As for Kelvin, he has recruited a beefcake army called Kelvin’s God Squad, who together resemble the workers inside the gay steel mill in the John Waters episode of The Simpsons.īut there’s plenty of new trouble on the horizon. After she shot him in the ass for his lying and cavorting and coke-snorting, Jesse has earned back the trust of his wife Amber, and the two are casting their eyes on a new entrepreneurial venture. Judy is out singing and dancing in front of a packed house at Gemstone Salvation Center, proving that she doesn’t need Baby Billy to realize her show-biz dreams. Once that Eli Gemstone reemerges, anything is possible.Īfter last season’s threats were suppressed with little consequence to the Gemstones - which enforces the show’s running theme about our tendency to endlessly forgive rich frauds - things are looking a little better for the family overall. He says he’s there for a friendly nostalgia trip with Eli - and Eli indulges the fiction by picking up a steak dinner at Sticky Stephen’s - but his purpose is to reacquaint himself with the Maniac Kid again. There’s never a moment in “I Speak in the Tongues of Men and Angels” when his Junior feels ill at ease around Eli, despite the obvious fact that he doesn’t carry the same money or influence.
Nearly 40 years later, Roberts still has an ease about him in the darkest roles, as if he’s comfortable in his villainy. No wonder Logan and Eli are both clinging to their posts with both hands.Īs if he weren’t acutely aware of this spiritual predicament already, Eli gets an unwanted visitor from his past in Junior, played by Eric Roberts, an actor whose sinister oiliness dates back at least to Bob Fosse’s 1983 film Star 80, in which he played the husband and murderer of Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten. And much like Logan Roy in Succession - which seems more and more like a sister show to this one - Eli’s foul, greedy, dim-witted children are a reflection of his moral shortcomings and a sad reminder of the future that awaits his empire.
These contradictions cannot be reconciled, of course, and now they’re been amplified into this grotesque evangelical cash machine, which can buy him the image of righteousness (and political favors) without ever actually redeeming him.
Now presiding over the Gemstone empire, which includes a brand-new premium streaming service, Eli still carries the contradictions of his youth, when he was both showman and child of God, the Maniac Kid and the progeny of a humble Christian family. The kid is Eli Gemstone, and he’s got the devil in him. He then agrees to step in as a mighty henchman for his shady boss, snapping the thumbs of a deadbeat who won’t pay up.
Good girls soundtrack s2e1 full#
The second season of The Righteous Gemstones opens with a seeming piece of misdirection, flashing back to Memphis in 1968, when a fresh-faced wrestler named the Maniac Kid, in Lone Ranger get-up, whips an Indian in full headdress over the top ropes. Eli is the most righteous of the Gemstones, almost by default - not merely because his sins are more discreet than those of other family members, but because he’s genuinely seeking salvation.
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