasco, as He has in the three previous seasons. But expensive failures like the Prayer Pods are going to start to pile up, and Eli’s simple gravitas at the Aimee-Leigh Telethon was a reminder that the kids might not be able to tend the flock with dumb pyrotechnics for much longer. The Simkins threat seems particularly alarming, like a shark detecting blood in the water. He’s being almost too generous to Jesse when he likens his strip mall operations next to Gemstone ministries to opening up a Burger King in a town where there’s a McDonald’s. In reality, Simkins intends to be more like Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, drinking up Jesse’s Shamrock shake.

One slight glimmer of trouble may be Prism, a success story that may portend failure down the line. While Kelvin basks in the glory of being a Top Christ-Following Man of the Year nominee for his bravery in “centering individuals that are usually othered by society,” the Gemstones may be overlooking who in society is doing the othering. At a meeting of The Cape and Pistol Society in which Jesse displays mastery of neither pistol nor cape, Simkins zeroes in on Kelvin’s enterprise, first as a way to mock Jesse (“I guess your homosexual brother is the Gemstone with the juice these days”) and later, when mentioning BJ’s pole-dancing accident, as a mockery of the Gemstones as a family of queers. As usual, Jesse is too puffed up to notice, but it’s worth watching how much good old-fashioned bigotry might affect the Gemstones’ futures.

This week, the show introduces Seann William Scott as Lori’s son, Corey Milsap, and Arden Myrin as his wife, Jana, who laughs uneasily at the Gemstone siblings “ripping” each other for sport. At a cookout, the humiliating demise of Jesse’s Prayer Pods is the main topic of conversation, as malls and airports ultimately decided against having a solemn refuge for public masturbation. “Homeboy here even stocked them full of lotion,” says Judy, suggesting that Jesse was willing to lean into the pods’ re-purposing. But Corey proves lousy at “ripping.” There’s no joke to telling Jana that her dress is “fucking dumb,” and there’s no joke to him pointing out that Eli has a hickey on his neck, either — or at least there wouldn’t be if Eli’s kids didn’t continue to find the idea of their dad hooking up ridiculous. Even when Corey, Jana, and the Gemstone kids spot Eli and Lori seeming affectionate with each other on the driveway, Judy snipes, “Just like picture sweet Miss Lori, you know, like, nude in her bathroom, splashing on CK One so she can get railed by Eli’s big old floppy daddy dick.”

But Miss Lori has been getting railed, and the announcement of their union over the weekly Gemstone lunch at Jason’s Steakhouse goes over poorly, to say the least. Corey condemns his mother and walks out while the Gemstone kids retreat to the freezer at Jason’s to have it out. In a show where most of the laughs come either from the salty dialogue or big visual set pieces, it’s worth noting that maybe the funniest shot of the entire episode is Kelvin sternly listening to his father’s emotional pleas while his glasses are still fogged up from the freezer. As horrified as they are by the idea of Eli finding another woman (and a family friend, no less), they’re sympathetic to his confessions of loneliness and seem willing to get him a chance. Jesse apologizes for calling him “a slut.” They are a family that can forgive as readily as they sin.

“No matter what,” Jesse says in the sermon that ends the show, “we never turn our back on family. That is our Gemstone commitment to you.” The question remains: Will that commitment be reciprocated?

Uncut Gemstones

• Who swiped the Elijah Gemstone Bible from the house in 2002? Young Kelvin would seem to have gotten a good look at the culprit, but it’s a mystery the show is tucking away for now.

• Incredible monologue by Tony Cavalero as Keefe, who takes Kelvin’s line about rain as “the devil peeing on you” and runs so far with it that he brings himself to completion far from any Prayer Pod. The speech is a reminder of Keefe’s past in more sinful corners of society and how thin the line still remains between where he was then and where he is now.

• Jesse considering whether Eli and Lori are a couple: “I did notice they were taking pisses at the same time, but I wrote that off as typical old-people shit.”

• News of the latest Simkins “encroachment” spoils Jesse’s efforts to mentor Gideon on leadership. His men seem eager to answer with violence, but Jesse wants to look diplomatic in front of his son. It’s only later, when a car full of goons toss Molotov cocktails into Simkins’s new church that he responds in the most expected Gemstone way.

• A tip of the hat to the show’s commitment to full-frontal male nudity, thanks to a casual backstage shot at the pole-dancing competition. The Righteous Gemstones seems committed to redressing the nudity balance at HBO, one floppy weenus at a time.

• Fantastic reference to BJ having a stairlift “like Mrs. Deagle has in Gremlins.” I’d rate Mrs. Deagle’s demise among the great movie deaths.

• “You think I’m intimidated by the circling of the men?”