“I am healed,” BJ announces during the cold open to the penultimate episode of The Righteous Gemstones. After a season of using a wheelchair and with the help of Dr. Watson, BJ can play tag again, and the air of recovery permeates the Jason’s Steakhouse roundtable. The family has its mojo back and can enjoy Dr. Watson sucking darts and masturbating as a collective unit. By the end of the episode, all of their conflicts have been resolved. Simkins is done, allowing his homophobia to get the best of him at the Top Christ Following Man awards. Even Pontius is back at the post-church family brunch, laughing at the masturbating monkey with the rest of them. And Baby Billy got his $2 mil and an eight ball to finish Teenjus the right way.
Tonight’s episode, “On Your Belly You Will Go,” continues the show’s economy of storytelling and is exceptionally well structured as it builds to Cobb and Eli’s climax while highlighting what sets this season apart. This final season has differed from the rest in a few ways, but it distinguishes itself through scale. The stakes were smaller and more personal this year, and though God still has the Gemstones’ backs, he doesn’t send a horde of locusts to clean up their mess. Instead, the power to change comes from within. Take Jesse, who learns this while complaining to Amber that he’ll never get the glory for inspiring Kelvin last week. Interestingly, Judy told Amber the same thing. Cassidy Friedman, who has the unenviable task of being the normal one on the show, gives the character a stern Aimee-Leigh quality, finding ways to communicate with Jesse without offending him and telling him there’s a more mature dignity in being a hidden figure. It’s the hidden figures that keep the Gemstones tethered to Earth.
Speaking of hidden figures, Dr. Watson has served his purpose now that BJ is walking again. After Watson attempts to turn Judy into an X-ray skeleton by dropping a hairdryer in the tub, Judy pleads with BJ to get rid of him, appealing to Dr. Watson’s strengths and BJ’s empathy. Dr. Watson is happiest when he’s serving someone; right now, he’s serving himself pre-cooked fajita meat. So, despite Jesse’s stipulation that they must keep the monkey if he smokes on command because it is too cool, BJ loads his helper monkey into the back of a van and kisses him goodbye. As they say goodbye, Judy learns that she and Dr. Watson aren’t so different after all. Like Judy, Dr. Watson changed after his mother, a monkey with a big personality that everyone loved, died. He became, as Judy describes him, mean, manipulative, jealous, and unpredictable. How could anyone love him? Because he’s “loyal, beautiful, and believes in me,” BJ replies. Another Gemstone mystery solved: So that’s why BJ stays with Judy.
Not everyone is doing so well. Baby Billy got what he wanted from the Gemstones, but despite the cocaine and money, Teenjus still isn’t working. As the show’s star, he doesn’t look like a teenage Jesus, natch. As its director, he’s a cruel tyrant, yelling at child actors for ad-libbing on set. Meanwhile, he’s breaking for bumps from his cocaine ring every few minutes and skipping family picnics with Aunt Tiffany. With the brief Billy check-in, the episode begins ratcheting up the tension. We go from Billy’s coked-up direction to Corey’s birthday, where Cobb made a horrible introduction by knocking a beer out of a partygoer’s hand. He beelines it for Corey, delivering him a knife by master bladesmith Gil Hibben and a slap across the face. Happy birthday, Corey. Thanks for inviting your terrible father. As an encore, he’s going to harass your mother.
It can be hard to tell who the villains and heroes are on a show like Gemstones, where the characters are already so aggressive and cruel. Michael Rooker leaves no such ambiguity. In his scene with Mullally, his menace is palpable. Mullally plays Lori with the strength and exhaustion of a woman hardened by decades of dealing with this psychopath, projecting a fortified front against him. Still, after Cobb mentions that Eli could end up like “Big Dick” Mitch, Lori knows that she has to get in touch with her ex. Unfortunately, Eli is out to lunch this episode. Heartbroken over the breakup with Lori, Eli can’t even enjoy Dr. Watson’s entertaining masturbatory delights without thinking of the woman he lost. Eli’s catatonic state comes to a head when Billy enlists him as a backup dancer for the “Turn The Other Cheek” video. We’ll never know why Eli got this part, but at lunch, Billy tells Eli to hit the brakes with Lori. Don’t answer Lori’s phone calls and give her a chance to think Eli’s too busy for her. Make her want him again. Of course, by ignoring her calls, Eli never receives the warning about Cobb and ends up blow-darted and locked in a basement.
“On Your Belly” plays with our expectations in its last third. First, when Eli gets darted, Goodman briefly straightens his arm, creating the suspicion that maybe he had a heart attack. The Gemstones have dealt with a sick daddy, so it was a relief to see the dart in his neck. But when Cobb knocks out Billy, the show goes black, hinting that this may be a cliffhanger for next week. Nope. Gemstones heads into its Pulp Fiction-inspired finale, pitting Eli against Cobb in one last fight.
Eli and Billy awake in the gimp room of Cobb’s gator farm. There, “Big Dick” Mitch (“That’s kind of an odd thing to comment on”) stumbles out of the corner nude, presumably after months of Cobb’s sexual torture. As Cobb prepares to make Eli and Billy his play things, the cops respond to a call from Lori, which Cobb uses to his advantage. The gator farmer uses the cop’s misogyny to ingratiate himself with them, and he almost gets away with it, if not for Eli freeing himself and Mitch running naked through the gator farm parking lot. From here, Cobb starts hitting the Jim Beam again. He kills the cops and his poor employee Stacy before heading to the platform where his giant alligator Gus gets fed. Eli and Cobb start to fight, with Billy offering nothing but a very meme-able moment when he charges at Cobb, screaming, “Cocaine!” But before Cobb can get the fatal blow, another hidden figure saves the day. Corey, who takes the place of last season’s deus-ex locust, jumps from the bushes and drives the Gil Hibben knife into his father’s back. What a bladesmith, indeed. Corey pushes his awful dad into Gus’ water as Eli rings the dinner bell.
The episode ends with the family reuniting and Eli and Lori holding each other tightly. It’s a cathartic ending that closes the book on the whole season, more or less. After all, what more is there to look at? Sure, Baby Billy is still choosing work over family, and Elijah’s gold Bible is still missing, but many of the season-long conflicts have been resolved. The job of this penultimate episode is to clear the board. The family is back at square one for the series finale. The only question is, after all they have been through this season, will they emerge more righteous than ever or will they revert to the same old Gemstones?
Stray observations
- • Sunday School: Tonight’s title, “On Your Belly You Will Go,” comes from Genesis 3:14. “And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” This is some real Old Testament shit right here. God throws the serpent out of the Garden of Eden after it convinces Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. In a Gemstone context, this applies, mostly to Cobb—but “in a belly you will go” would be more accurate, as long as we’re editing the Bible. There’s a nice symmetry in the references to Jonah earlier in the season and Cobb’s death. Though a whale’s belly is preferable to a gator’s, if I’m choosing.
- • According to Judy, the ideal patient for Dr. Watson is “someone who fell off a building.”
- • There is something deeply funny about Baby Billy calling Sola “Bilbo Baggins.”
- • Judy’s response to Lori entering the meeting: “Take out a gun and kill her.”
- • “The song stuff is pretty much fucking working on me.”
- • “Is that Daddy or a Shakespeare witch?”
- • R.I.P. Stacy. The guy just wanted the Fourth of July 4th off, Cobb. Jesus.
- • As much as I enjoyed the “Turn The Other Cheek” number, it didn’t hit me like “Misbehavin'” or “Pay Day.” I feel like we’re missing a real Gemstones banger this season.
