‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Season 3, Episode 5 Review
by Frank Martin
After three seasons, it’s become a bit of a tradition for The Righteous Gemstones to do an interlude episode that takes place entirely in the past. These episodes provide some much-needed context for what’s happening in the current storylines and gives the audience a more rounded sense of the various character arcs as they go into the second half of the season. After the first two seasons dealt with the 1980s and the 90s, it only made sense that the third interlude episode takes place in 2000, the same year that Eli’s (John Goodman) sister attacked Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles). And out of all three of the interlude episodes, this one had the most rounded performances from its young actors.
The plot mainly dealt with Eli’s family and the hardships they struggled because of Eli’s Y2K business. The Gemstone Church is under threat from a scandal as they scammed many of their congregants into buying Y2K survival buckets for a disaster that never happened. Eli’s sister refuses to take help from him and condemns the way he practices Christianity. Because of the stress this puts on her husband (Steve Zahn) following his failed business venture, he snaps and tries to rob a bank, which results in him getting shot and sent to prison. The episode also deals with Judy’s (Edi Patterson) anger and how her relationship with Jesse is more complicated than it seems.
There was a lot going on in this episode between the kids and the adults. But it did an excellent job juggling all these different plot threads at once while giving context and being entertaining at the same time. But besides fleshing out the character arcs for Eli’s side of the family, the young actors who depicted Judy and Jesse did an unbelievable job mimicking their adult counterparts. Seeing them interact as youngsters really brings the audience into this family and see how it evolved over time. It was extremely well done and these young actors deserve credit for carrying the episode on their shoulders.
The Righteous Gemstones air Sundays on HBO.
