Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for The Righteous Gemstones S3E5 “Interlude III” (written by John Carcieri & Danny McBride and directed by David Gordon Green).
Every season of The Righteous Gemstones, it’s been the same. It’s an Interlude episode, I say. It won’t be quite as exciting as the main storyline, I say. But damn it, the Interlude always ends up being one of the most compelling episodes of the entire season for how it builds out relationships and context for the primary events. It elevates the show in an absolutely brilliant way, and is a crucial ingredient in why the show and its characters work so well.
The high school version of Judy Gemstone proves that she didn’t just pick up being a weird lunatic in adulthood. As she drapes her hair over the desk of her crush, Trent, sitting directly behind her, multiple classmates look on in exasperation—apparently Judy is well known to be someone that acts out. Trent ends up cutting some of the hair off, and Judy is bullied for it.
The young actors do outstanding work replicating the behaviors and mannerisms of their modern-day counterparts. It’s seriously impressive. These kids are returning after previous Interlude episodes, and they’re only getting better at matching the adult versions of their characters down to the cadence of line delivery. And now that I think about it, I really want to see Keefe show up in an Interlude.
Judy immediately takes to antagonizing Amber when Jesse brings her over for dinner. She taunts Amber about her her hair, her country girl background, and unglamorous clothing, claiming that Amber doesn’t love Jesse; she’s just after his money. I think this is one part jealousy that Amber got the boy she liked while Judy’s crush rejected her, and one part overprotectiveness of her brother. When Amber exits the bathroom in a huff, Judy pockets the ring Amber accidentally left behind.
Early in the episode, there’s a commercial with Aimee-Leigh and Eli advertising their doomsday prepper kits. At the forefront of the shot is Eli’s Y2K book—the book May-May presented when confronting Eli at his book signing in the present day. At this point in the past, Y2K has come and gone, and we hear later that the Gemstones have made millions of dollars off peddling the conspiracy.
So, this is actually really interesting: back in 2000, it’s May-May who seems to be the more toxic, antagonistic member of the Montgomery family. Peter is surprisingly meek and submissive, made visibly anxious by his wife’s assertiveness and her willingness to strike her sons if they speak out of line. Eli, and especially Aimee-Leigh, are nothing but hospitable, and while Peter graciously appreciates the offer, May-May immediately shuts her husband down.
The fact the Peter is so timid makes me wonder what else happened in the break with the Gemstones: I don’t think this is simply a case of Peter going nuts and forming a cult, and the Gemstones aren’t exclusively the source of Peter breaking away from the family. It’s also important to consider that the rift between the Gemstones and May-May wasn’t predicated on Peter, it had to have been something involving May-May herself. She mentions that Eli got greedy, which is obvious. The cousins seem to get along well enough with each other in 2000 as well. This just goes to show how much the Interlude episodes give us to chew on.
Coming to Eli, Peter reveals that he poured his family’s entire life savings, $25,000, into buying those Y2K buckets without his family’s knowledge because he fully believed in the end times. Eli graciously offers to repurchase all of the overstock, but May-May won’t allow her brother to bail them out. Later, Eli and Aimee-Leigh mutually confess that they didn’t actually believe the end was going to happen.
Given my hilariously terrible track record at predicting television plot twists, you can take this with the grainiest of grains of salt—are we going to get a redemption arc for Peter and a May-May antagonist reveal? Or, at the very least, reconciliation between Peter, May-May and the Gemstones? I keep thinking back to Peter’s meekness in these flashbacks, and how he basically comes across as a kicked puppy. We know from last week he has designs to execute a terrorist attack, but there is still plenty of time for him to have a change of heart and be brought back from the brink. How? I have no idea. But we’ve also been seeing Eli and May-May reconcile, so I don’t know if I’d want for that to crumble.
When Jesse confronts Judy about the disappearance of Amber’s heirloom ring, Judy fully owns up to taking and attempting to pawn the ring. But when Judy is clearly distraught with loneliness, Jesse takes to comforting his sister. It’s such a sweet scene, and a reminder that as much as these characters bicker and tear each other down, they do care for each other. Jesse actually gives his sister some genuine encouragement, and Judy returns Amber’s ring and compliments her hair. Jesse proceeds to avenge Judy, donning a ski mask and shaving Trent’s hair at the school.
This episode’s director David Gordon Green beautifully brings things home, delivering a long take of Peter attempting a bank robbery. Shot from inside the diner across the street, we see Peter enter the bank, muzzle flashes from inside, and Peter escaping the building before killing a guard and getting blasted across the face to explain the scar running from the edge of his mouth.
“Interlude III,” as all of the Interlude episodes are, is a highlight of the season. I continue to be impressed with how the show manages to balance hilarity, vulgarity, characterization and a core of spirituality. It jabs at preachers with one hand, but is charitable to the tenets of Christianity on the other. Next week, back in the present day, I am extremely excited to see what happens now that we’ve got some context of where May-May, Peter and the Gemstones started to break apart.
