I am Going to Miss "The Righteous Gemstones"

"The Righteous Gemstones" had their series finale this past Sunday. My wife and I watched it last night. We both loved it. I felt like it was a pretty good ending for what the show had become over its four seasons. They wrapped up all the main characters' stories, they gave the new characters solid endings this season and it was bittersweet for me to see it end.

This is what Danny McBride and David Gordon Green do. They give us these great ideas and they make the series short and sweet. "Eastbound and Down" gave us four seasons, "Vice Principals" was two and now "Gemstones" was four. My wife and I both felt that the ending of season three felt like a series finale, and we were curious to see how they were going to get one more 10 episode arc out of them, but they delivered. I recommend going and watching the whole series, I'm going to rewatch myself.

My blog today is not a review of the finale, but more an appreciation post to the greatness that is "The Righteous Gemstones". This show perfectly sent up the wild and crazy world of mega churches. I am not a religious person, and I felt like the powers that be with this show have the same feelings about religion as I do. So, instead of painting by colors with it, and making it some kind of cliche meag church thing, they took it in a totally different direction. The pastors do drugs and philander. They do not follow their sacred vows. The main people in this show have some very bad demons and they have a tough time exorcising said demons. They curse and gripe about their family and kids. The siblings are constantly at each other's throats. Their dad wants them to grow the hell up, but they refuse. The kids' spouses are along for the ride it seems, but they also act like a regular married couple. "The Righteous Gemstones" is this heightened world, but the people have real, everyday problems. They just happen to be rich and claim to be religious leaders.

Outside the Gemstone family we got some great side characters. Keef is a gentle giant of a person. He is a former satanist and he has "found god". I found myself enjoying him throughout the whole series. He got better with each new season. BJ was dumb as rocks, but also a loyal and grateful member of the family. He loved his wife and would do whatever it took to make her happy. The kids in the Gemstone family got to find their own way. They made mistakes, they did stuff that was very wrong, but in the end they wanted to be in this family.

The best thing this show ever did, and will go down in history as one of the greats, was the creation of Uncle Baby Billy. Walton Goggins more than embodied this role and took it to a whole other level. Uncle Baby Billy was crass, a bad husband and father, a drug addict and worked way, way too much. He always fought with the Gemstone family. He took on way more than he could handle. But damn if he wasn't the best part of this whole show. Everytime Uncle Baby Billy was onscreen I was stoked and anticipating something amazing happening. And it pretty much always delivered. Walton Goggins is having a moment, and for me, Uncle Baby Billy is the peak.

Outside the actors, the writers were amazing. They had cast members direct episodes and they did wonderful things. The show was always funny and could even veer dark, but they never made it too bleak.

I will miss this show for so many reasons. I'm happy with what we got, and it will be on Max for a long, long time. But, this is going to be tough to not see any new episodes. I want to thank everyone who made this world come to life on my little tv screen. Thank you for all the hard and great work. "The Righteous Gemstones" will go down as a classic. It was a wonderful, wonderful four seasons of tv. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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