It seems like only a week ago I was regaling the Gemstones’ ability to come together as a family, despite grudges and betrayals and brow-scorching insults that would end other relationships. And now, this week, a fresh round of betrayals either begins the cycle anew or snaps a tree’s worth of olive branches in half. The Righteous Gemstones had spent the first three episodes carefully building out a season where Eli Gemstone has finally handed over his empire to his children — the ultimate act of blind faith, to be sure, but also an act of trust. The fourth and best episode so far harmonizes the trust theme across multiple timelines and considers the consequences for nearly every major character in the cast.
The speech that ends the episode recalls the voiceover that opens Martin Scorsese’s Casino, when Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro), walking out of the Tangiers in one of his pastel suits, says, “When you love someone, you’ve got to trust them. There’s no other way. You’ve got to give them the key to everything that’s yours. Otherwise, what’s the point?†He then turns the ignition on his car and it explodes, sending him tumbling through space. He trusted the wrong person, plainly, but it would be an exceptionally lonely life without extending trust to those closest to you. But the world of the Gemstones and the megachurch business is full of temptation and wickedness, and disappointment often becomes an inevitable cost of loyalty.
There are different flavors of trust, however. When Kelvin extends his trust in Keefe to manage an “ice cream and wiener party†for his teen squad and their parents, it isn’t entirely Keefe’s fault that the owner of Adult Emporium loudly entices him to check out his new “premium fuck dolls†after he bought out all his “butt buzzers†the previous week. It was Kelvin’s brilliant idea, after all, to buy up stock to keep sex toys out of the hairy hands of truck drivers, without much thought to how selling things tends to be good for business. Still, Keefe does not give the ideal response: “It’s not what you think. It’s something we do with your kids!†And the fallout from parents leads Kelvin’s siblings to the obvious conclusion that Keefe isn’t cut out to be assistant youth pastor.
In the middle of the inevitable comment-box revolt, a parent finally says the thing that everyone else is thinking, asking Kelvin, “With all the rumors swirling about you, can’t you see how strange this all looks?†The love between Kelvin and Keefe dare not speak its name and indeed both parties have remained outrageously silent around it, despite the ceaseless barrage of skin-bearing outfits, double entendres, and intimacies about warm sausage dip. There’s a world in which they could be happy together, but it’s certainly not this world, which has been looking for a reason to break them up and has now found one. Given how quickly Keefe regressed to Satanism the last time they had a falling out, his prospects on the outside are grim. With that in mind, his farewell to Kelvin — “You saved me and I will walk the righteous path from here on out because of you†— is a heartbreaker.
After seemingly everyone knowing about Judy’s dry-humping affair with her tour guitarist save for her husband, that shoe finally drops in the most humiliating way possible. BJ isn’t much of a mathematician, so putting two and two together has been hard for him, even when Stephen sends dick pics while Judy and BJ are painting and sipping wine together. (BJ feels bad that the pic has missed its intended recipient: “Some lucky gal is missing out on that glorious cock shot.â€) Stephen makes it even more obvious when he turns up as BJ’s substitute partner in a pickleball match and starts talking about a dry-hump session that left “the fucking map of the Hawaiian islands all down my slacks.†But BJ doesn’t make connection until Stephen engineers a meeting between all three of them, which is also heartbreaking in its way. BJ is certainly the type to miss signs and social cues, but it never occurred to him that Judy would have an affair. That’s trust.
But the most fascinating and important figure this episode is Eli, who has been remarkably calm and steadfast in handing over the Gemstone ministries to his children and trying to mend fences with his sister May-May and his wayward nephews. He has tried to fish. He has tried to read a biography of John Adams. He spends time in the lush, peaceful gardens that his late wife had tended. He’s trying to be a retiree, but what’s more, he’s also been trying to turn the other cheek and draw out the best of the people around him. In my season-premiere recap, I wrote about the connection between The Righteous Gemstones and Succession, but this is where the one-to-one comparisons break down: Logan Roy’s children never had his faith and trust, and his impulse was always to appeal to people’s worst selves. For Logan, both choices were good for business, if not so much for the soul.
Eli has watched his children fail to carry his legacy forward from the start, so it’s really just one more predictably exasperating moment when Jesse whiffs his induction into the Cape and Motherfucking Pistol Society. Jesse cannot be expected to refrain from swearing, but he surely didn’t expect to be given a ritualized, Eyes Wide Shut treatment for failing to abide by the rules. But his patience with his sister and nephews is another matter. In the key exchange of the whole episode, May-May and Eli connect over the troubled relationships they have with their children:
May-May: “I was never jealous of your riches. I am jealous that your kids love you. That’s more than I can say about my own.â€
Eli: “Don’t mistake love for dependency. I feel like one of them old dogs with swollen nipples you see on a ranch searching for shade.â€
Those words linger over the events that follow when the love that Eli shows to his nephews is answered by the boys stealing two-and-a-half tons of ammonium nitrate for their father, who plans to “stick it up Uncle Sam’s ass.†There was seemingly nothing the Gemstones or May-May could do to rescue Chuck and Karl away from their father’s influence, despite their seeming enjoyment of their silk suits and grooming treatment, as if they were prepping to see the Wizard of Oz. It’s hard to know exactly what Chuck and Karl are thinking, but the song they play to their mother’s delight, with its chorus about “the time’s a-comin’ when the sinner must die,†sends a message. They’re faithful soldiers in a larger fight.
Uncut Gemstones
• High tension between Jesse and his son Pontius, who didn’t get accepted to college, doesn’t want to go outside (“Nature sucks. Shit’s boring.â€) and has got caught having sex with his girlfriend on the couch. On the college front, Jesse gets in one of the spicier lines of the episode: “I bet you the boys at the Citadel would split your ass like a pair of damn Chinese chopsticks.â€
• Judy, appreciating her cousin’s new look: “Karl’s presenting like a straight-up cunt-smasher now.â€
“I just couldn’t articulate how buying bunches of sex toys was in the best interest of the church.†Not many could, Keefe.
• Some sharp art criticism from Judy after BJ shows her his painting of his dog Rags: “Is Rags an explosive diarrhea that you named?â€
• Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers may be DOA, but a hologram of Aimee-Leigh singing seems like exactly the ticket to give the Gemstone church the combination of gravitas and razzle-dazzle it desperately needs.
• BJ, the good ally, rebuking Stephen’s homophobic slur: “I’m a straight cis male, but I don’t believe that queer people should be referenced that way regardless.â€
• Jesse’s big speech to Pontius at the end is superbly written and underscores a montage of betrayals perfectly. “Trust is the only thing keeping the entire house of cards standing. Without it, we’re left with a shit-stained world full of liars and cheats.†Amen, brother.