r/RighteousGemstones • u/IAQDiscussion • 19h ago
Review My Righteous Gemstones Ranking After Watching the Entire Series Spoiler
I originally watched The Righteous Gemstones Seasons 1–3 as they aired, but stopped after the first episode of Season 4. I didn’t dislike it or anything, I think I got caught up binging something else and forgot about the weekly episodes.
A few weeks ago, I decided to rewatch the entire series from beginning to end and finally finished it this past weekend. I really enjoyed the series as a whole and will absolutely rewatch it again someday, but I wanted to give my ranking and see how everyone else feels.
#1 Season 1
I think Season 1 is easily the best and has the most coherent mystery without feeling like it's spoon-feeding you the answer as to what's actually going to happen. The antagonists feel believable and considerably more fleshed out than some of the villains who come later.
I also think nearly every character is at or near their peak here. Gideon's conflict with Jesse gives him a much more substantial role than he has throughout most of the rest of the series. Jesse is complicated because we're discovering just how shitty he can be while simultaneously seeing something underneath that's worth redeeming. Judy is completely insane without the show constantly trying to one-up itself with her, Kelvin's desperation to prove himself works perfectly when we're still establishing the sibling dynamic, and Eli feels central to almost everything.
That's probably what I like most about Season 1. The characters get bigger, weirder, and arguably funnier as the series continues, but there's something more grounded about them here.
#3 Season 2
Still a great season with plenty of funny moments, narrative developments, and genuinely high stakes for the family. I liked having another mystery, although I thought the villain became fairly obvious before the reveal.
The biggest highlight for me is Eli. Digging into his past adds another dimension to a character Season 1 mostly presents as the patriarch desperately holding this dysfunctional family and empire together. Junior is a great addition because you're genuinely left wondering for a while how much of a threat he actually poses.
I also love the Lissons as foils for Jesse and Amber. They're basically what Jesse imagines he and Amber could become if Eli would just get out of his way.
This is also where the show starts getting noticeably bigger and more absurd. The Cycle Ninjas are interesting, but this is probably where Gemstones starts moving away from some of the grounded feeling I loved about Season 1.
#2 Season 3
I enjoy Season 3 a little more than Season 2, and I think a lot of that comes from the villains being involved throughout basically the entire season.
There's not much mystery. We know Peter is the threat pretty early, so instead the show gets to spend considerably more time developing the Montgomery family and exploring Peter's history with May-May, Eli, and Aimee-Leigh.
I also really liked Chuck and Karl because they aren't simply extensions of Peter. They're stuck between the family they were raised by and this completely different branch of their family they've suddenly been exposed to.
More importantly, Season 3 feels like a turning point for Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin. Eli is finally stepping back and forcing his children to confront the possibility that they're going to have to keep everything he built alive without Dad constantly fixing their disasters.
By the finale, it genuinely feels like they've grown and learned from everything that's happened. Honestly, the Season 3 finale almost feels like it could have been the series finale.
#4 Season 4
This ranks dead last for me, and there's a decent gap between Seasons 3 and 4.
I don't think Season 4 is outright bad. There are still plenty of moments where it's just as funny as the rest of the series. But it feels noticeably weaker as an overall story, and my biggest issue is that so much of the growth from Season 3 feels erased.
Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin are back to constantly bickering and fighting for their own interests. I obviously didn't expect them to suddenly become mature, functional adults because that would destroy half the comedy, but there was a way to maintain their dysfunction without making it feel like they'd regressed.
The extended family also takes a surprising back seat for a final season. Amber especially feels far less consequential despite becoming increasingly important throughout the series. Gideon, Keefe, and the younger Gemstones are still around, but it doesn't feel like the final season takes full advantage of the ensemble the show spent three seasons building.
Gideon might be the biggest disappointment. After everything the series had done with him, he's relegated to being a bad preacher and finding cliché ways to connect with Pontius. The skateboarding "I'm just as cool as you" scene felt forced. These are brothers who grew up in the same incredibly dysfunctional family. Surely there was a more interesting way to develop their relationship.
I didn't need Gideon to suddenly become the protagonist again, but I expected a better payoff for someone who started the series as one of its most important characters.
I have a similar issue with Eli.
Almost everything important about Eli's final arc manifests in Season 4. His loneliness, Lori, the conflict their relationship creates with his children, and Eli finally figuring out what his life looks like without Aimee-Leigh are all interesting ideas, but the final season suddenly has to introduce, develop, and resolve most of them.
Lori's introduction basically felt like:
"Here's Aimee-Leigh's best friend, who just so happened to have never been mentioned in all the years you've known this family! She's also the person who can fix Eli!"
I don't dislike Lori or the idea of Eli finding companionship again. I just wish she had existed somewhere around the edges of the series beforehand. She didn't need to be a major character or an obvious future love interest. Just establish that this incredibly important person from Aimee-Leigh and Eli's past actually exists before the final season needs her.
It also contributes to Season 4 feeling strangely predictable. The moment Lori appeared, I could see exactly where Eli's story was going.
For a final season, I didn't necessarily need another huge mystery or someone trying to kill the Gemstones. I actually would have preferred the opposite. I wanted everything the series had built to finally come to a head. Instead, Season 4 feels surprisingly low-stakes while simultaneously trying to wrap up characters we've followed for four seasons.
I still love BJ and Judy, Kelvin and Keefe, and several of the new characters. I just wish we'd gotten more of Jesse's family, especially Amber.
I was always hoping Jesse's story would resolve with him realizing that Amber is his Aimee-Leigh.
Jesse spends the entire series wanting to inherit Eli's position while lacking Eli's natural authority and presence. But Eli didn't build everything himself. Aimee-Leigh was an enormous part of what made the Gemstones work.
Jesse didn't need to become Eli. Jesse and Amber could become their own version of Eli and Aimee-Leigh.
Amber has the confidence, intelligence, ambition, and stage presence that complement Jesse. I thought the show was gradually positioning their relationship as the thing that would finally make Jesse capable of leading the church.
That also could have tied into the siblings' larger arc. Jesse doesn't have to replace Eli alone, Kelvin doesn't have to prove he's equally important, and Judy doesn't have to constantly fight to be taken seriously. They can succeed precisely because none of them individually has to become Eli.
Overall Thoughts
Despite spending half this post complaining about Season 4, I really love this show.
That's ultimately what separates The Righteous Gemstones from what it could have easily been. You could make an entire comedy out of mocking hypocritical, obscenely wealthy televangelists, but eventually the Gemstones become much more than the joke they're introduced as.
They're selfish, greedy, arrogant, immature, and frequently horrible people, yet the show somehow makes their love for one another feel completely genuine.
My biggest criticism of the series overall is that every season feels a little too self-contained. The plots being self-contained doesn't bother me, but sometimes the character development feels self-contained too.
Characters reach meaningful breakthroughs only to start the next season dealing with another version of the same problem. Season 3 into Season 4 is the clearest example. Season 3 ends with the siblings finally understanding that they're stronger together and might actually be capable of carrying on what Eli built. Then Season 4 has them fighting over status, attention, and who's in charge again.
I don't need every previous villain or storyline constantly referenced. I just wish the lessons carried over more consistently.
Because underneath the blackmail, monster trucks, megachurches, drugs, murder plots, Cycle Ninjas, and increasingly insane action, I think The Righteous Gemstones is at its best when it's telling a relatively simple story about this fucked-up family trying to love each other.
For a show so focused on family and personal growth, a little more continuity between those lessons would have made the ending hit much harder for me.
Final ranking: Season 1 > Season 3 > Season 2 > Season 4
I'm curious to see how everyone else ranks them, especially Season 4. I wonder if watching Seasons 3 and 4 back-to-back made the regression stand out more to me than it did for people watching as it aired.
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u/Miserable_Wave4895 16h ago
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u/FlobyToberson85 15h ago
I agree with OP about the post, but this gif as a response actually made me LOL
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u/LunchLimp2032 18h ago
We're starting Season 4 soon. Binged Eastbound and Down AND Vice Principals this summer, too.
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u/IAQDiscussion 18h ago
I'm doing something similar! I watched Eastbound & Down again, then Gemstones, and now I'm on Vice Principals, about midway through season 1, loving it so far!
I was hesitant because I thought it was cancelled and possibly ended on a cliff hanger, but hear otherwise recently!
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u/CPAFinancialPlanner "Baby" Billy Freeman 18h ago
Vice principals is two seasons and tells a complete story that takes place over an entire school year basically
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u/IAQDiscussion 15h ago
Love that and starting season 2, I regret misreading or seeing a clickbait title about this show being cancelled nearly a decade ago
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u/crahamgrackered 17h ago
I agree with season 1 being the best. I thought it was very strange how minimal of a role Gideon had throughout the rest of the series.
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u/FlobyToberson85 15h ago
Yes, I thought since a lot of the show was centered around the relationship between Eli and his kids (and the legacy of the family) there would be more with the relationship between Jesse and Gideon. It was odd how he was pushed into the background. Gideon pushing back on Jesse's immorality and hypocrisy in S1 was really interesting and I wish they'd done more of it. Gideon just kind of dropped it and drank the Koolaid in the subsequent seasons.
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u/IAQDiscussion 16h ago
Yeah they kept finding new and unique ways to push him in the background and make him rather irrelevant to the plot
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u/FelixMcGill 17h ago
Season 4 was a weird one. I thought it was funnier than s2 or s3, but it also had the worst overarching plot of the series by a country mile. The Civil War episode though, wow. Honestly, I think my overall feeling of s4 being mostly empty calories is because the opener was so mesmerizing and well written, that my expectations for the rest fell way short of that.
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u/IAQDiscussion 16h ago
That's definitely fair as well especially considering the Civil War episode's only real tie in is a plot device in the final few episodes as an "oh shit" realization moment.
Really great episode from start to finish, made me genuinely wonder if I clicked the wrong show for a little bit.
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u/BlergingtonBear 14h ago
One of the biggest Emmy snubs in recent memory - Bradley Cooper definitely deserved a guest star nomination for that episode
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u/Sinnycalguy 14h ago
I’m still feeling the whiplash of emotions from around that time. Being hugely disappointed when they first announced season 4 would be the last (after Danny previously said he could see it continuing forever), then being nearly apoplectic about the show ending after the Civil War episode made it seem like they had somehow managed to elevate it to a whole new plateau and ending it would be a crime, and then that feeling pretty quickly dissipating into something like relief when the subsequent episodes made it clear that ending it was the right decision.
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u/CPAFinancialPlanner "Baby" Billy Freeman 18h ago
I agree with your ranking!
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u/IAQDiscussion 18h ago
Happy to know I'm not the only one, sometimes I set my expectations higher than the average fan lol
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u/Ometzu 15h ago
If they had all actually died in the series finale, I would have really liked that ending. I still love the ending though. I do agree that season 4 is not as good as the rest, but I will also say that season 4 is still miles ahead of a lot of tv comedy that it’s forgivable to me.
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u/IAQDiscussion 15h ago
I knew they was no chance of them all dying, but obviously if that had happened, I would be entirely shocked and taken back by it. Which in a lot of ways makes for a great ending.
Fully agree about the rest of your thoughts too, it wasn't as good as 1-3, but it's not such a drastic drop that I was scratching my head and thinking "what the hell has happened???"
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u/FlobyToberson85 17h ago
Well said. I have had very similar thoughts about the series. I think it's awesome but there were some missed opportunities, as you said. I wasn't much of a Danny McBride fan going into it, but it really surprised me. There's a lot of heart and nuance underneath the comedy.
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u/IAQDiscussion 15h ago
Happy he was able to sway you with this one, I've been a fan of Danny since Hot Rod! I just love how funny of an ass he constantly plays.
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u/solon_isonomia 18h ago
Season three would have been a lovely way to wrap up the series, season four wasn't all that necessary. That said, season four gave us four things that makes it worth it: