Yellowstone continues to struggle with the Kevin Costner question, but eventually finds a way forward in season 5 episode 11. Our spoiler-filled review.
Spoilers lie ahead. Our review of the last episode is here.
There’s a tiny, niggling feeling that Yellowstone hasn’t quite wrestled what to do with the absence of its top-billed star in its current run of episodes. The return of season five a few weeks ago dealt quickly with the death of John Dutton, blocking off any logical way back for Kevin Costner. Two further episodes down the line, and the show just loves talking about. It’s another ten-minute prologue basically going through the same thing for a start. Arguably an episode doing so, until the last two minutes upends it all.
Until then? Look! Kayce is still moving into his new house with Monica and Tate. Rip and Beth still like having sex, and are conducting long distance nuptials. And John Dutton is still dead, it’s just this time we go mildly Rashomon, and see a different angle. An angle that takes some of the ambiguity away, but finally unlocks a way the narrative can move forward.
Dutton’s death is now a murder investigation, and so, bluntly, here go. Yellowstone can start unleashing its bigger narrative again.
The most interesting strand of the show these past weeks has comfortably been Wes Bentley’s oily, cowardly, bound to win Jamie. Perhaps that’s why the episodes have been holding him back a tiny bit so far, figuring his plotline is the new star attraction. It still is here.
Still, we go a bit Phantom Menace with the first Jamie segment in Three Fifty-Three, digging straight into a post-credits argument over legality, land, agreements, all specific to the future of the ranch. Fun stuff.
It enforces the point that John Dutton may not be live and kicking, but his actions and his beliefs still have supporters. Gil Birmingham’s Thomas Rainwater may have had his problems with Dutton when he was alive, but he may yet be a protective force around his legacy now. We’ve not seen much of Rainwater, and there’s the ongoing admission that a way of life is changing. Rainwater’s been on the outside thus far in Season 5 Part 2, but maybe his day is coming.
Oily Jamie plays the broader game well enough for most of the episode, coming out with words about his obligations to the ranch. He’s also looking at overriding his siblings but, again, this is nothing new? Kayce coming to confront him is basically a sort of repeat of Beth doing the same thing last week.
The siblings are getting slightly short shrift so far since Yellowstone came back, though. The only new things really were some alert Kayce had while he was asleep that all wasn’t well, and Beth learning Italian. They’re still getting a better deal than Rip, who turns up in a seemingly regular flashback spot. Cole Hauser must be holding out hope for season six to happen, just so he has something more to actually do.
By then, after 50 minutes of basically treading water, recapping, throwing in a useful plot development about Jamie having to be recused from formalities, finally, finally, finally, something major happened. But at a price.
The price was Sarah Atwood, the standout character in the show of late, a whirling of not-give-a-shit-dom, who’s had Jamie on toast from the moment she met him. She’s also been something of a protective cloak for him: mess with Jamie, and Sarah may not best be pleased. Dawn Olivieri has been outstanding in the role, and what a loss she’s going to be to the show.
But look what’s been removed from Jamie’s life now. If he’s recused from legalities, then his power base has waned. And without Sarah to protect him, he’s vulnerable on multiple fronts. Dramatically, this is significant.
There’s the bigger question too: just who’s taken Sarah out? Who’s the bigger power at play? Some obvious candidates, but it does all guarantee that next week, we won’t be sitting through 50 minutes of people looking stern and/or sad, and talking about stuff that we know.
Granted, it’s the old trick of throwing in a curveball at the end of an episode to make us tune in next week. But in this instance? It’s worked, and lifted an otherwise pretty forgettable Yellowstone chapter…
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