Yellowstone Recap: The Hunter Most Hunted

That’s more like it. This has been a slow season of Yellowstone, but the penultimate episode begins to pay off the character relationships built all season long. Sure, the plot still isn’t exactly catapulting forward, and there are a million directions the finale could go. But we’re approaching a number of turning points.

One aspect of Yellowstone that I’ve enjoyed throughout this season is the warmth between John and his two biological kids. Early in the season, Kayce was his main companion on the ranch, and it was nice to see how far they’d come since the beginning of the show. Kayce left with his family, but Beth took his place as the current favorite, moving into the lodge and becoming a sounding board for John’s passions and his fears. It has been nice to see those two relationships take center stage, with past resentments falling away.

So I should’ve known one of them would go to shit. “No Such Thing As Fair” may not have a ton of fireworks in the typical sense, but the moment when Summer tells John that Beth was the one to suggest she “take one for the team” at the airport protest made my heart sink. It’s the rare story that directly carries over from the previous episode, showing the immediate and brutal consequences of the plan Beth hatched to use Summer.

There’s a pair of John-Beth conversations in the episode, one before the revelation and one after. In the first, Beth admonishes John for his rash diner vigilante moment, accusing him of ignoring the real people he should be going after. It’s a bit of a silly point, honestly, because John was actually headed to talk to the sheriff about arranging the murder of Terrell Riggins, but John doesn’t mention that. He does say, for some reason, that Riggins ordered the Dutton hits to prove his authority to rival gangs, like “an animal trying to convince other animals he’s still strong.” I’m actually not sure where he got this information — did he just assume it when he didn’t hear any information otherwise from Jamie? (For the last time, I ask: Why did Kayce never follow up with his brother about that meeting with Riggins?)

Then John makes that trip to visit Summer down at the station, where she’s facing at least 30 years in prison, maybe life. She drops the bombshell that Beth manipulated her into doing this, and he visits a diner, where he shares a tense conversation with Garrett Randall. Garrett has just voluntarily made himself scarce from Jamie’s life, knowing his time in prison could endanger Jamied’s “pragmatic progressivism” stance and tank his campaign. John still doesn’t know Garrett’s role in the hits, but his poaching of Jamie is reason enough to loath the guy. “I raised your son with love and respect, and I made him what he is today,” John says. “If he chooses to let you unmake it, I can’t stop that.” He signs off with a standard threat and heads home for the real blow-up of the episode.

In the dining room, John shouts at Beth for throwing an innocent woman under the bus. Sure, Summer went along with it voluntarily, so maybe Beth didn’t force her to do anything, but it was her push and twisted logic that convinced Summer it was the right move. Beth has an honest response to John: She doesn’t care. Her mission is to destroy the enemies of the Duttons, and an unexpected martyr for the Yellowstone like Summer could make the difference between continuing their way of life and losing their land forever. Besides, Beth points out, it’s not like John’s offering an alternative solution, with his stoic refusal to sell the land.

But John, for all his monstrous qualities, has a code, and this isn’t right. “We don’t kill sheep. We kill wolves,” he insists. “You have really disappointed me, honey. And I never thought I’d say that about you.” He suggests that she find another home while he deals with this debacle.

It’s a pretty big shake-up of the status quo for this show, all things considered. Sure, John and Beth always bicker; just last episode, she was throwing a tantrum in the same dining room. But this one feels more serious, as though John’s perception of his daughter has shifted in some significant way. And it hurts all the more after the strange but consistent camaraderie they’ve had all season. When Rip looks on with concern as Beth sobs during Walker’s performance of his (Ryan Bingham’s) song “Hallelujah,” it’s a foreboding ending. We don’t yet know how long this break will last, but it has real weight.

Jimmy’s story is much more minor, but there’s a sort of climax there, too. Again, the weekly visits to the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas haven’t been unbearable this season — in fact, they contain a lot of the peaceful, beautiful ranching scenes that are this show’s bread and butter — but they feel disconnected from the rest of the show. Luckily, they tie back into it this week, when Travis tells Jimmy the Sixes are sending him back to the Yellowstone, and Jimmy has to choose whether to stay or go.

I’ll start by saying this: I’m not yet at the point where I feel attached to Jimmy’s relationship with Emily, which is still ultimately only a week old, no matter how magical that week has been. During their banter this episode, Jimmy speculates that Mia liked him for the potential she saw in him, while Emily likes him for exactly who he is. That may be true, but it’s hard to feel heartbroken over their impending separation throughout the episode, especially since it’s clear he’ll be back before long.

Still, the final scene is nicely romantic, with Jimmy asking Emily to wait for him, at her own suggestion. And I’m still intrigued by Jimmy’s identity crisis over what makes you a cowboy. He’s attracted to the life of spectacle and fame, but Travis reminds him that the real cowboying happens when you’re alone with the animals.

I’ve accepted that Kayce’s story this season is fundamentally separate from the show’s main action, and that’s okay. If everyone else has more urgent, immediate concerns — John and Jamie running for governor, Beth scheming to tank her company’s development on her family’s land, Jimmy choosing between keeping a promise and being with the woman he loves — Kayce has kind of reached all but the top tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He’s settled down in a nice home with his wife and son, and another kid is on the way. He has a good relationship with his dad and both of his siblings. His family has been through a lot of trauma in the past couple of years, but they’ve managed to achieve some peace. Danger doesn’t feel as ever present as it used to.

Instead, Kayce focuses on the wolf he has seen four times now. Chief Rainwater and Mo insist that the wolf is his protector, his spirit animal. If he wants to understand why and when the wolf follows him, he’ll have to ask — by undertaking a four-day Lakota vision quest.

I do wish we’d get more time with Chief Rainwater outside his relationship with the Duttons; there has really been no follow-up on his potential deal with Market Equities, and it’s a bit frustrating to see him mostly serve the role of Kayce’s family’s go-to guide for spiritual remedies. That aside, I haven’t had much of a problem with Kayce’s separation from the main story this season. His scenes feel less essential than ever, but they provide a nice contrast in tone. And his absence will have enabled the biggest potential relationship rupture if John and Beth don’t make up.

This season has had its issues, and the pace is still too erratic for my tastes. But going into the finale, I’m excited to see what happens and how the stakes can be upped for season five.

The Last Round-Up

• Carter Corner: John teaches him to ride a horse and gives him a surprisingly forthright lesson about the 19th-century culling of buffaloes by the Army, which wanted to force natives onto the reservations by destroying their food source. Later, Carter plays poker in the bunkhouse, and he’s a hit. I have to say, Carter has been less of a drain on the show’s narrative energy than I expected. I think this is the perfect use for him.

• Speaking of the bunkhouse, I guess they’re back to being background characters for the rest of the season, since the Lloyd-Walker feud is over.

• The reporter on Jamie’s TV insists that “The armed robbery would have certainly led to a greater loss of innocent life had [John Dutton] not intervened,” but I’m not so sure. Do diner stick-ups typically lead to massacres? Maybe in the Yellowstone world.

• Bill Ramsey, the interim sheriff, could introduce a really interesting new dynamic to the show if he follows through on his plan to actually enforce the rules Sheriff Haskell was ignoring.