The Stones

The Righteous Gemstones is an HBO comedy that debuted last night. It's created by and stars Danny McBride.  I'm not a big fan of his TV work, but HBO apparently loves him, since this is his third show for them after Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals.

It's about the Gemstone family, televangelists overseeing a multi-million-dollar empire who, in private, have a lot of questionable activity and infighting. The patriarch is Eli Gemstone (John Goodman), whose wife died not that long ago. The next generation of Gemstones are firstborn son Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam DeVine).

Jesse has the main plot in the pilot--he's being blackmailed over a video of a wild party he attended.  He's also got a wife (Cassidy Freeman) and a rebellious teenage son. They have another son they don't talk about who's already left the family. Meanwhile, Judy is secretly shacking up with her boyfriend and Kelvin's close friend is a young man who was formerly a Satanist.

Mocking religious hypocrites has been around about as long as there's been drama, though the trouble today is they've become almost too easy a target.  One gets the feeling, however, that The Righteous Gemstones isn't really about religion--that's just the world these people live in; they could be any rich, dysfunctional family, such as the Roy family in Succession, the HBO show that precedes The Righteous Gemstones.

It's hard to judge too much from just one hour, but so far the show seems to feature the same crude comedy that McBride specializes in, tending to come from how overdone, jerky and stupid the characters are.  Perhaps these caricatures will deepen as the show goes on, but if it doesn't get better soon, I expect I'll be gone.