‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Season 3 Finally Explains Why Judy Hates Amber

Marking the halfway point of the season, The Righteous Gemstones has graced us with yet another flashback episode. “Interlude III” gives us further insight into the Gemstones’ feud with Eli’s (John Goodman) side of the family, and also serves as an origin story for Judy (Edi Patterson), showing how her attention-seeking behaviors stem from childhood and explaining how she became such an unhinged character in adulthood. Episode 4 leaves Judy in a precarious position, as she continues to butt heads with her brothers over issues facing the church, and her affair is finally revealed to her husband BJ (Tim Baltz). “Interlude III” also provides context to Judy’s lifelong feud with Jesse’s (Danny McBride) wife Amber (Cassidy Freeman), who accused Amber of being a social climber upon their first meeting. The first half of Season 3 proves this resentment has carried over into adulthood, as Amber tries to meddle in Judy’s marriage and expose her affair to BJ.

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The Gemstone-Montgomery Family Feud

The lifelong feud between the Gemstones and the Montgomerys is a focal point of Season 3, and “Interlude III” explains its origins. The episode takes place in the year 2000 as Eli and Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles) are facing backlash for selling Y2K survival kits on TV. Eli confidently assures their congregants that God spoke to him and told him the end of the world was imminent, but we later find out that neither Eli nor Aimee-Leigh actually believed this to be the case. When January 1, 2000 comes and goes, they face backlash not only from the members of their church, but members of their family including Eli’s sister May-May (Kristen Johnston) and her husband Peter (Steve Zahn).

While May-May had already taken a firm anti-Gemstone stance, opposed to their way of commercializing their belief system, Peter put stock in Eli’s word, investing all the money they had in savings to buy $25,000 worth of survival kits. Peter asks Eli for money and in return Eli offers to buy back his stock, but when Peter finally confesses to May-May, she blows up at Eli and refuses to take any of his money. Now unable to accept Eli’s offer, Peter instead tries to rob a bank in the episode’s final moments, leading to his getting shot.

This fiasco explains why May-May had ceased contact with Eli until the first episode of Season 3 when she begs him to help her sons Chuck (Lukas Haas) and Karl (Robert Oberst). The flashback also explains the fractured relationship the adult Gemstone siblings have with their cousins, who got along well enough as kids despite their disparate economic situations but likely inherited their father’s contempt for his side of the family. While the Gemstone kids flaunt their wealth, Chuck and Karl are resigned to the fact that they’ll never enjoy the privileges that their cousins do, and, even into adulthood, the feud between the Gemstone and Montgomery kids seems mostly one-sided. Though based on the end of Episode 4, there appears to be a revenge plot in the works.

Judy Gemstone’s Backstory Explains Why She’s So Chaotic

Amidst the Gemstone-Montgomery feud, “Interlude III” also shows some formative moments in young Judy’s (Emma Shannon) life, providing some insight as to why adult Judy is the way that she is. In her flashback scenes, we see Judy’s misguided attempts at flirting with a boy seated behind her in class by leaning back to put her hair on his desk, but he doesn’t take kindly to this and cuts part of her hair off. When girls start laughing at her in the school bathroom, she bursts into the band room to cause a scene and break his saxophone.

Judy Gemstone then becomes a bit of a kleptomaniac, at first stealing Amber’s (Keely Marshall) ring, and then going on a shoplifting spree at the mall, stealing CDs, clothes, and jewelry. Still wounded from her crush’s rejection, Judy also takes her anger out on Jesse’s (J. Gaven Wilde) then-girlfriend and future wife Amber, who comes to the Gemstone house to meet the family for the first time. Judy makes fun of her red hair, mocks her for being from a small town in Kentucky, and accuses her of using Jesse as a ticket out of poverty. She thinks Amber is a social climber and relishes being able to get a rise out of her, but ultimately cools things off with her and returns her ring.

Judy’s emotional turmoil is only exacerbated by overhearing her parents joking about her “minor undiagnosed mental problems,” which also leads to a rare but touching wholesome moment between Judy and Jesse. She feels lonely with Jesse gone all the time and often lets her anger and quick temper get the best of her, but she and Jesse are similar in this way. The big, raucous personalities she and Jesse both have aren’t as socially acceptable in a young girl as in a young boy, and Judy worries it might be an obstacle in trying to find a romantic partner. Jesse is surprisingly able to comfort her quite effectively, and we get to see a different side to their relationship that isn’t shown very much in the present-day plot.

This flashback episode informs a lot of what we know about present-day Judy. She still craves attention, has a potty mouth like her older brother, and ended up marrying a rather submissive man in BJ, likely scarred by harsh rejection in her youth. It’s still not totally clear whether she ever got diagnosed with or treated for her “minor mental health problems,” though perhaps we’ll get a therapy storyline for Judy down the road to explore her past trauma. We briefly see Wilde and Shannon as young Jesse and young Judy in the previous two interlude episodes in Seasons 1 and 2, but in “Interlude III,” they really nail Danny McBride and Edi Patterson’s speech patterns and mannerisms. These bottle episodes are the perfect way to break up the season and give some much-needed context to the events of the present day, leaving viewers ready for more.