The Righteous Gemstones Halo Report is a weekly recap feature that assigns between zero and five halos to people, things, events, and general topics from each episode. There is very little to this beyond an excuse to highlight cool stuff from a good show and make jokes. And do crappy drawings of halos in MS Paint. We’re having fun.
ZERO HALOS
Getting called out on Christmas morning for abandoning your family at a pet store in the mall
Merry Christmas to everyone, but especially to me/us, as we were all treated to another flashback episode this week. The last time Gemstones took us back in time, we were introduced to “Misbehavin.’” This time, while we got some songs and some cufflinks, things were slightly less festive. We’ll get to the bodies and squabbles momentarily but first…
Aimee Leigh was not wrong to call out Billy for jetting on his family. She was right. I still hope a 40-year-old Harmon shows up later this season, just as evil as all hell, wearing black leather head-to-toe and eating an apple with a knife he carries on his belt. Big tattoo on his neck. His whole name shaved into the side of his head. I’ve been thinking about Harmon a lot.
Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah. Aimee Leigh, call someone into the next room before you air out the family business. The kids are there. They know Billy is a scumbag. Everyone does. But still.
Getting murdered and buried the cement of what will eventually become a religious-themed amusement park
We throw around the phrase “where the bodies are buried” pretty liberally considering what it’s actually saying. We use it as a shorthand for any dark secret or shady steps taken on the road to success. The Gemstones mean it literally. There is straight-up a money laundering Memphis wrestling promoter buried in the cement under the roller coaster at their Jesus theme park. That is… something. It’s definitely something! Merry Christmas.
It also adds a fascinating new layer to the “Eli riding the roller coaster by himself in a moment of personal crisis with just no joy or emotion at all on his entire face” thing from last week. He built a thrill ride on the bones of his previous life. Again, literally. There are layers at play here.
Stephen Root not being on this show yet
How has Stephen Root not been on this show yet? This might be the most “guest-starring Stephen Root”-ass show I’ve ever seen, at least since Justified, which he guest-starred on as a pistol-packing Kentucky judge. Something has to be done here. Cast him as a rival pastor. Cast him as a corrupt politician. Cast him as a rival pastor who became a corrupt politician.
I don’t care. Just do it. Fix this. Call him today.
ONE HALO
Eli Gemstone
Tough sledding here for Eli. His ambition is on full display, in all its ugly iterations. He wants to grow, now and a lot, and is considering corner-cutting to do it, which is how he finds himself once again roped in with Memphis hucksters. He’s got no real handle on his kids. His brother-in-law is already starting to suck money and energy out of the family like a leach. He’s firing accountants for kind of telling the truth and covering up murders and really just making a slew of shaky decisions all in a row.
It all kind of adds up, though. You can see all of this on his face in the present, all the sacrifices he made and all the work he put into building an empire his spoiled kids are now trying to push him out of. Which, again, brings us to the sad roller coaster rides. It’s not ideal.
Glendon Marsh
Is he as sleazy as can be? Sure.
Did he end up dead and buried in cement? Of course.
Did I kind of fall in love with him as soon as he dropped a modified “we’re not so different” on Eli? Folks, you know I did.
TWO HALOS
Old school arcade games
Here’s the thing about old-school arcade games: they stunk. Big and clunky and stupid and something people remember fondly because they had fun slipping a $10 bill into a machine and getting a big pile of quarters and running amok on Mortal Kombat or Cruisin’ USA while their moms looked at blouses and bulky blazers in JC Penney, but like, no.
This was the way you knew they were actually junk: If you had a rich friend who had one, like in a garage or basement or rec room, you’d be blown away by it for like 30 minutes but then the charm would wear off and it would become just like another place people hung wet clothes to dry. The past wasn’t always that cool, or at least not as cool as you remember. We didn’t even have, like, DVR back then. If you missed an episode of a show and weren’t the kind of rocket scientist who could program a VCR, you just never got to see it. It was weird. And bad. Come on.
Granddaddy Roy
Man just wants to stumble around in his underpants with a shotgun in his hands, blasting holes into shady characters who are harassing his son. Leave him alone. He’s earned that much.
THREE HALOS
Baby Billy
See, the temptation here is to deduct multiple halos from his score for offenses like “abandoning his family” and “mooching off anyone he can” and “having a big empty hole inside his body that he fills with various resentments and grievances” and “giving everyone cufflinks for Christmas and then pouting until he realized they got him a boombox,” but… I mean…
The Marlboro sweatshirt. Have you ever seen such a perfect little touch? Like, as soon as I saw him in it I was like “yes, of course, this feels so right that I’m angry I didn’t realize it before.” I’m very proud of everyone involved.
Aimee Leigh
I don’t know why I’m not giving Aimee Leigh more halos here. I should, by any reasonable standard. She’s a good woman who tries her best given her ambitious husband and scumbag brother and snotty children. She has tremendous glasses. I feel like I might just be punishing her because she and Billy didn’t perform a holiday-themed version of “Misbehavin’” about, like, Jesus being born in the manger. It’s not fair. I know that. But here we are anyway.
FOUR HALOS
Twirling a gun menacingly while thinking about your enemies
This show is so blessed to have Eric Roberts on it. Look at him up there. Have you ever in your entire life seen someone look so convincing as a vengeance-seeking slimeball? It’s almost enough to make me forget about the thing where Stephen Root hasn’t been on the show yet.
Almost.
Having a massive mural of lions above your bed
Give me an entire episode about the commissioning of this mural and the painting of it and the reactions to it by various friends and families as they step back and look at the entire scene and say something like “That’s… cool.”
It fascinates me. I must know everything about it. I also now want a similar mural above my bed, but instead of this scene, with the lions and such, I want a heavenly recreation of Nick Foles catching a touchdown pass in the Super Bowl. Go Birds.
The casting department on this show, generally
God, Young Judy and Young Jesse are so perfect. They’re so perfect that I almost forgot that these are entirely different people playing the characters, like for a second my brain was just willing to accept that this was the young version of the same people, like they had a real time machine. Good job, everyone.
FIVE HALOS
Anton Chekhov, 19th-century Russian playwright
Anton Chekhov was a legendary writer who would have been influential and important even if he hadn’t been credited with one of the most famous storytelling rules in history, but he did do that, so let’s just go ahead and quote the theory of Chekhov’s Gun once again:
“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
Granddaddy Roy showed up in Act I brandishing a weapon and by the end of the episode he had used that weapon to blow a hole straight through the torso of a man who had his sights set on ruining everything we already know ends up getting built. This is all very straightforward. Chalk up another victory for Chekhov.
Martin
Martin was already rocketing up the list of Brian’s Favorite Characters on Television and then he went and showed up 30 years in the past with a luxurious mustache and a willingness to help dispose of a body for a man he just met a few weeks earlier. Under a roller coaster. On Christmas.
Martin is an extremely solid dude. The most solid dude on the entire show, easily. I now want nothing but the best for him forever. And I want a Martin in my own life. I feel like I’d be much more productive and happy. And I would have help disposing of bodies. If it ever comes to that. I’m not planning on it or anything. But… you never know, you know?
Tater tots
Wildly underrated side dish. Delicious. Should be offered on more restaurants menus, either in addition to or in place of french fries. No one has ever seen a bowl of piping hot tater tots and been like “nah.” You’re definitely snagging one if you see that. Especially while they’re hot and crispy. I feel like I should get credit for waiting this long into the recap to say all this. If I had been like 15 percent hungrier, this whole sucker would’ve been like 1500 words about tater tots and then a sentence at the end about the murder.
Tater tots are good.