Yellowstone
I killed a man today
Season 3
Episode 8
Editor’s rating
Photo: Cam McLeod / Paramount Network
Nowadays I should be accustomed Yellowstone strung by half-realized storylines and banal mythopoetic navel-gazing in the middle of their season, only to ride to the end. But I can not remember a cover as dramatic as the one between the frustrating nothing of last week’s episode and this week’s I Killed a Man Today, which is explicitly what this show can be like when everything clicks. At its best, Yellowstone is a bit like a 21st century Bonanza, using the over-the-top melodrama of the classic TV western as the culmination of an honest re-examination of how the great American ranching dynasties of 150 years ago are coming together.
Let me then start by eating some of my words. I’ve complained a lot this season about the re-framing of “John Dutton, Rich and Powerful Super-Rancher” as “John Dutton, Cash-Strapped Working Man.” And even after this week’s chapter, I still think so YellowstoneCreator Taylor Sheridan – often influenced by the proud ranch people he may have talked to before giving up this show – has a skewed sense of the American caste system when he thinks the Duttons are not rich. Put it this way: With what they possess and with the resources they have, they can get things that most of us cannot.
However, I found that in “I Killed a Man Today”, the characters stop talking around the situation John Dutton confronts, and instead just explain everything directly to each other. Here’s what we already knew: Market Equities and its real estate partners are offering the Duttons half a billion dollars for 50 acres of land; and if John refuses, they will enroll the state government to intervene anyway. But here’s the larger context (previously indicated, but now clearly expressed): With farm income going down and property taxes increasing, the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch could not survive more than a few years in its current form.
Those are the stakes. And they are real enough, despite John Dutton’s perception of his own socio-economic status. The problem, from a playwright’s point of view, is that the solution seems obvious here. John needs to sell. (As Beth points out, he does not agree sell the ranch. He can hold on to his home and business, and will have enough liquidity to keep farms until he dies.) That’s where it helps that Sheridan has spent so much time the past two seasons making John as an idiosyncratic son, with madness children.
Okay, maybe they are not all crazy. Much of this season’s arc has revolved around Kayce’s development into a Fine Young Man. He finds dozens of ranchers rushing to the office of his Livestock commissioner, to thank him for risking his life to bring the rustlers to justice. Jamie tells him that John never deserves such admiration. (“Respect and loyalty,” he says, “but not dat. ”) The two Dutton boys then share a sweet moment when the adopted Jamie asks if he can still call Kayce” brother “. Kayce says, without a doubt, “‘Until the day you die, you should never call me anything else.’
Beth, however? Beth is still pretty angry. Finding a fella and asking for his hand in marriage has not dulled her edge. In this episode, she pulls out all the stops to try to scare Market Equities out of Montana: sell her stock short; the markets are haunted by planting rumors of takeovers; collaborating with resident financial hawk Angela Blue Thunder; the works. In return, she is crushed by Roarke Morris’ boss Willa Hayes. (“After I fired this bitch, we should hire her,” Willa sighed.)
Yet despite all that – and despite telling her father just how hopeless his case is – she still lets him know that she will pursue his interests if he wants to. “Everything I do is for you,” recalls Beth John. So what does he order her to do on the land sale? ‘Not an inch. No one. . There is always another way. ”
After last week’s disproportionate lack of action, it was gratifying to see such a greater sense of urgency and import in “I Killed a Man Today.” Sheridan and the director of this episode, Guy Ferland, even turned my early skepticism against a subplot that – for its first few scenes – looked like setting up a free scene of sexual assault. When a stranded Monica on the side of the road is picked up by something crippled, I waited too early for what was to come. But it turned out that the whole sequence was a payoff for the investigation into missing persons from two episodes ago. Monica accused a serial killer and rapist, who had previously taken prisoners. I will admit: I was crazy.
However, the fee for the Monica storyline is a letdown. She first avoids telling Kayce about her plans to help Chief Rainwater with the sting, because they do not want him to worry. Mar he too does not tell has about his bloody raid on the rustlers (who made the front page of the local newspaper and injured two of his men … that I’m not sure his reticence as their ignorance makes much sense). They have a spat over their respective lack of openness, which ends with Kayce making excuses for himself – pointing to the dangers and complexities of his life – and Monica does not have to say much at all. The appreciation of his choices and his interior life over hers is, honestly, overwhelming.
And Kayce and Monica’s big argument is not the only dubious moment of the week. Rip also goes on an early journey. He tells Lloyd about his upcoming marriage to Beth, and then falls into a funk after Lloyd congratulates him on “surviving your past.” The episode ends with Rip screaming at a bar. Maybe he’s overwhelmed because the musician playing on the stage is Walker, the former Yellowstone ranch hand that Rip intended to kill last season (before Kayce enters). Or maybe – like the useless barking horse he can’t bring himself to destroy – Rip feels like a wild animal that should not be tamed.
Whatever the reason for Mopey Rip, this new development could well be another step in the big Rip / Beth split I’ve been thinking about all season. But who knows? Maybe I’ll be so pleasantly surprised at the way the bow goes, just like I was by so much of “I Killed a Man Today.”
How good was this episode? It even found a good use for the creepy Teeter / Colby flirtation. Here, their go-to seduction technique – taking off their clothes and demanding that he be skinny – leads them both into the path of the Duttons’ gruesome cowboy nemesis Wade, who tramples the pair directly under the horse of his band. Whether Teeter and Colby are dead or alive remains to be seen. For now, it’s just a relief that there’s something event, event on this show, however extreme as bizarre.
To be honest, I had a good feeling about this opening season episode: a short, lyrical sequence from a rodeo pro who just did his thing. It looked beautiful, it was exciting to see, and it did not waste much time. Here, the remaining two chapters of season three hope to follow that lead.
• While I appreciate the more honest accounting of the Dutton family’s finances in this episode, I have to scare Tate about describing his father as “broke as hell.” Last I checked, Kayce is a Montana Livestock Commissioner (a job that pays in the high double digits, according to Google), married to a university instructor (not a lucrative gig, but barely minimal pay), probably lives rent-free in a massive ranch house that probably has a well-equipped kitchen. I will forgive that the Duttons may be the kind of empire that has a lot of strings. But I think most Americans want that “break”.
• Kayce, however, remains an honorable guy, as evidenced by his response when Jamie hesitates his rustler-busting mission with, “My office will not doubt it.” Kayce gives him a fierce look and says, “You should probably doubt it.”
• I sometimes feel like Sheridan is borrowing too hard on the “hard-bitten Beth” stick; but I have to admit I laughed out loud when John stated that she did not look like “a blushing bride” and she replied, “The blush was crazy to me years ago.” (Almost as funny was John’s stopping follow-up: “I like our man-to-man conversations, but we need to set some divine boundaries.”)
