“You’re telling me you would not want to fuck your fine-ass brother?” she asks. In a normal world, this would cow a character even as outrageous as Judy, who might realize that her initial idea-that siblings spend all day fantasizing about each other sexually-was just a little bit insane. Needless to say, this is a ridiculous, revolting idea, and KJ, playing an effective straight man, says so. “Jesse and Kelvin might be my brothers,” she goes on, “but that don’t mean they’re not sitting up in their rooms at night thinking someday they might hook up with me.” Her brothers, she says, hate BJ, because BJ “took my ass off the market.” (In a funny real-life twist to what comes next, KJ is played by Lily Sullivan, the actual fiancée of Baltz.) Judy sashays up to her, part strut and part West Side Story gang dance, flicks water in her face, and then-this is where it gets really good-tells her that “siblings have to hate siblings’ spouses.” When asked why, she doesn’t hate to explain that sexual competition is at the root of it. Judy Gemstone (played by Edi Patterson in a performance so funny it almost defies words), in the women’s restroom at the gaudy baptism of her husband BJ (Tim Baltz), decides to confront her sister-in-law KJ, a skeptic and apparent agnostic, whose attitude has rankled her all day. If you asked 100 fans of The Righteous Gemstones to tell you what they liked best about it, you might get 100 different answers, from the skewering of for-profit Christianity, to the simple pompous swaggering of the Gemstone siblings, to anything involving the heartbreaking, hilarious character called “Uncle Baby Billy.” My favorite aspect, which is slightly harder to explain, are the moments where a character-any character, really-shamelessly doubles down on some piece of absurd logic until the entire conversation devolves in a kind of demented spiral that ends up hilarious and disturbing in approximately equal measure.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |