Review of S01E01:
I read many of the Ten Star reviews of this series and none of them articulated in any meaningful way why this show is worth watching, just lots of "great acting" and "great writing" with nothing in the way of specifics.
I don't get the first episode, and I definitely don't get the insanely high rating for this series.
I've tried twice to make it through the very first episode of Yellowstone. I won't say that the third time was a charm because I didn't find it charming-or entertaining-in the least, nor did it make any sense, but I made it to the end. There is so much back-story thrown at the viewer that you need to have a scorecard to keep track of the plotlines and character.
First, we meet John Dutton, the family patriarch and horse murderer. He seemed to have walked away from some sort of horrific traffic mishap, but this isn't explained. Sutton tells developer Dan that Jenkins owes him a horse. Is this about the traffic mishap? And doesn't Dutton remember that he shot the horse?
Next, we get two scenes that paint the daughter as a viper. Got it. She's a huge hag. Hates horses. Then she has sex with someone I figured to be her brother as John Dutton was schooling him on how to be a cowboy, but it turns out this is Rip, a hired hand with a small weenier, at least according to the daughter. They introduced so many characters in the first episode that I couldn't tell them apart, and bot the son and Rip look very similar.
Next, we have the estranged son, Kayce, who is married to an Indian and seems to be working for the Indians except when he's killing them or executing them as he did with one guy. He has a son but has kept him from his grandfather, John Sutton. All we know of the relationship between Sutton and Kayce is that Sutton told him to leave, and Kayce left. No reasons given. He's some sort of war hero.
For a story, a handful of cows strayed on to an Indian reservation and the Indians don't want to give them back. Range war ensues but is called off at the last minute by Dutton when he sees his estranged son working with the Indians. Another clichéd plotline is the housing development cooked up by the evil outsider (I think they refer to non-Montanans as transfers, as if they aren't even American).. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has nothing on a couple of quasi-literate ranch hands who divert a mountain river with a few sticks of dynamite. Impossible is nothing in Taylor Sheridan productions as most of his work is reality-defyng.
Is this about right so far?
I don't like anyone in this episode, and don't see why I ever would. Sutton is a power-hungry creep with a ranch "as big as New Hampshire" according to one guy. Why we would allow anyone to own that much of the earth's surface is a crime in itself.
Review of S01E02:
It starts off ridiculous as can be: they duct tape an inexperienced kid to a wild stallion. I know nothing about horses, and don't care to know, but I'm almost positive that this is a stupid thing to do bordering on murder.
The next scene is a mentally handicapped guy trying to pull a one-meter wide stump out of the ground with a tractor, then he blows it up with a plastic bucket of something that he ignites by shooting it with a rifle, which I'm not sure would work. It leaves behind a crater like a 500 pound bomb from a B52 strike. Wow, this show is truly stupid.
What really gets stupid is the story. A Sutton son killed, Indian executed, and an investigation led by morons. The only thing dumber is the dialogue, like this attempt to sound heavy:
"Do it fast. This is the kind of ship that sinks everyone."
"That's the only kind of ship I ever find myself on."
Stupid, especially when you consider that his dad is the richest man in the state, so he was born with silver spoons stuck in every bodily orifice, not just his mouth.
The direction is also way to invested in the new trend of filming so much of it in extremely low light making black the color of about ninety-five percent of the screen. If you don't like images, maybe you should try radio.
Children in the forties who act like pre-teens is enough evidence to condemn John Dutton to donating everything he has to support abortion.
He drives by exactly when the meth lab blows up. Coincidences are the absolute laziest trick in writing. Why would a guy cook meth in rural Montana two meters off of a road? I thought the whole reason people lived out there was to get away from it all. He may as well put his trailer in the parking lot at Walmart. It was the dumbest plot fabrication so far in these two episodes I've suffered through, and that's saying a lot.
Then he mercy shoots a scumbag who deserves to die in agony after blowing up his family? He could have covered the guy's face and he would have suffocated. Just an incredibly stupid thing to do and a worse thing to write into a script. So he's executed two people in twenty-four hours. He also implicated his wife in the killing. Then the cop is going to admit that he did it? There is no "mercy killing" law in the USA. What he did was murder, plain and simple. It wasn't the right thing to do.
People who like this show must have a high tolerance for non-reality based stories. The writers just introduce random acts of violence just to jerk around the audience without there being any logical reason for these acts. Either people get hurt or animals die right and left, and there's nothing at all clever about how they do it.
That's it for me. I'm tapping out after two episodes.
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