User Reviews

Heartwarming, enriching, and impactful! Danny MCBride and Adam Devine are so excellent, I'll miss this show very much and the emotions are perfectly raw while also being peculiar. One of the best shows of the year in my opinion!!

I approached "The Righteous Gemstones" with a bit of trepidation, the reviews in the right places were good, but I'd given up on both "Eastbound And Down" and "Vice Principals" after a few episodes. Overall though, I enjoyed this one and stuck with it.

Wealthy Televangelist Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) runs his successful church with his family, eldest son Jesse (Danny McBride), daughter Judy (Edi Patterson) and youngest son Kelvin (Adam Devine). Scandal beckons though, as Jesse is being blackmailed with a video of a coke fuelled orgy that he and his friends took part in. Desperate to keep it from his wife and father, Jesse engages his siblings in a plan, a plan that does not involve paying the blackmailers off.

Haven't looked at any of the other reviews yet, but I can imagine that some of them take issue with Christians being the brunt of another joke, from the liberal Hollywood elite. If you actually watch the show though, I thought that it was reasonably well balanced in that regard. The target isn't Christians, nor even the poor saps that see fit to hand over their last few dollars to this mass charade. The target is the hypocritical central family who amass and abuse massive wealth whilst preaching Christian values.

Without ever really becoming a comedy-drama, there is enough plot, both in the individual episodes and the overall season to hang a story around. Occasionally, it's even a little moving, particularly with John Goodman dealing with the death of his wife and the flashback episode to 1989. It's funny though, that's the key thing. Both with the moments of wit, and with shock, slapstick or gross-out humour. Edi Patterson was really the star of the show for me, Judy is a more extreme caricature than the rest of her family, but Patterson hits all the right notes.

Looking forward to the second season.

The righteous gemstones has been consistently amazing and hilarious throughout the whole season, exceeding all of my expectations. This episode a masterpiece of what television should be. HBO is hitting it out of the park, I honestly thing that this show could be seen as near perfect. John Goodman is the shining star of this episode acting wise, but I think all of the characters are wonderfully written. With season 2 already announced, I think this show could go down as one of the best comedies of all time.

Every episode is too long and seems to have too many weird unnecessary scenes. I just didn't find this show that funny. And there is barely a storyline. The story of the blackmail could have been told in 2 episodes and I really don't care for the flashbacks. Sorry but won't be watching Season 2. HBO has had a lot of really poor shows on lately. They need to get great shows on or I'll be canceling. Ugh!