Over the years, we’ve come to expect the unexpected with The Righteous Gemstones. The time slot might remain the same, but Danny McBride’s now-epic divine comedy has never been afraid to explore the diverse and thematically resonant tendrils of the Gemstones’ evangelical empire. Season two explored Eli’s roots in pro-wrestling, where he learned to grift and gab in ways that would aid his emerging televangelist heel turn. Last season, McBride explored the faithlessness of that empire, linking the Gemstones’ wealth to NASCAR, monster trucks, militias, and doomsday survivalism. While those ideas could prove unwieldy, requiring episodes to fill in the backstory, they just as often reveal an inner depth to the family’s dysfunction. We’re all trying to understand what branch of the family tree fucked the Gemstones up most. Tonight’s season premiere, “Prelude,” shows how deep those roots go. 

McBride, who directed tonight’s episode, loves to surprise viewers. “Prelude” delivers two in the first five minutes. The episode opens in Virginia in 1862 with Minister Abel Grieves (Josh McDermitt) sermonizing on the importance of states’ rights and the divine duty to serve the Confederacy. After telling his flock that it’s a sin not to serve the Confederacy, he passes the collection plate and fiendishly counts his haul. The show’s long-running commentary on prosperity gospel and the church’s wider political and militaristic aims does much of the work toward giving this preacher a malevolent air, but something more sinister lurks in the pews. As we wonder if this will be a whole episode flashback and how this preacher fits into the grand design (maybe he’s a Gemstone?), a man in the back row pops up. You can practically hear every viewer in unison ask the same question: “Is that…Bradley Cooper?”

Indeed it is. 

As Elijah Gemstone, Cooper adds to a run of charming cameos that includes a heartbreakingly hilarious turn as a halfling ex-husband in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and an “as himself” guest spot on Abbot Elementary. Though often pigeonholed as an overly self-serious Oscar baiter, Cooper has never been too good for TV. He was the face of Alias, for crying out loud, and returned for both the Wet Hot American Summer and Limitless spin-offs. He’s around. However, his casting is a bit more pointed. Not only can the Oscar nominee hold the screen and the audience’s attention for a half hour on a show that’s not his own, Cooper evokes his character from Nightmare Alley, Stan Carlisle. His story is pretty similar, too. Like Stan, “Prelude” opens with a murder and an escape. Gemstone murders the preacher, assumes his identity, and takes off with a battalion of Confederates, who arrive just after the killing to collect the preacher and make him their chaplain. After hearing it pays $50 a month for one morning’s work, Elijah takes the job, and suddenly, the Gemstones are in the faith business.

Elijah may not be adept at holding a crowd, but he has a willing, forgiving, and downcast audience. Introduced through a montage of portraits and amputations that wouldn’t be out of place in Ken Burns’ The Civil War, the soldiers he’s meant to comfort are desperate for salvation. It’s all they have to look forward to. Fighting a losing war with nothing to anticipate but hell on the other side, they turn to Elijah for reassurance of God’s love and find little in return. Despite posing as a proselytizer for our divine father’s word, Elijah dismisses the role, with Cooper shuffling his feet whenever he’s asked to offer a few words. He watches his men die with a shrug, offering a tossed-off “go be with Christ” before finishing up with a highly Gemstonian “that’s it, I guess” and heading to his next poker game. He soon learns the power of the pulpit—and, yes, Uncle Ben, that great power comes with great responsibility, too. Like the preacher’s speech about states’ rights, he knows a preacher can get away with just about anything because these God-fearing men put so much stock in the position. Elijah is a middleman between themselves and God, and to question his methods or believe the rumors about Elijah’s sinful ways, the phony preacher warns, is to go against God. 

That’s the whole ballgame. For 100 years, the Gemstones have been hobnobbing with the powerful and taking advantage of the desperate. But the desperate aren’t stupid; they’re vulnerable, and Elijah’s more than happy to exploit that vulnerability, just as he would a fellow grifter. As a man of the cloth or a two-bit huckster, Elijah finds followers to betray. When Rollins (Kimball Farley) recognizes Elijah from a nearby tavern and calls him on his grift, the pair plan to rip off an incoming Captain with deep pockets and a love for cards. After successfully cheating the man, Elijah strangles Rollins to death rather than share the pot. 

At each turn in “Prelude,” Elijah takes the anti-social, self-enriching route that takes advantage of the soldiers’ good faith. They need to know that what they did wasn’t sinful, and it doesn’t matter who tells them, really, so long as they’re carrying a bible. The episode’s final act validates whatever divine protection is placed on men of faith when the Union descends on the Confederates, executing every soldier but Elijah. Saved by the gold-plated bible that Elijah stole from the preacher, the Union allows Elijah to pray for his men. It’s here that Elijah turns on his gift for bullshit and allows for a sliver of empathy to slip into his speech. He delivers an awful prayer, but it’s better than nothing, and Elijah treats it with slight solemnity, recognizing that these men, morally, are better than him and that God’s plan is to keep sinners on Earth until they’re called home (though these men are still fighting for slavery, so it stands to reason they aren’t going to heaven). That moment of self-reflection, his recognition that dying in war is not the same as killing for money or meanness, gives Elijah some juice. It might be the key to the whole Gemstone thing, that even a modicum of self-awareness and treating the job with some sincerity endears him to his men. 

Despite teasing a revelation, the experience doesn’t change Elijah’s heart. Elijah throws the machine-gunned soldiers onto a cart and carries them back to camp. It’s a good deed for the soldiers’ families who’d like to bury their dead, but it also serves to mythologize the Gemstones. Why’d the Yanks spare his life? They didn’t. God saved him. Maybe he believes that. After all, given all that he’s been through, it would appear like a guardian angel is looking out for these Gemstones. Later that night, high on the power that God’s word gives him, Elijah cracks open the Bible and begins at the beginning. This is the way forward: Learn the Bible and enrich yourself off good-faith followers of Christ. 

“Prelude” is very much that: a setting in motion everything we’ve seen thus far on the show. While far from the funniest episode, “Prelude” offers a more somber and reflective tone, one that shows the roots of this blasphemous family tree. The Gemstones have kept faith-based kayfabe for more than 160 years and have little reason to stop, seemingly being rewarded by the almighty for misleading and exploiting His followers. That pattern continues to the modern Gemstones despite glimmers of moral righteousness. In this final season, will the circle be unbroken? There’s a better home a-waiting if they can find it. 

Stray observations 

• • Blessed art thou who returned for our Righteous Gemstones recaps and welcome all newcomers to the flock. I’m Matt Schimkowitz, and I recapped season three for The A.V. Club and can’t wait to see Uncle Baby Billy again. I have high hopes for this final season, and “Prelude” provides a fine foundation for what’s to come.
• • I have long said that the best episodes of television end with the title card “Directed by Danny McBride.” Once again, he shows his willingness to break free of convention, surprise his faithful followers, and balance a literary depth with his casually cruel humor.  
• • In his recap of the Lost finale, A.V. Club veteran Noel Murray suggested that a novelization of Lost be written to “give the best sense of just what an epic this was.” I’d like the same for The Righteous Gemstones. 
• • If there was any doubt that Jesse Gemstone was Elijah’s descendant, his exchange with the dying soldier should put it to bed:
• “Say a prayer for my soul.”
• “Uh, I did already. Yeah, it’s done. I’ve been praying this whole time, silently, in my mind.”
• “Can you say it out loud?”
• “There’s no need. I’m very confident that the Lord hears me.”
• “Can you say it so I can hear it? I’m scared.”
• “Okay, well, just give me a second…if I could just think about the right words.”
• “Please….”
• “All right, just give me a second, Jesus Christ.”
• • During a recent panel that I attended, Danny McBride said Bradley Cooper hadn’t seen a lick of Gemstones before receiving the script and refused to watch the show until his episode was done.
• • Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think we’ve seen this gold-plated Bible before, but I assume we’ll see more throughout the season. 
• • More than the Bible, I’m curious about what came of Grieves’ body and how Elijah reclaimed the Gemstone name. 
• • “Can you tell him I’m your assistant chaplain?”
• “I would, pal. He knows everybody’s rank, I think.”
• • It seems unlikely, but I would love to see Cooper in another episode, preferably in which he wears old-man makeup designed and applied by Maestro‘s Kazu Hiro.