Last week, The Righteous Gemstones premiered, introducing the world to the Gemstones family of televangelists, an episode that ended with the three kids appearing to kill two people who were extorting the family for money.
Here is a look at this week’s second episode of The Righteous Gemstones, “Is This the Man Who Made the Earth Tremble?”
Righteous Gemstones recap
After the Righteous Gemstones season premiere, there was no telling which way this series would go.
Last week, we met the Gemstones last season and seeing how corrupt and devious they were on the way to trying to kill someone. What wasn’t totally expected was that this week we would meet the people that they tried to kill.
This week’s Righteous Gemstones episode started out from inside the van that the extortionists were in. Remember, last week, one guy got out but he was beaten up and then run over by the Gemstone siblings.
Then a second got out and they chased her down and ran over her as well. As the episode showed, these three were named Scott, Jack, and Lucy. None of them died, although Jack and Scott tossed Lucy down a hill to get rid of the body.
This is looking more and more like a comedy version of The Sopranos, or maybe even a Coen Brothers story. No one in this story is good — not even the illustrious Eli Gemstone, who only gets two short scenes — one where he kills a snake in his house (foreshadowing, maybe?)
Lucy lived and while Scott and Jack tried to hide the fact that they dumped her body, she figures it out, destroys the backup blackmail tape, and leaves them.
While this is going on, Jesse (Danny McBride) is gathering his family’s friends and forcing them to do his dirty work. He sends them into the store where the incident occurred to steal the videotape, which hilariously goes wrong.
They realize the two were three and they lived and use traffic cam footage to find the hotel they were staying at.
It doesn’t help that Jesse is having some problems at home as his wife has been talking to their son Gideon who left home and has made his way to California to work as a stunt man.
However, the end of the episode turned everything on its head when Jack showed up at Jesse’s house and turned out to be Gideon.
This second episode of The Righteous Gemstones was nowhere near as great as the first, and it seemed this week just set up the storyline some after that explosive season premiere.
The problem this week is that there were not enough scenes with the Gemstones and that will be a problem moving forward for the show. They are the highlights and everything else is just coasting along.
What separates #TheRighteousGemstones from Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down?
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Credit does go to the scenes with the siblings, especially the squabbling this week between Jesse and his sister Judy (Edi Patterson). The Righteous Gemstones needs more of that.
The Righteous Gemstones airs on Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on HBO.