The Righteous Gemstones Recap: Ancestral Family Vacation Home
It would be an insult to the writers and craftspeople behind this episode of The Righteous Gemstones merely to describe the cold open as Baby Billy waterskiing in the nude, a kind of sequel to his casual drawer-dropping after the telethon rehearsal in the season’s second episode. Baby Billy’s first full-frontal scene is more a testament to Walton Goggins’s incredible hayseed bravado in the rule. (“Behold, look at this. That’s my privates right there.”) But the waterskiing bit is cinema because so much forethought has gone into the funniest possible staging of the sequence. Specifically, there was the revelation that Baby Billy dropping to one ski would result in the most intense stream of water shooting up toward his scrotum. That’s not juvenilia. That’s art.
It’s also our introduction to Galilee Gulch, the opulent Gemstone lake house that must not be disrespected, according to Jesse, because it’s “our ancestral family vacation home.” And yet disrespect is the unifying sentiment of the weekend, as the Gemstone children have gathered their family and the Milsaps together in a characteristically ham-fisted attempt to destroy Eli and Lori’s relationship. Their main thought is that Galilee Gulch will bring up so many memories of Aimee-Leigh that their father will be shamed into dumping Lori and return to a more dignified retirement of loneliness and depression. Though the possibility of Lori making a claim on the family moment does get raised in this episode, the funny thing is that the Gemstone siblings seem to have not even considered it. They’re just hung up on the gross thought of their old man fucking again. (“Ugh,” cries Judy. “Just picture Daddy’s shaft going into Lori’s elderly juice pit.”)
What follows is an escalating series of provocations, poorly masked as a generous extending of an olive branch. Eli is so grateful that the kids are giving Lori a chance that he’s willing to overlook the rackful of Aimee-Leigh’s old clothes that remain in the bedroom closet. By their standards, it’s a subtle enough gambit to give them plausible deniability. (Not so the next time those clothes make an appearance.) Later, Jesse stumbles into a guaranteed winner when Corey, who’s warming to the relationship, tells him that he prefers Eli to Lori’s previous suitor, a salesman from a Mercedes dealership who goes by the name “Big Dick” Mitch. Now, the kids can offer a chorus of fake support for this relationship, which will surely fall apart due to their father’s embarrassment and jealousy. (“It’s a big old ‘no’ on ‘Big Dick’ Mitch for me,” declares Kelvin.) But once again, Eli and Lori talk it out and reconcile so quickly that still more drastic moves are required to separate them, like a talent-show musical number reminding the group that “Mom’s here” watching over them. Finally, the happy couple can see they’re in the middle of a temper tantrum.
One of the fascinating aspects of The Righteous Gemstones is how this family is as quick to forgive as it is quick to anger. (The Bible emphasizes the importance of being slow to anger and quick to forgive, so they only get it half-right.) Casey brought up how much he admired the Gemstone art of “ripping” each other in a previous episode, and he failed terribly when he tried it out on his wife, because he can’t make his burning resentment of her seem like a joke. The steps the Gemstone kids — and Keefe, in full Psycho mode — take to sabotage their dad’s relationship are extreme yet entirely expected. When Judy decides to “turn out” Lori by making an aggressive pass in the bedroom (“Why don’t you slide on out of that cotton dress, let me snack on that pussy?”) and writing out a large check for her to go away, Lori takes it in stride. “This is exactly how you acted when your mama got sick,” says Lori. These kids are incorrigible!
Contrast that to Amber’s reaction to Eli telling her to “shut the fuck up” in the wake of Keefe invading his bedroom in his late wife’s clothes and eventually being put down by Sola, a German nanny who happens to know kung fu. (Shades of Danny McBride and Jody Hill’s 2006 breakthrough comedy, The Foot Fist Way.) Amber was trying to play peacemaker to a steamed-up Eli and got snapped at in a way that’s foreign to her but totally commonplace to her husband and his siblings. Judy laughs in appreciation over her dad’s “very well-timed ‘shut the fuck up,’” but even after marrying into the Gemstone family, Amber can’t handle such a harsh rebuke. After all their shenanigans, the Gemstone siblings are ready to reconcile with their father and give their blessings to him and Lori. Such is the tenor of their relationship. Is that grace or psychosis?
The episode ends with another rupture, however, as the Gemstone kids march right into their father’s bedroom to make peace and find him 69-ing Lori, which we know from his boat tryst is a favorite position of his. Now the Lord has punished them for recoiling at the mere thought of their dad having sex by presenting them with the retina-searing reality of it. “You were licking another woman that wasn’t mama” is a wonderfully childlike reaction to what they saw, though maybe the funniest part of the confrontation that follows is Eli picking a strand of public hair from his teeth. Now the Gemstones are back to having to forgive one another again. The cycle repeats itself.
Uncut Gemstones
• Of course, Baby Billy has a Cybertruck. And, of course, the twins have a toy Cybertruck to play with. We’ll see how long the panels of each stay glued on.
• BJ’s disability has turned him less into the family pariah than a squeaky wheel that people forget about most of the time. He hates being at a lake house with no ramps, a gambling table that’s almost over his head, and an inadequate selection of snacks. In a montage where the whole family is out on the water having a ball, he’s shown dropping a bottle of lotion and futilely attempting to pick it up. His anger and marginalization will be something to monitor.
• Baby Billy’s fury at his nanny is a fun running joke because the idea of having kids is more appealing to him than the intolerable hassle of spending any time with them. “We ain’t paying her to put on fashion shows,” he screams when she’s off changing her clothes. “We’re paying her to nan.”
• Tiffany: “Baby Billy’s got all the good ideas in his head. I just got peanuts floating around in mine.”
• Hard to single out one comic high point in an episode loaded with them, but Jesse’s graphic hypothetical about hooking up with Amber’s best friend after she dies is a pornographic delight. Jesse imagining the women ruining the mattress topper with her squirting is an example of the specificity of great writing.
• “Lionel spilled country gravy all over the pack-and-play.”