Walton Goggins Went Full-Frontal On HBO, And This Is A Bigger Victory Than You Realize

"The Righteous Gemstones" is one of the best comedies in HBO history: a "Succession"-like story about a family of infamous televangelists that explores themes of religion, corruption, greed, deviance, and propaganda. It's also the show that very well may be single-handedly evening the bare scales in terms of displaying full-frontal male nudity. There have been plenty of discussions this year surrounding the moments of male nudity on season 3 of "The White Lotus," but it's one thing to catch Patrick Schwarzenegger in the nude for a brief moment or flash a bit of Jason Isaacs' stunt hog before jolting the camera away to capture the shocked reactions of the other characters in the room — it's another thing entirely to feature a cold-open where Walton Goggins' second nude body double waterskis wearing nothing but a life jacket, boink swatter flapping in the wind.

Full-frontal male nudity is nothing new for "The Righteous Gemstones." Season 1 saw Goggins' Uncle Baby Billy nude in an outdoor bathtub; earlier this season he stood pantsless in a dressing room, and instead of using prosthetics, show creator and star Danny McBride told USA Today that the show uses stunt performers and body doubles. "No, no prostheses," he told the outlet. "Oh yeah, brother, those are red hot organs."

Showing the whole kit and caboodle is the only real boundary Goggins has ever set on "The Righteous Gemstones," and as McBride explained on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker's Toolkit Podcast (via Indiewire), "We've never used the same penis twice," McBride said. "It was always a different elderly stunt double coming in. And for that particular sequence, we had to have an elderly penis that knew how to waterski." The team would CGI Goggins' face over the stunt performer, which also means, yes, there are continuity issues with Uncle Baby Billy's pork steeple.

This isn't just a win for equality in terms of nudity presented on screen, it's also an incredible step toward normalizing aging bodies on screen in all their glory.

Because I am nothing if not a dedicated journalist, I went back through the first three seasons of the show to figure out how many times the show has put a full-blown flesh mallet on display (as opposed to just butts or testicles) in addition to the hat trick scored by Uncle Baby Billy's little willy. The official "dick-tionary" of "The Righteous Gemstones," if you please.

The blackmail tape used against Jesse Gemstone (McBride) in season 1 caught his buddy Chad (James Dumont) in the buff at the sex-and-drugs party. In the third episode of the same season, "They Are Weak, But He Is Strong," six men are revealed to have been sent by a rival church to vandalize the Gemstone's mall-church run by Uncle Baby Billy, and instead of being brought to justice by the police, patriarch Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) forces the men to exit through the parking lot fully nude. Keefe (Tony Cavalero) accidentally lets his mushroom tip slip when he leaves the house wearing only a shirt, and he also goes The Full Monty while in an isolation tank. There was also a random guy peen-out during the goth party at Club Sinister.

Season 2 had a decline in skin sabers, only featuring a nude man coming out of the shower during a flashback scene of young Eli Gemstone during his professional wrestling days, while poor Keefe gets pirate-eyed through a glory hole in a later episode. Season 3 really upped the ante, showing the husband of Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson), BJ Barnes (Tim Baltz) nude in a photograph, playing "helicopter penis" in a bathtub, a dick pick sent by Stephen (Stephen Schneider), the genuinely incredible fight scene between the two men — with Stephen fighting completely in the nude, and an orgy scene with, you guessed it, Uncle Baby Billy.

As has been the case since "The Deuce" star Emily Meade helped transform the on-set practices at HBO in 2018, "The Righteous Gemstones" enlists the help of an intimacy coordinator every step of the way. Actors — above the line and stand-ins — are not only protected from being exploited the way many young actors have been in the past, but there's no one-size-fits-all reasoning for displaying the nakedness in the first place. By using real people and real bodies, the show helps remind viewers about the normalcy of the existence of nude forms.

"The Righteous Gemstones" has never been afraid to tackle the toxic masculinity simmering within evangelical, patriarchal hierarchies, and the show uses the naked form of cis men to comment on it. There has been an increase in equal donning of the birthday suit across binary gender lines in recent years, with films like "Walk Hard" in 2007 and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" in 2008 that seemed to break the taboo barrier of showing a flaccid penis on screen, and it soon became pretty standard for R-rated comedies to feature a swift wink of the bologna pony. Despite McBride's history with the common denominator of both of those films, Judd Apatow, "The Righteous Gemstones" has far more in common with another institution of phallocentrism, the slapstick, stunt-based, physical comedy champions of "Jackass."

On the obvious level: Uncle Baby Billy hanging dong while waterskiing, Stephen fighting BJ in the nude because he interrupted him while he was in the middle of "badgering the witness," BJ practicing his meat spins in the bathtub, and Eli forcing six men to sprint naked through a mall are all "Jackass" stunts. On a more intellectual level, Keefe's comfortability with his own body is not unlike that of "Jackass" star Chris Pontius, and the humor lies with his inherent comfort in a world that is so uncomfortable with the sight of male déshabillé. All the while, the show never once forgets that there is endless hilarity to be found if you look beyond the "sexy" possibilities of normalizing nudity.

Was it hilarious to flip on this week's episode to see Uncle Baby Billy's toothy grin, knowing that his overly tan bible bonker was getting some fresh air? Yes, of course, but it was funnier to see his nephew Kelvin (Adam Devine) be completely unphased by his behavior and the very comfortable Keefe ask if they should join him? Absolutely. "The Righteous Gemstones" deserves to be remembered as a great comedy, but at the very least, it will be the series that evened the scales in terms of equitable displays of family jewels.