NOVEMBER 18, 2020 – Despite our real-life struggles to avoid danger, eschew evil, and experience peace, we flock to entertainment that features terror, conflict, and villainy. I’m talking, for example, about the Xfinity series, Yellowstone, recommended to us by trusted friends.
My wife and I are now deep into the show. It offers something for everyone—progressive Democrat, Trumpian Republican (is there any other kind?), nature lover, nature hater, movie critic, movie cynic, academic, anti-intellectual, even Chinese tourists for whom nature and rugged individualism are alien concepts. The viewer loves certain characters, loves to hate others, and both loves and hates the rest. Set in a post-Obama era (his immediate successor is never mentioned), the show borrows from Bonanza but is more reminiscent of Dallas, amped up for the late first quarter of the 21st century.
Kevin Costner, also executive producer, plays the starring role—John Dutton, owner of America’s largest cattle ranch (Yellowstone) located near Bozeman, Montana. Dancing with Wolves (1990) served as perfect training grounds for Costner, who’s a natural in Yellowstone. A bevy of actors in supporting roles turn out magnificent performances too, with exceptional scripts and top-flight direction.
Dutton is filthy rich and can play dirty with and against the best of dirty players. He’s a bully-tyrant within his own family, but unlike JR Ewing, John Dutton isn’t a detestable phony and isn’t without redeeming qualities. He’s one helluva cowboy and a quintessentially American one, though the ’Mrcan flag figures nowhere on the show.
Speaking of cowboys, a collection of misfits serve as the ranch wranglers. A rough bunch, they know the ropes—except “Jimmy,” but he’s learnin’ (for comic relief).
The (adult) Dutton kids have been psychologically traumatized by their domineering father; two of them were done-in emotionally by the sudden death of their mother (thrown by a horse). No amount of group therapy can repair the damage done to these sorry souls. All the cowboys in the bunkhouse are similarly damaged goods. America is a great country.
In the outside world, Dutton has plenty of enemies, from chairman of the local Indian nation to a billionaire real estate developer from California. Real trouble brews when Indian leader and developer, distrusting of each other, join forces to destroy ranchman Dutton.
Conflict in the show runs wild, from interpersonal to legal to political to financial to . . . the natural order of things: horses vs. cattle; man vs. grizzly bear; Indian vs. cowboy. There’s very little gratuitous sex but lots of fist-a-cuff cowboy altercations, and an occasional shoot-out on the expansive ranchlands as well as on the scruffy Indian reservation that borders it.
Amidst the cartoonish elements—dinosaur bones and the ubiquitous Dutton ranch helicopter, for example—are some fairly sophisticated political and financial machinations. By ongoing efforts to destroy Dutton’s domain and the constant conflicts among a tightly wound bunch of characters well played, you’ll be wholly entertained by the series Yellowstone.
An added bonus: insight into what makes Trumpland . . . Trumpland.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
