The Righteous Gemstones
Hey everyone, and welcome today. We will be talking about the 4th and final season of The Righteous Gemstones. Fun Fact: Jennifer Nettles, who plays Aimee-Leigh Gemstone, is the lead vocalist of the country duo Sugarland. This season came out in 2025 and stars Danny McBride, who also created the show, Edi Patterson, Adam Devine, and John Goodman. So without further ado, let's get right into it.
Season 4 of The Righteous Gemstones sees the Gemstones trying to figure out what direction the church is going in and how to pull in more members. The patriarch of the family, Eli, starts dating Laurie, who was his late wife's best friend, which causes some drama amongst Laurie and his kids. The gemstones must overcome all this hate and division to ensure the church can thrive and make sure their dad can have a love life, even if it's not with their mom.
The Righteous Gemstones is a comedy-drama show that is a satire of televangelists. It has similar vibes to Veep, In the Eyes of Tammy Faye, or Vice Principals.
Righteous Gemstones has been on for a while and has kept up the ability to make me laugh. I feel like some people may believe it's making fun of Christianity, but it's actually more of a satire of televangelism and megachurches and how predatory they have become. Teaching the bible is part of what they want to do, but they don't practice what they preach, and look to keep themselves in a position where they have a lot of power and make a lot of money. In past seasons, I may have thought Wow, that seems like a reach and then I learned about some events that are very similar to what they're discussing, and I'm like Well, maybe not that far of a reach. Righteous Gemstones shows how these people in religious leadership positions misuse their power and money.
The season starts off with an origin story of the Gemstones and how the family got into the religious space. Bradley Cooper makes a cameo as their ancestor, Elijah, who is a criminal who becomes a preacher. He sees the money in it as well as the ability to remain alive during the civil war because no one wants to kill a man of the cloth. While he is lying and scamming his way through this minister role, he is really good at preaching and making himself seem believable.
Jesse is the eldest boy who feels like he has something to prove and is trying to have his oldest son, Gideon, be a minister, while his middle son, Pontious, doesn't want to be involved at all. He tries to implement prayer pods, which fail, and he is beefing with Vance Simpkins, a rival minister who tries to build churches by the Gemstones and steal their members. Jesse sucks in general, but his wife, Amber, always seems to come up with the best ideas and knows how to tell them to him so that he will actually do what she says. Amber usually gets drowned out by the family, but she knows how to influence Jesse. After Vance ridicules his brother for being gay during the top Christian follower panel, she encourages him to go talk to his brother, even though they are beefing, which does end up helping. He ends up helping Kelvin win and also showing his son that sometimes you have to be the bigger person in life, or you'll just be holding onto this anger, which is thanks to Amber, since she pushed him to show up for his family.
Jesses' son Gideon is struggling as a minister, and I love his storyline of finding where he fits best. He was trying so hard to mimic his grandfather and sucks at the traditional preaching. He shows some kids that he's not uptight and does some cool skateboarding tricks, which is his way to connect with his generation and invite them into the church. I feel like his storyline shows that you can’t mimic someone else’s path and you have to create your own. It also highlights that sometimes you can't expect people to meet you where you're at; you have to also find a way to appeal to them, a little give and take.
Judy is the middle child, and she has this skewed idea of how people act and tries to intimidate them, which usually comes off hilariously. This season, her husband, BJ, gets into pole dancing and hurts himself, and needs a wheelchair. Judy acts so inconvenienced by that, which is hilarious to see, because she wants him to get better, but she doesn’t want to help. They get a monkey to help as suggested by Amber, but when BJ becomes attached to the monkey, she fears he is trying to replace her, and she beefs with it. The way her lines are delivered in this slow southern drawl, but also the crassness of her lines, always has me laughing. I feel like she is the most inappropriate of the 3 siblings, but also she might be the funniest.
Kelvin’s storyline mainly deals with him finally coming out as gay and having a relationship with Keef. His character mimics those young “hip” pastors who target lgbt and young people to try and get them to the church. He gets nominated for top Christian follower and eventually wins, but has a slump when he gets ridiculed for being gay. He eventually comes out of it with the help of his siblings and comes out on top. His storyline highlighted the religious bigotry in the religious space and how, if they were to be more accepting, they could open their space to more people. He overcomes and gets married in the finale and gets the happy ending he wanted.
The Top Christ Follower is so funny to me because why should it be a competition? Like, yes, highlight people who are making a difference in the religious space, but why do you have to make it a competition to see whose better when, honestly, all the ones who are competing really only care about is having a title and more money.
Eli is living his best retired life until his kids make him come back for a tribute to their mom, which he can't refuse. I love how Eli always looks so disappointed in his kids and generally just wants to be left alone. When he meets Ms. Laurie, their relationship blooms quickly, and he starts dating her, and in a crazy scene, his kids walk in on them 69’ing. I was shocked they got John Goodman to do that, and was dying laughing at his kid's reaction. I feel bad for him sometimes because he is trying to live life, and every time he does something, the kids bring up their mom to make him feel guilty. It has to suck to watch the love of your life slip away, but then to have your kids constantly using her death as a guilt trip. Even with this, he just wants them to be happy, and in the end, they are, which seems to give him a sense of satisfaction.
This season introduces Laurie, who was Aimee-leigh’s best friend, and starts dating Eli. She's really nice, but the kids hate her because they don't want their daddy dating anyone but their mama. The kids plant seeds of doubt about Ms. Laurie, and when her ex-husband, Cobb, further says she's poor, Eli brings it up, which causes them to break up. Later, we find out that Cobb has been sabotaging her love life for years cause he wants her back. There were some mentions of a missing boyfriend early on and how bad Cobb was, but to my surprise, he was the one capturing her boyfriends and killing some, and torturing others. An even bigger surprise is that after Corey kills Cobb, he attempts to kill the Gemstones, which caught me off guard. Corey explained that his dad made him start helping him, and then he basically told him he was an accomplice, and Corey didn't see a way out. The Gemstones get Jesse's gun and are able to kill him by shooting him in the neck. The sad part is that Laurie loved her son, and it was heartbreaking to see her mourning him even though he committed an awful crime. In the end, she does reconcile with Eli and decides to go with him on the boat.
Even though the show is filled with crazy stuff, the ending was a nice way to send off the show. Aimee-Leigh is reading a letter about saying goodbye when she was sick. She mentions that sometimes it's best to let life play out and not try to wrap up things nice and neat. She mentions the importance of friends and family when life changes. She says that it's easier to hold onto darkness than to grab the light, and she says Let go and grab the light. She says that she's always there if they need her. We see clips of the characters while she speaks, and it brought tears to my eyes. Aimee-Leigh's voice is just so comforting, and I'm glad they could include this in the finale.
My favorite part of this season was Uncle Baby Billy. He may not have the biggest role, but he shines in every scene that he is in. He has some of the greatest comebacks and will say the most outrageous stuff. He creates projects all the time because he wants some type of legacy, and this season it's a show about teen Jesus, which started rough because he calls it Teenjus, and everyone is like Why did you keep teen and shorten Jesus. Then he decides he wants to play him, and some man is like, aren't you like 50 playing a teenager, and he responds that it's acting, and that guy is playing the devil, but he's not really the devil because he's acting. He has a nanny, Sola, and he stays on her neck because he expects her to nanny his kids. One of my favorites is when Sola asks You need? And he said yes, I need bitch, I need you to do your job. He criticizes her outfits, calls her Bruce lee, and even calls her Bilbo Baggins. He's just so funny and should've gotten more recognition.
The Righteous Gemstones is a funny show with a great cast. While it is a comedy, it also shines a light on how outrageous televangelism and megachurches are and makes you question if these people actually want to spread the word of god or just make more money for themselves.
