The Righteous Gemstones

Gemstones delicately balances the ridiculous and extreme with surprisingly subtle character moments that keeps the show from drifting too far away from legitimate emotion and humanity.

The lack of searing commentary is a bit of a letdown looking back over the first six episodes, but there’s still potential. Putting characters first is rarely a bad idea with ongoing TV series, and McBride ensures viewers will want to keep coming back just to see more of what this cast can do.

Watching Jesse Gemstone squirm because of the troublesome situation he manufactured for himself is wildly entertaining. There’s nothing quite like seeing simpleminded cretins get their comeuppance, and viewers will see plenty of that in “The Righteous Gemstones.”

Where the series ultimately thrives, though, is in its characterizations, which transform in unexpected ways over the course of the first six episodes (which were all that was provided for press).

“The Righteous Gemstones” clicks along for a couple of episodes, then hits high gear when Walton Goggins shows up as Baby Billy Freeman, Eli’s late wife’s brother. ... Tossing him – a propane tank of emotions – into a volatile mix like this enhances what already was a comic firestorm.

HBO's new comedy The Righteous Gemstones is likely to resonate with the audience that embraced his previous HBO comedies and perplex those requiring more conventionally "likable" characters. ... The Righteous Gemstones is coarse and enthusiastically performed, with punchlines that don't always hit for me, but the first six episodes have highlights of surprising potency.

The series premiere is an hour long and that’s just fine because we’re just meeting his family and there’s a lot of soak in. But subsequent episodes running as long as 40 minutes seem padded. Feels like this should be a half-hour show. Remarkably, even as we’re shaking our heads at the hypocrisy of these people, by the fourth or fifth episode we have come to like these characters and we start to care about what happens to them. Well. Some of them.

The good news is that the other characters are getting there, both emotionally and satirically. With each episode, the church, the dimming light binding these characters together, is crystallizing into a symbol of the spiritual void left by Aimee-Leigh’s absence. That emptiness needs to be filled somehow, and The Righteous Gemstones is best when it confronts both that need and the needs that bring anyone into a spiritual community.

Despite its proclivity for forced, flat subplots, The Righteous Gemstones is a compelling and humanizing study of its characters, the faith they profess, and the world they strive to proselytize.

Gemstones' subtler moments work better than its bold strokes.

This is a decent show that could quickly become good or even great. All the pieces are there, even if McBride seems to be struggling at the beginning to put them together into one convincing sermon. Still, I wouldn't blame anyone for coming back every Sunday.

For the bulk of this opener, The Righteous Gemstones hovers cautiously, without ever quite finding the strength of its voice. But it clearly has the potential to be much more. I’m praying for these Gemstones to shine.

The show sometimes meanders too much. The cast, as is always the case in McBride’s projects, is incredibly strong. ... But for now, it’s a show about a spiritually bankrupt family that hasn’t quite found its own soul.

While “The Righteous Gemstones” does indeed partake in some rather low-hanging fruit as it mocks the megachurch milieu (where the prosperity gospel rains its flashiest blessings upon those who preach it), it occasionally hints at some stronger potential. Mostly the show comes off as an unfinished, vaguely Coen brothers-flavored gumbo of broad stereotypes, violent occurrences and snakey retributions among a family whose holiest instincts were long ago subsumed by their contempt for one another.

Judy isn’t distinct enough from her brothers. Worse yet, she occupies the same role that so many of McBride’s other female creations have before her: that of a screeching scold. ... All of which might be forgivable if the series dug deeper into its other ostensible targets: televangelism, the prosperity gospel, and broader aspects of evangelical culture. But at least in its first six episodes, the show barely scratches the surface before reverting to a more conventional crime-dramedy mode.

Its best asset, a premise that can open up to sharp commentary and granular sociological depiction, is lost. Not merely does this series have little real perspective on what goes on in the family church services, but its push to redeem Jesse seems to seek a depth and soulfulness neither script nor performance consistently serves.

The show doesn’t lack style, but it’s shockingly weak on substance given its singular setting. Instead of plunging us into the world of televangelism, The Righteous Gemstones is just another group of wealthy jerks who happily bicker amongst each other when they’re not scraping everyone else off their shoes.

Despite the abilities of the cast, McBride’s touch is too heavy, and before long, we yearn for some heavenly force to smite Jesse, just to get him to stop cursing, insulting everyone and strutting around in total blowhard fashion. ... It’s not clear what exactly it is trying to do. And it’s not funny enough to make us want to keep watching.