On Sunday I finally saw the last chapter of one of the series that has been amusing me the most lately, The Righteous Gemstones; a very funny series that has some hints of criticism against the way religion acts in certain settings but does not focus entirely on religious issues or social criticism, after all, it is a pure comedy.

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The Religious Empire

Recently I was telling a friend that for Americans there are no half-measures on some subjects, or they are totally committed and devout or they just don't care at all; and that's part of this series plot, how a southern family was able to build a gigantic EMPIRE focusing only on taking advantage of religion. And not, here is no depravity, lust and such things, here the family only takes advantage of something they are really devoted to, Jesus and religion.

As I mentioned we have a family that is super involved in the subject of religion as a business, in fact they have franchised it, becoming the main preachers of all America and earning money per tons, so much so that they live like kings, with luxurious houses, vehicles, airplanes and everything that anyone could wish for. The curious and really funny thing is the dynamics of this family because the main nucleus is a father with his three sons (two men and one woman), where everyone participates in the activities of the church, the men serving as preachers and the woman helping in the administrative part.

Only seeing the interactions of the brothers and the way they preach and combine their life with the whole religious environment, unleashes a lot of super funny scenes, but the real madness begins when the oldest of the sons begin to be blackmailed by an unknown man who has a video of himself and his friends doing all kinds of deprivations (very soft). From there begins an endless search to recover the video and keep their lives intact.

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It's super fun to watch the three kids try to hide everything from their father, doing all kinds of stupid things that only make everything worse . It gets so bad that in the end his father is forced to intervene but it only gets worse and is stolen by criminals.

The Gemstones

This series is like a series of funny sketches combined on the basis of a religious theme, a series where chapter by chapter some character has his moment to stand out. Throughout the series we see how none of the brothers is more protagonist than the others and that what they have in common is how stupid they are.

The way in which the three brothers act is very audacious, their performances are combined with the others. Danny McBride plays an older brother with deliriums of greatness and believes that he is capable of doing everything perfect, but deep down he is just a lucky fool who has got himself into a foolish mess that now must be resolved with the help of his brothers. The performance is super fun, with a very particular way of speaking that combined with characteristic gestures make this a great character.

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Among the other two brothers we have Adam Devine as the younger brother in charge of the youth sector of the church, but who strangely has a very close friend who used to be something devilish. Adam Devine manages to embody a young preacher who is somewhat lost, bored and lacking in enthusiasm who lives his life in the same way every day hoping for something interesting to happen, a character who is apparently unsure of his sexuality. Finally the last member of the Gemstones is Edi Patterson, a woman frustrated with her father because he doesn't appreciate her much and doesn't give her the opportunity to participate in church shows more often, a woman afraid of her father and who maintains a relationship with a man that no one in her family respects. Edi Patterson gives us some of the funniest scenes of the whole series, with an atypical but very good comedy.

Last Words.

This is a series that never wanted to criticize the subject of religious emporiums, but nevertheless offers us an inside to what these empires are, how they work and how they earn so much money. A series that reminds me a lot of The Office for its comedy so simple but so funny and entertaining.

The series is not only foolishly funny, it uses a very intelligent and well developed comedy through curious moments.

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