Idk if media rants are allowed on here but didn't know where else to post.
For context righteous gemstones is a comedy about the children of a mega church pastor who try to succeed him and lead the church despite there horrible personalities. Generally makes fun of the hypocrisy of these rich church pastors pretty well.
The first episode of the newest season is a flashback to the civil war and the origins of the family. It opens with the ancestor of the gemstones shooting a southern pastor preaching about "states rights" after the service. At first I thought this would be great, this guys gonna go around killing confederates like django. Sadly no he just did it to rob the pastor then goes on to impersonate him as a pastor for the confederates on the Frontline. The rest of the show centers on him being a horrible pastor and focuses on how bad this con man is compared to the soldiers. It then ends with the union capturing his unit and committing a war crime by executing all of them except him.
The depiction of the civil war is completely white washed and focuses on making the confederate soldiers sympathetic children suffering and dying for there country. Slavery is never mentioned, there are no slaves or black people shown, none of the confederates even say anything racist.
I understand that portraying all the confederates as ultra racists with every other word out of there mouth being the n word would be inaccurate. It would've been funnier if they did and then we watched them get mowed down by the union, but for some reason this episode they tried to be serious. If you are going to be serious and pretend like this is an accurate portrayal then whitewashing them is just as bad as painting them as evil racists. I get there trying to humanize people often cast as the bad guys but removing there flaws isn't humanizing, it's veneration.
The rest of the season seems to be fine and pretty unrelated, so if you do want to watch it go ahead and skip the first episode, wont miss much unless you want to learn about the lost cause myth and how a lot of southerners still view the war.
So you didn’t get it. That’s fine. It’s a satire of southern megachurches, and how they are continuing the same con and the confederacy.