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Subtlety has never been a feature of the mega-church industry. That's the pastel sets of the 80's from Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker Praise the Lord network or stadium-style cult concerts stemming from more modern inventions like the Hillsong Church, success mega-churches has long relied on the grandeur of Christianity.
It's the atmosphere that Danny McBride and Jody Hill are trying to recreate in their new HBO comedy, Precious gems– a series on a mega-church and its founding family, whose interests are less in keeping with the teachings of Christ and more about the money that we can earn with him. But while a glance at the opulence and extravagance of Christians is a perfectly hilarious principle, Precious gems sometimes drowns his commentary on Christianity in a cacophony of absurdism.
The series features McBride as Jesse Gemstone, the eldest son of the Gemstone family. Jesse is ready to one day take over the reins of his father Eli's church, played by veteran television producer John Goodman. The main actors are Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam Devine). The family lives in a vast domain, each with a house and a land of its own. As for casting, the series is about as perfect as possible. Devine plays to perfection a pastor inspired by millennial Christian rock. But so much of the natural comedy that the bubbles among the cast members get lost in a series that tries to do too much.
After presenting his main characters via a hilarious mass baptism set in a wave pool of a Chinese water park, the pilot of the series presents intrigues around classicism, corruption and religious manipulation. It's already a little heavy on a plate (collectible), but quite manageable – especially in the hands of McBride and Hill, who have already co-developed To the east and to the bottom and Deputy Directors.
It's in the next episodes that Precious stones begins to break a little. In the third episode, there are three assassination attempts, two burglaries and an enmity of a strangely violent violence that seems out of place even amid the absurdity of the Gemstone clan. The characters of the periphery do not have the necessary time to guarantee their existence, in particular when the most interesting draw is: Precious stones look at this totally unfathomable family trying to reconcile its wealth and corruption with Bible teachings. The added madness gives the impression that this is exactly that: a chaotic addition to a series that already has so much to do.
About the middle of season 1 of his nine episodes, Precious stones begins to settle in the show that he wants to be. The meaning of McBride's comedy with banana is at its best when it highlights the religious hypocrisy of these very misguided followers of Christ. The problem with this change, however, is that even when the series gets underway, you wonder how you are going to solve all these problems that have arisen since the beginning. The later episodes of Season One are rather an example of what this series might be if it had been based from the outset on the natural atmosphere of evangelism.
The charm of his casting finally makes the first sins of Precious gems pardonable. Getting Goodman and McBride on the screen together is enough to ignore any initial strangeness, especially considering that the bones of Precious gems have the potential to make it one of the most intelligent comedies on television. The greatest irony is that this Christian satire probably would have benefited from having a little more self-confidence.
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