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Goodman, center, stars as the paterfamilias of a clan whose business is religionher s exist family. Their much younger
brother Kelvin (Adam DeVine) is the
obligatory youth minister, all spiky hair
and dated slang.
Though the threats to their empire
are many— including Aimee-Leigh’s
jealous brother Baby Billy, played by
Walton Goggins—it’s a blackmail video
of Jesse running wild in Atlanta that
plunges the pathetic siblings into crisis.
Sadly, the predictable action- comedy
beats that follow overpower Goodman’s
more restrained role. (A flashback epi-
sode is a welcome exception.)
McBride has a flair for comic set
pieces: the series opens with a very
funny scene at a mass baptism in what
turns out to be a Chinese wave pool—
complete with sirens, flashing lights and
a pop soundtrack—that would’ve made
a great sketch. And there’s plenty of
potential in a satire of the present- day
evangelical community, whose support
for politicians like Roy Moore and Don-
ald Trump has called its moral authority
into question. McBride, whose charac-
ters seem to have stepped straight out
of the Tammy Faye Bakker era, just isn’t
the right storyteller for the job. The PiTch sells iTselF: John GooD-
man plays the patriarch of a televangelist
dynasty. And when he gets the spotlight,
there are hints of the show The Righteous
Gemstones could’ve been. Goodman’s Eli
Gemstone, who presides over a mega-
church and a sprawling family compound,
is a true believer in Christ—and a major
beneficiary of the prosperity gospel. But
he hasn’t been himself since the death of
his wife Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles).
As the dissonance between Eli’s faith and
his greed set in, you can see Goodman’s
mask of backslapping virility slip.
But HBO’s Gemstones, premiering on
Aug. 18, takes only intermittent interest
in its characters’ internal lives. Created
by Danny McBride (Eastbound & Down),
a writer and actor known for juicing low-
hanging fruit, this comedy would rather
wring easy laughs out of the selfish,
hypocritical and often just stupid Gem-
stones. Eli’s offspring fit broad types: the
eldest, Jesse (McBride), has Tom Jones
hair, a wife (Cassidy Freeman) in the
Phyllis Schlafly mold, an estranged son
and a weakness for drunken debauch-
ery. Judy (Edi Patterson), the middle
child, is suffocating under the thumb ofREVIEW
Danny McBride drags HBO to church
By Judy BermanREVIEW
A place where
Duds can be
heroes
Lodge 49 didn’t get much
attention when it debuted
on AMC last summer. It was
hard to tell, at first, where this
shaggy dramedy about a SoCal
surfer, pool guy and golden
retriever of a man-child—
Wyatt Russell’s Sean “Dud”
Dudley—who stumbles upon a
struggling coed fraternal lodge
would lead. But the muted
response suited a show that,
much like its fictional Order
of the Lynx, turned out to be a
haven hiding in plain sight. In
time, the secretly ambitious
series unfolded into an
allegory for the eternal conflict
between Big Business and
nontransactional communities,
from families to civic groups.
Season 2, airing on
Mondays, is more of the same
ruminative, bittersweet, often
funny thing. As Dud recovers
from a shark bite and his sister
Liz (Sonya Cassidy) looks
for work after committing
white collar career suicide,
Dud’s fellow Lynxes Ernie (Brent
Jennings) and Connie (Linda
Emond) take separate journeys
to uncover the truth behind the
order’s lore. In their own ways,
each character is looking for
a reason to keep going. For all
its anticapitalist undertones,
Lodge 49 isn’t preaching
revolution. It’s simply asking
whether the 21st century has
anything to offer people more
motivated by friendship and
fulfillment than by money. —J.B.