Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
Jesus had some strong words for the religious leaders of His day. “Brood of vipers,” He called them. “Whitewashed tombs.” “Blind guides.” And, especially, “hypocrites.” Jesus used that particular moniker again and again.
Methinks that the Son of God might have an issue or two with the Gemstones as well.
The Gemstones are in the business of salvation. And boy, has business been good.
For decades, Eli and his family have been saving souls and spending money, though not necessarily in that order. Eli started the Gemstone family ministry with his wife, Aimee Leigh, back in the 1980s, when televangelists ruled the airwaves. As the Jimmy Swaggarts and the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakers of the world fell into sin and cultural oblivion, the Gemstones stood strong (or, at least, their popularity did). Together, they parlayed their flock’s devotion and generosity into a worldwide empire, including a massive worship center that’d rival many an NBA arena.
Aimee Leigh departed this mortal coil for her great reward some time ago, but Eli still has company on the Gemstone spiritual stage. Jesse, his oldest, might be the heir apparent—if his horrific secrets don’t bust out like Amasa’s intestines. Jesse’s kid brother, Kelvin, is a faith focal point, too, even if he’s still feeling his way in the ministry. Oh, we shouldn’t forget Judy, either—even if Eli and his boys sometimes do. “Flyin’ around on private planes, being leaders, that’s men’s business,” Jesse tells her.
They all live in their own mansions on the Gemstone family compound. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” a sign reads outside. (“No trespassing,” it adds.) Judy secretly lives with her insecure fiancée, B.J. Meanwhile, Kelvin cavorts (and experiences some homoerotic tension) with a reformed Satan worshipper named Keefe. Jesse goes home to his picture-perfect wife and their picture-perfect kids. Does it matter that his eldest, Gideon, ran away and is no longer in the picture at all? Or that their middle boy, Pontius, only reads the Bible to highlight all the nasty words?
Yep, the Gemstones are doing kingdom work, really: their kingdom.
The Righteous Gemstones is the work of comic and star Danny McBride who, with frequent collaborator Jody Hill, is known for his pitch-black satirical comedies. His shows have long polarized both critics and viewers: People either seem to love his wicked wit or are appalled by his vile characters and uber-bleak storylines.
This HBO show, considered a relatively nuanced McBride product, engenders a third sort of reaction from me.
Squint hard enough, and The Righteous Gemstones serves as biting satire—a cautionary warning about how genuine faith can be twisted into all kinds of awful. McBride, who was apparently raised Baptist (and whose mom, like the show’s Aimee Leigh, performed puppet shows in church), knows his way around a certain brand of Southern evangelicalism: The language feels right, even if the spirit is right out the window.
That makes this pointed satire all the more effectively pointy, and that’s not entirely a bad thing. Every Christian reading this review can point to plenty of Christian leaders who departed from the straight and narrow and pursued fortune in a Bunyan-esque Vanity Fair. And, at least early on, it seems as though the show’s satire mainly aims at this particular family’s excesses, rather than trying to tear down faith itself.
That said, McBride does occasionally skewer what we might broadly call evangelical Christianity: The Righteous Gemstones takes particular joy in suggesting how men and women are treated wildly differently in this culture, and in the pilot episode, J.B. is roundly humiliated for posting what’s characterized as a “pro-abortion” message on social media. (Remember, this is satire. In this ethos, the Gemstones’ scorn equals the show’s praise.)
And man-oh-man-oh-man-oh-man is this show foul. All the Gemstones’ many, many, many sins are exposed on screen, and we do mean exposed. (Viewers see both male and female nudity.) We see violence, murder and drug use, too. We hear incest jokes and streams of profanity. Temporal laws and eternal commandments are broken like uncooked spaghetti, and we’re witness to it all.
The Gemstone family is anything but righteous. And the ironically named Righteous Gemstones is anything but as well.
In the literal wake of a 24-hour baptism marathon in China (held at a water park, the wave machine was turned on by mistake), the Gemstones plan the next chapters in their respective lives. Daughter Judy is secretly living with her fiancee, and they’re considering moving off the family compound once they’re married. Father Eli mourns his dead wife and plots to build a new satellite congregation—gobbling up the city’s other evangelical churches if he can. But Jesse’s own plans (and family problems) take a detour when someone tries to blackmail him.
The blackmailers (one of whom dresses, fittingly, like the devil) hold a damning video of Jesse partying down at a ministry convention—using cocaine as he’s embraced by a bare-breasted prostitute and a bottomless man cavorts in the background. (The man’s privates get lots of screen time.) Jesse tries various underhanded means to raise the $1 million the blackmailers ask for before resorting to other means.
Given that this show’s about a family of televangelists, it’s impossible to detail every spiritual element here, but there are a lot of them, and they often highlight the divide between spiritual truth and the Gemstones’ hypocrisy. At other junctures, the show mocks conservative Christianity: Women are shown, for instance, to be laughably subservient to men, and some quips about someone being “pro-abortion” are made. Kelvin’s best friend is a former Satanist (his chest is adorned with an upside-down cross and the number “666”) who feels insecure about his past and seems to be trying to squelch his romantic feelings for Kelvin. Judy’s fiancée hides whenever someone comes to Judy’s door, knowing Eli’s feelings on “premarital cohabitation.” Crosses festoon a variety of surfaces, we hear lots of worship music, and we see a service in a massive megachurch. The Gemstones’ three private jets are named “Father,” “Son” and “The Holy Spirit.” Jesse criticizes Kelvin’s baptism technique. “You’re dippin’ ‘em back too far,” he says.
Two people get run over and presumably killed. (We see the incidents from some distance away, but each impact is horrifically documented.) Someone is shot in the stomach and bleeds profusely. (He also vomits when someone asks how he’s doing.) A man is beaten horribly: Under a mask, he seems to snap his dislocated jaw back in place. Multiple fathers slap their sons. (A daughter, desperate to be included, asks her dad to slap her, too.) People engage in a violent food fight that dislocates someone’s nose.
Characters drink wine and curse like crazy. We hear at least 30 f-words, another 25 s-words and a smattering of other profanities including “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “f-g” and “p-ss.” People use obscene hand gestures. We hear a joke about brother-and-sister incest, as well as a couple of quips about same-sex relations. Jesse’s son, Pontius, calls his father a homosexual slur when Jesse innocently kisses him goodnight. Jesse’s horrified. “I’ve got friends who are homosexuals,” he says. “I bet you do,” his son snaps back.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
