Raging Love Letter to Judy Gemstone

I’m a huge fan of chaotic women on screen—especially the kind with impeccable comedic timing and the emotional restraint of a raccoon in a trash can. I didn’t think I’d meet my fictional dream girl until I witnessed Edi Patterson as Judy Gemstone in The Righteous Gemstones. Now, with Season 4 wrapped, my admiration has reached combustion levels, and I can’t keep quiet about it. So here it is: an unruly, slightly unhinged tribute to the most unapologetically wild woman on TV.

Judy has always stood out in the Gemstone universe. She’s a high-octane cocktail of glitter, childhood trauma, and blunt-force personality—usually crashing into scenes like a Molotov in heels. In a show that skewers televangelist excess with a heavy Southern-fried coating, this season finally gives her the mic (or chainsaw). And what Judy does with that spotlight is less “breakthrough moment” and more “holy inferno.” Bless her heart.

She’s always been a lot—loud, impulsive, emotional, vulgar. But most of the time, she’s the only character who feels real. Not virtuous, not well-adjusted (God, no), but real in the way that makes me feel both seen and vaguely concerned about my mental health. While Jesse and Kelvin puff out their chests and cosplay as alpha males in a church rotting from the inside out, Judy doesn’t bother with the act. Yet as a woman, she's still told she's too emotional to lead, she'll start wars, oh wait-

And the show doesn’t reduce her to a cartoonish villain, either. Her flaws aren’t just there to “balance out” a male lead or to be punished by the plot. She just is. Judy is the product of an environment that rewards male arrogance and punishes female emotion, and her personality is what happens when you grow up in that ecosystem and say “fk it.” She can insult a stranger and still make it sound like a favour. She’s a human contradiction—abrasive and vulnerable, aggressive and fragile—all at once. She’s every internal monologue I’ve ever buried under a tight smile and a forced laugh.

I didn’t expect to see myself in Judy Gemstone because, on paper, we couldn’t be more different. She grew up in the gaudy lap of evangelical luxury; I grew up refilling the shampoo bottle with water. She speaks in aggressive falsetto and thinly veiled threats; I say “No worries!” while fuming on the inside. But somewhere in this latest season, Judy stopped being just comic relief and started feeling like the anger I’ve been bottling up since childhood. The filtered, furious, angry girl in me that resides beneath the surface. The Righteous Gemstones has always been about the spectacle of faith and family—about men strutting around, flailing and failing in dramatic fashion. Jesse and Kelvin are clowns in tailored suits, fumbling through their birthright. Judy rages because she’s been sidelined, dismissed, and underestimated for so long that anger is the only language left that anyone might actually hear.

Watching Judy, I thought about every time I was called “too emotional” while my dad got to shout through walls so loud my neighbours could participate. Or the moments I wanted to scream in a primal fashion but didn’t, because I knew it’d make me look unhinged. Judy doesn’t care. She throws the tantrum because she is the tantrum. It also reminds me how society grants men the luxury of childishness. Grown men are praised for being “carefree” or “young at heart,” while women who display emotion, or worse, regression, are branded a public embarrassment. I think Judy normalizes the idea that women were forced to grow up too fast, and we should be allowed to revert to our rawest form sometimes.

Her rebellion becomes especially clear in her marriage. BJ, her husband and emotional golden retriever, is usually there to calm the storm. But Judy has never been the dutiful wife, and thank God for that. That role belongs to Jesse’s wife Amber, whose entire vibe screams “repressed rage in a designer dress.” Judy grew up with Amber, remembers the real her, and actively mocks the bland Stepford act she now performs. Judy knows what Amber could’ve been—and how Jesse probably helped kill it. It’s a dynamic, both hilarious and tragic. Judy is the only one telling the truth, even if she does it like she’s throwing a plate at your face.

She’s not the most likable character on TV (seriously, don’t invite her to brunch, she'll eat your share with her mouth open), but she’s the most alive. And that aliveness is rare—especially for women on screen, who are so often either sanded down into “strong female leads” or dumped into the “crazy ex” bin. Judy is neither. What really hits me are the quiet moments when she tries to be vulnerable, and nobody listens. Judy has flashes of emotional clarity that would stop traffic if anyone bothered to notice. But they don’t. So she gets louder. That’s the cycle: express a need, get ignored, explode. Women like her aren’t taken seriously—but they’ll make damn sure they’re heard. And honestly, she might be the most emotionally intelligent person in the family. Not in a “let me walk you through this with a PowerPoint” kind of way, but in that gut-level, call-your-BS-instantly way.

Judy sees through the Gemstone family's phony piety and hollow morality. She just doesn’t have the patience—or the permission—to critique it calmly. So she spirals. She rants. And underneath those meltdowns are truths no one else wants to admit. Her self-destruction doubles as whistleblowing. That doesn’t mean she’s secretly wise or a misunderstood martyr. She’s a wreck. But I like that the show doesn’t punish her for it. She’s not reformed by love. She doesn’t learn a valuable lesson. She gets messier. She gets louder. And that refusal to be “fixed” feels, weirdly, like freedom.

My grandmother secretly managed the family budget because she “wasn’t good with numbers.” My mom worked a full-time job and ran a household, and still got interrupted at every parent-teacher conference or never got the check handed to her (I wish this would happen to me in this economy). That kind of silencing is inherited. It’s learned. And watching Judy set it on fire with a scream feels like watching someone break a generational curse in real time. She’s not a feminist icon in the TED Talk sense. She’s not an empowerment poster. But that’s what makes her revolutionary. Judy is a woman who has been failed by every institution that claimed to love her—family, religion, and marriage. And instead of becoming a sob story, or a redemption arc, or a Pinterest quote, she becomes a force. Not a hero. Just… a force.

So yeah, Judy Gemstone inspires me to be a louder woman with funnier jokes and one-liners to impress my less funny friends. Judy is an interesting icon to watch, not because she’s empowered, or “strong,” or even remotely likable. But because she’s honest in a world full of liars. Because she’s loud when everyone wants her quiet. Because she refuses to be edited into something palatable. And maybe that’s the most radical thing a woman can do.