Since 2019, The Righteous Gemstones has chronicled the sordid lives of America’s most revolting yet lovable Megachurch dynasty. As it enters its fourth and final season, the bawdy comedy has essentially fulfilled the promise of its initial premise: Put-upon patriarch Eli (John Goodman) has stepped aside and allowed his children Jesse (series creator Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam Devine) to succeed him as the leaders of his empire, and the siblings have made peace, content to mercilessly rib each other instead of actively working to undermine their business ventures and personal lives. With all that drama behind them, what’s left for The Righteous Gemstones to accomplish with its farewell season? Not nearly enough, unfortunately. Gemstones IV’s relatively slight and low-stakes plot takes far too long to get moving, reserving nearly all the drama, mystery, and madcap action for its final three episodes.
Megan Mullally joins the cast as Lori Milsap, best friend and songwriting partner of the late Aimee-Lee Gemstone (Jennifer Nettles). Her return into the lives of the surviving Gemstones stirs up a lot of emotion, especially for the lonely retired Eli. The friction between Eli and Lori becomes the center of this season’s plot. Jesse, whose hare-brained schemes usually drive the show, takes a backseat this time around, while the rest of the ensembles’ running subplots are fairly tame and paced out awkwardly throughout the season. Kelvin’s story, which sees the recently out queer church leader angling for a prestigious award, wraps up weeks ahead of the finale, while Uncle Baby Billy’s (Walton Goggins) arc — the production of a TV series about a Teen Jesus that he calls Teenjus — doesn’t even get rolling until the midpoint.
Unlike previous seasons, this run of Gemstones lacks a sense of urgency. Past seasons have been driven by murder, kidnapping, extortion and larceny, with family members frequently finding themselves in mortal danger. This time, however, there are far fewer bullets flying or cars racing. The action-thriller elements that often made Gemstones feel like Barry’s redneck cousin are largely absent. There’s also not much in the way of courtly intrigue, as the family’s morally-bankrupt, tax-exempt enterprise doesn’t face any real threats, either.
That’s not to say that season’s a total miss. The show’s trademark raunchy sense of humor is still on full display (as are Walton Goggins’ genitals). There are dick jokes and pratfalls aplenty, and the returning cast has lost none of its chemistry. Megan Mullally is a perfect addition, having made a career playing broad, irrepressible personalities who you can’t help but fall in love with. Composer Joseph Stevens’ songs, too, hold up to their usual hokey earworm quality, though none aspire to the parody perfection of Season 1’s “Misbehavin’.”
And, as always, the heart of the season is an episode set during the Gemstones’ youth, with J. Gavin Wilde, Emma Shannon and Tristan Borders playing pitch perfect younger versions of the lead characters and Jennifer Nettles returning as Aimee-Leigh, the saintly Country/worship singer whose death set the series into motion.
These “Interlude” flashback episodes usually serve to humanize the show’s loathsome leads, but by now Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin have outgrown the need to be softened. They’re self-actualized, self-aware and no longer the authors of their own doom. It’s another of the reasons why this season of The Righteous Gemstones feels subdued. Even the broader supporting characters, like Baby Billy, his young bride Tiffany (Valyn Hall) and Judy’s husband BJ (Tim Baltz) don’t feel quite as big this time around, since they’re no longer at odds with the rest of the family and have settled into a comfortable status quo. There’s just not enough conflict to go around.
It could be that McBride and company have noticed this, too, and that it impacted their decision to end the series. McBride had previously projected a much longer run for the show, but announced this January that this season of Gemstones would be the last. McBride’s stated rationales make total sense — the show’s momentum has been broken twice, once by the pandemic and once by the 2023 strikes, meaning that these four seasons have taken eight years to produce. That’s a long enough time to be working on any series, particularly one that so often pushed beyond the typical production standards of a TV comedy. It’s disappointing, however, that its final season should be the one that pushes those boundaries the least. Jesse Gemstone, the bad boy of televangelism, deserves to burn out rather than fade away.
The first episode of season four of ‘The Righteous Gemstones’ premieres on Max on March 9th.
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