Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/HBO
Tim Baltz has a theory about his The Righteous Gemstones character, Benjamin Jason “BJ” Barnes. He reckons that his tightly wound Disney Adult probably had a lot of “normal” relationships before he met his wife, the bombastic yet deeply insecure megachurch heiress Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson)—and that when they met, she was “probably the most exciting person that he’d ever been around.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more tolerant husband than BJ, but halfway through the HBO comedy’s third season, things are looking dire. They only got uglier this week, during a bruising (and ridiculous) naked fight scene.
Everyone but BJ knew, until quite recently, that Judy had a dry-humping affair with her touring guitarist, Stephen (Stephen Schneider). The reveal was humiliating. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that this week, after a tutorial on smack talk (and a furious rollerblading session) BJ shows up at Stephen’s place to rain some brass knuckles on him and prove he’s no “cuck.”