The midseason "Interlude" episodes of "The Righteous Gemstones" often stand out as both the most potent and pivotal installments in the series, serving as a nostalgic journey back to the very roots of the Gemstone family's myriad woes. These chapters frequently revolve around Jennifer Nettles' portrayal of Aimee-Leigh Gemstone, a woman with a voice as sweet as honey and an unwavering faith, remembered fondly as an emblem of virtue and probity but who has since come to symbolize the family's moral decay. Recall how season three commenced with a harrowing flashback, depicting May-May assaulting Aimee-Leigh with a colossal wrench before transitioning to the present, where Eli, somewhat implausibly, agrees to assist his sister. Was this a gesture of magnanimity from Eli, an attempt to reconcile with the sibling who once threatened his wife's life? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was an acknowledgment that May-May's anger was not entirely misplaced. We shall delve deeper into this later, but the core narrative of "Interlude III" focuses on Judy, whose blend of audacity and profound insecurity was already palpable during her high school days in the year 2000.
Money seems to have instilled in her the belief that she could attain anything she desired, granting her an irrational self-assurance to don vibrant, body-hugging hot pants and make her move on the school's most popular boy by dramatically flinging her hair across his desk. ("You're getting dandruff all over my worksheet," he complained. "You know you like it, stud," she retorted.) Rejected and publicly humiliated, young Judy responded with quintessential Gemstone belligerence: she stormed into band practice and smashed the boy's saxophone into smithereens. (And that was merely the beginning of his ordeal.)
"The Righteous Gemstones" doesn't endeavor to present "Interlude III" as a neat and tidy summation of the adult Judy, but it does illuminate her enduring status as an outlier—the middle sibling and sole female in a family whose patriarchal dynasty offers no clear path for women. Her solution is to compete for attention and dominate every conversation with her boisterous voice. She outdoes her brothers in vulgarity, even Jesse, whose crudeness may be blunter but lacks her extremes and comic ingenuity. When a dinner-table squabble between them inevitably descends into a vulgar war of words, with each inviting the other to perform a lewd act, Judy secures the final say: "I want a meal, boy, not no snack." This retort earns her her mother's disdain, a minor triumph in a family where timidity earns no rewards.
In a particular aspect, young Judy resembles a rustic, televised evangelist debutante, a My Super Sweet 16 monster dressed to the nines yet seething with rage because she hasn't received every item she believes is her due. The school's most adorable boy should rightfully be hers, and a trip to the mall grants her access to anything her heart desires, to the extent that her shoplifting is so audacious, as if she genuinely believes she's exempt from paying for anything. Fully cognizant of her privilege, Judy exploits it to torment Jesse's promising new girlfriend, Amber, a country lass, accusing her of being a gold digger. "You wouldn't be able to afford this even if you slept with every man in the hills and hollers of Kentucky," Judy hisses venomously. (The fact that they can reconcile after such a brutal insult aligns with the unofficial Gemstone mantra that nothing is unpardonable.)
Judy shocks her parents not only at the dinner table but beyond, yet in the end, she's hurt by eavesdropping on them discussing her "minor, undiagnosed mental issues." Nonetheless, she remains deeply influenced by Eli and Aimee-Leigh's marriage. Judy's dismissive labeling of Amber as poverty-stricken Kentucky trash echoes, albeit less subtly and devastatingly, how her parents treat Peter and May-May Montgomery in flashbacks. The Gemstones have amassed a fortune by duping their followers with a Y2K survival kit they secretly, silently knew wasn't necessary. So, in the months preceding the millennial apocalypse that was supposed to crash our entire economic system due to coding errors, the Gemstones ran ads hyping freeze-dried soup mix and other survival buckets. "If I knew I could safeguard my family in such an uncertain and terrifying time with just a bucket or two," says Aimee-Leigh in the commercial, "well, I'd rush to my purse."
Peter, too, rushed to his purse, investing his family's entire nest egg of $25,000 in what turned out to be a storage garage filled with unsellable survival buckets. In a flashback, we witness Peter undergoing the poignant ordeal of begging his brother-in-law for help before May-May discovers his poor investment. Eli doesn't mind portraying himself as the benevolent savior in this situation, but when May-May eventually learns the truth, she sees through her brother's deception. He fully understood that he was duping Peter and everyone else who bought Y2K gear, and he wasn't about to bring Peter into the scam. Eli viewed Peter as a common sucker, indistinguishable from all the other gullible souls pouring money they didn't have into the church.
"Allow us to lend a hand, May-May," Aimee-Leigh implores, her voice tinged with a false sense of camaraderie. "We are family, after all." Yet again, May-May pierces through the Gemstones' veil of hypocrisy, exposing their true intentions. Aimee-Leigh, like Eli, yearns to cast herself in the light of a benevolent deity, wielding the resources at their disposal to perpetuate their image as benevolent philanthropists. (In The Wolf of Wall Street, there's a poignant voice-over that captures the essence of how wealth can distort morality: "You can lavish your chosen church or political party with generosity. Save the damned spotted owl with your ill-gotten gains.") However, their ostensible offer to assist the Montgomerys is merely a convenient vehicle for Aimee-Leigh to wash away her own guilt, while the Montgomerys are transformed into passive recipients of charity, their dignity stripped away.
Ultimately, Peter finds himself pulling the trigger on a security guard during a bank robbery that, from afar, seems like a comical spectacle of incompetence—a farcry from a well-orchestrated heist. The Montgomery family is shattered beyond repair, their bonds irrevocably fractured. It's hardly surprising that decades later, Eli is inclined to grant his sister a favor, nor that Peter and their sons harbor a lingering resentment, their wounds refusing to heal.
