The Thing about Yellowstone or Whatever You Do DON’T Take The Train
When it stampeded onto Amazon Prime, I described to my compadres that Yellowstone was a show that “scratched the itch Sons of Anarchy left behind.” Indeed, they both depict traditional hierarchies of grouped masculinity working in iconic hyper-macho fields, where constantly breaking the law (but for the “right” reasons), employing ‘righteous’ violence (with TONS of collateral damage along the way) and straight up murdering people, is seen as a harsh necessity. Both shows also bend over backwards (or are at least valiant in the attempt) to depict their main characters NOT as sociopathic criminals, but as Protectors and Saviours of a bygone way of life, adhering to a vastly superior ethos of “doing the right thing cuz it’s the right thing,” compared to the namby/pamby, prancing/preening, spineless, all-talk-no-action, too-much-legalese, morally-bankrupt city folk. Much like SoA, plot lines in Yellowstone are abandoned (Bastard babies! Murdered brothers! Favours from wronged fathers! Hidden bombs!) when they become too inconvenient to wrap up, same with characters (several ranch hands just up and disappear, sometimes with but a single line of dialogue explanation, and sometimes none at all). Both shows also delight in over-reliance on head-slappingly baffling plot contrivances and astronomically unlikely coincidences, with insurmountable challenges being washed away with the gruff growl of a “fuck it” that might as well be a straight quote from the exasperated writer’s room. But both are undeniably watchable with the charisma of the leads managing to shore up any hazards to disbelief suspension. The unassailable beauty of Yellowstone’s backdrop don’t hurt none neither.
It is quite the juggling act in this day and age to make broken, dangerous men sympathetic let alone heroic. SoA would twist itself into all manner of impossible positions to keep its benevolent bikers just barely on the wrong side of the law: they hated drugs (!) and wouldn’t allow their sale in their home town of Charming, California. But they were perfectly sanguine to sell AUTOMATIC WEAPONS from the IRA (still a going concern all these years after the Troubles, and sartorially-equipped like a Guy Ritchie rollick) to various street gangs in and around LA. These Sons were bad enough to be bad boys, but still caring enough to be GOOD bad guys. SoA made many (many) questionable plot decisions, and then opted to wrap the series up with SPOILERS a literal murder spree to tie up all loose storylines. Twain, it ’tweren’t.
And it appears Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone who played Deputy Chief David Hale on SoA, has ripped several pages out of the biker drama’s playbook. To maintain that Good-But-Bad edge, Yellowstone has the cowboys, under the employ of John Dutton (Kevin Costner), embody the dyed-in-the-wool American myth of Good Bad Guys Doing What Needs To Be Done To Protect The Land and Family. Which is to say they embody all the traditional traits of Heroes (courage, strength, toughness, expertise, tenderness to horses and also women) but occasionally, they just straight up perpetrate undeniable villainy. Like murders and the cover-up of murders and occasionally, murders to cover up the cover-ups of murders. Seriously heinous shit goes down and we lap it up; with every misdeed, murder and meth lab explosion skeeter-thinly justified because they’re defending The Land. Let’s just say there’s two ways of quitting Dutton ranch: you get taken to the bus station or you get taken to the “train station.” And the latter is a much more uncomfortable ride.
Now make no mistake The Land is shot beautifully, and if by season’s end you don’t want to move to Montana, learn to ride a horse and possibly brand another human being, you made need to check your red-blooded, Freedom-loving pulse. But a major ongoing plot thread is the frank and unchallenged statement that The Land was stolen from the Indigenous peoples of what is now called Montana (who are attempting to buy back the land broken-truced and false-promised away from them hundreds of years ago) so the whole time we’re tacitly accepting the notion that none of Dutton’s actions are actually legitimate. It’s a supremely odd dissonance that I’m not sure the show realizes it’s perpetuating.
And naturally such a celebration of American Exceptionalism could not breathe free without the spectre of Communism attempting to suffocate it. The Big C (and its better dressed cousin Socialism) is dogwhistled through literal Chinese tourists and a bleeding heart liberal journalist from NEW YORK (who also reads as Asian), both practically spitting the notion that “no one man should own this much land” (cue Kanye’s Power)
New, heretofore unmentioned enemies appear out of nowhere, each more vicious and violent than the last. The Duttons constantly (solemnly) intone that they’re going to have to “play dirty” with the gruff assertion they’ve been pushed to this point, never relishing the opportunity to use violence to eliminate problems. But one never gets to see anyone “playing clean” as in by the rules and under rule of law, hence the tacit endorsement of a lack of faith in the established system. And the enemies of The Land? Are usually Developers or Better Business Bureau types…who also just happen to have heavily-armed, well-trained Militias in their pockets in case the lawyers don’t deliver. The West never really stopped being Wild, I guess.
The implication here is that enemies of liberty and private property will always menace the good, hard-working people of Wherever and they must never falter in their violent struggle to protect THE LAND and their family legacy. And thus the Horrific may occasionally become Necessary. And I hope I don’t need to tell you how quickly the Necessary becomes Normal.
