Recently the free TV streamer Pluto TV -- it's free because they insert commercials, and I wish I could remember where I'd heard of that before -- began airing the first three seasons of Taylor Sheridan's modern Western Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner. I watched the first season and a few other episodes.
The post headline gives you a picture of what you're watching. Set on the sprawling Yellowstone ranch, owned and run by Costner's clan patriarch John Dutton, Yellowstone calls to mind the 1962-71 series The Virginian, starring James Drury and Doug McClure. Drury was the foreman on a ranch owned by Judge Henry Garth (Lee J. Cobb) and McClure was his top hand, Trampas. Like the Duttons, Judge Garth often faced schemes to acquire part of his land or his cattle and was always battling the folks in second place to keep them from pulling him down. The Virginian's fast draw (Drury's character never had a name) or perhaps Trampas's would finally be called on to end the threat.
Yellowstone's Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) combines Drury and McClure's character, but Dutton's daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) is a far cry from Judge Garth's charge Betsy. She's a borderline sociopath fiercely loyal to her father and other family members. She's devious, manipulative and when holding the power in a relationship clearly a bully herself. Wheeler himself has little to no hesitation about killing John's enemies when required or when John directs him to, and violence seems to be the first item in his toolkit when handling about any situation.
Borrowing a little bit from Dallas, Kaycie Dutton (Luke Grimes) is the good son, married to a local Native American teacher and father to Tate. His past as a Navy SEAL often haunts him, even though he is mostly content with life. Bad son Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) is loyal to his father but has his own ambitions that don't always parallel the family's. Dutton's recurring opponent is Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) of the nearby Broken Rock Indian Reservation. The tribe seeks the return of large portions of the Dutton ranch to their ownership.
The show offers a lot of trappings of a Western drama and characters are regularly framed against gorgeous Utah-standing-in-for-Montana scenery. A lot of the Western ideals about self-reliance, protecting your own and standing for the rights of the individual against faceless corporations or bureaucracies feature prominently. But as the other show in the headline might indicate, the people espousing these ideals rarely hesitate to set them aside if need be. The code is held most strongly when it is to their advantage, otherwise it's a tissue to be held up and imperfectly cover bloody violence.
Yellowstone suffers from the tendency to bring forth Great Philosophical Pronouncements from its characters (especially when they are framed by the aforementioned gorgeous Utah-as-Montana scenery), as well as all too frequently having them declare that the previous nasty fight wasn't nasty and now things will really get nasty. The acting hits a wide range. Costner is essentially playing himself, and while Grimes and Kelsey Asbille as his wife Monica bring a lot of layers to their characters, Bentley is all too often not much more than a handsome profile -- what's meant as conflicted appears more as wooden -- and Reilly chows down on more than her share of scenery. Perhaps Beth is supposed to be larger than life but she usually just winds up as over the top.
In more ways than one, Yellowstone also recalls the nighttime soaps of the 80s: Dallas, Dynasty, Knot's Landing and others. Perhaps its storylines are a little more realistic and perhaps its setting a little more believable than the sprawling mansions inhabited by the Ewings, the Carringtons and the denizens of Seaview Circle. And perhaps cowboy hats, Wranglers and aviator shades look cooler than the padded shoulders wielded by Joan Collins and Linda Evans.
But even so, Yellowstone seems to be a chef's salad of several other dramas, pulling violence and language from The Sopranos, outrageous family drama from Dallas and the like and the ranch-against-the-world setting of The Virginian. The seams show, the blend is off and the show...can be skipped.
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