The long, short road to a “Righteous” final season

As “Righteous Gemstones” (shown here) starts its final season (10:01 p.m. Sunday, March 9, on HBO), it might seem sort of fleeting.
This is the fourth nine-episode season. Next to, say, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (26th season, 565 episodes) that’s a mere blink of an eye.
Still, it feels like it goes way back. “When we finished the pilot in 2018, it was a different world,” said Tim Baltz, who co-stars.
The first season went smoothly enough; the second didn’t. “We were shooting for two days and then we shut down for Covid,” said Danny McBride, the show’s creator and star.
More delays came from two strikes. There was a 27-month gap before the second season aired, 16 months before the third, 19 months before the fourth.
Then again, the timing may be ideal. “When times are tough,” McBride said, “that’s when comedy is important. The world is burning and all we give them is horror movies.”
Or hybrids. There are “all these dramas that call themselves comedies,” said co-star Tony Cavalero. “This is a real comedy.”
That’s been a McBride specialty. He creates HBO series in which he plays big, brash characters – a pitcher, a vice-principal, now an evangelist.
The show centers on the combative offspring of mega-church pastor Eli Gemstone (John Goodman). Jesse (McBride, center) is the oldest and loudest, Judy (Edi Patterson, left) is in the middle, Kelvin (Adam Devine, right) is overwhelmed.
Cassidy Freeman plays Jesse’s wife Amber; Baltz is Edie’s husband BJ; Cavalero is Kelvin’s secret (at first) boyfriend Keefe.
The filming is based in a former Sears store in Charleston, S.C. The show has big action; the third season had a kidnapping and explosions, the fourth starts with a flashback starring Bradley Cooper. It also has catchy clothes, some of which the actors are keeping.
“I’m now able to roll up to a wedding in a sequined Gucci gown any time,” Patterson said.
Baltz isn’t likely to wear his “Gemstone” clothes in real life. “It stretches my sense of style,” he said, deadpan. “I’m just a humble boy from the Midwest.”
He went to Loyola University in Chicago and grew up in Joliet, Ill., in a religious family. “They like the show and think it’s about the other church.”