【China】

In so many ways,China The Righteous Gemstonesfits neatly alongside Eastbound and Downand Vice Principalsin star and creator Danny McBride's growing catalogue of HBO comedies about a certain type of straight white male American manhood.

Its comic sensibility feels familiar, down to the cadence of the dialogue and the shamelessness of the nudity. The tone walks that same line between silly and dark. McBride once again plays a wannabe alpha male whose efforts to puff himself up only make him seem smaller. And the queasiness that comes along with all of it, the sense that these people represent Everything That's Wrong With America, as amusing as they might be, hasn't gone away.

The Righteous Gemstones makes no bones of the fact that these are awful people.

What has changed, though, is that unlike Eastboundand Vice Principals, the new series does not revolve around impotent men grasping for power. The Gemstones are already on top of the world when we meet them, with more money, fame, and influence than most of us could dream of. The question is not what a man with little might do for a little bit more, but what happens when people get it all, and find it's still not enough.

At the head of this troubled clan is Eli (John Goodman), who's built a televangelist empire nearly from scratch -- albeit with the help of his late wife Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles). He is blessed, or cursed, with three disappointing adult children, Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam Devine), all of whom are involved with the church in different capacities, and all of whom live in adjacent mansions on the sprawling family compound.

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Jesse gets the first meaty arc of the series, as he tries to evade a blackmailer in possession of an incriminating video. It's an easy way into the series' driving theme of hypocrisy, with a few early twists that drive up the stakes, though (at least in the six episodes I've seen) it's also nothing we haven't seen before, blustery macho bullshit and all.

Other subplots include Judy's growing frustration at the church's patriarchal traditions -- which is much funnier than it sounds, given that one of Judy's modes of rebellion is gratuitous raunchiness, and that she comes with a fiancé (Tim Baltz) so deathly dull he's downright riveting -- and Eli's battle against a small local congregation that stands as the David to his Goliath.

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But all of these are puzzle pieces in Gemstones' larger picture, which is an exploration of how and why this family lost its way. The series is patient with the groundwork here, taking its time in introducing major characters like Eli's oily brother-in-law Baby Billy (Walton Goggins in yet another role it feels like he was born to play), and only hinting at the roots of the family's dysfunction in early episodes. Of course, that only makes the big reveals hit harder when they finally come.

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Gemstonesmakes no bones of the fact that these are awful people, and it makes no apologies for their rancid behavior, including stealing from the church, gaslighting their loved ones, and beating the shit out of their enemies. Yet like its Sunday night lead-in Succession, it also insists on finding the humanity within these screwed-up one-percenters -- in Eli's continued grief over Aimee-Leigh's passing or Kelvin's oddball friendship with ex-Satanist Keefe (Tony Cavalero).

The crude sincerity of Eastboundand the destructive rage of Vice Principalsis replaced in Gemstoneswith something slipperier. Ultimately, Gemstonesis just a portrait of one troubled family, and it's a sharp and colorful one. But as it breaks down the greed and narcissism driving this family forward, as it exposes the hollowness of their beliefs and the flimsiness of their institutions, it's hard not to suspect McBride has once again hit upon something all too real, something as frighteningly current as it is funny.

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