UNLOCKED - Steer Team Six w/Chris Cabin (Yellowstone Season 1)
Support the show at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for a bonus episode every week This week Chris Cabin from We Hate Movies joins us to discuss Paramount Network's original prestige drama Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner as a wealthy rancher/business owner/politician/cop that we are somehow supposed to be rooting for. Filled with epic facebook bon mots and casual racism, Yellowstone dares to answer the question: what if a millionaire cowboy cop was also a troop? music: Daughn Gibson - The Pisgee Nest
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Alright, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Greedy land developers are responsible.
We're documenting it.
What's up, everybody?
This is your Patreon episode for the week.
Thank you so much for supporting the show.
We love you folks, etc, as always.
We have just an amazing show for today.
This is an episode that I've wanted to do for a long time.
It's something that I've Almost been, like, intimidated to do.
This felt like a grand undertaking to do.
Luckily, I had the help of an intrepid listener to sort of guide me, and I will give credit to that listener when the time is right, but We also have a wonderful guest here today, and I am so happy that he was able to join us for this adventure.
We have Chris Cabin of the We Hate Movies podcast.
Thank you so much for joining us, Chris.
Hey man, thanks for having me.
Yeah, big fan of We Hate Movies.
It was, I told you before we started recording, but it was literally the first podcast I ever listened to about six or seven years ago.
It got me through loading a lot of trailers.
Shout out to Jerry for recommending me.
We Hate Movies.
If you're a movie fan, if you like making fun of bad movies, We Hate Movies has been doing it for what, like 10 years now?
Yeah, we started in 2010.
We've just been doing it.
Wonderful show.
Highly recommended.
Thank you guys.
That means a lot.
Um, so, we are not talking about a movie today.
We are talking about Prestige TV.
Something somewhat similar to a movie, especially due to the fact that it is written and directed by a, you know, film writer and director.
Uh, we are talking about Yellowstone.
The Paramount Network original TV show, Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner as a, let's just say rancher for now, named John Dutton who owns a ranch in Montana called Yellowstone.
This is a TV show that came across, like, you know, I discovered by seeing a sponsored ad for Episode 7, Season 1, in which Kevin Costner as this rancher John Dutton
uh harasses a group of I think Chinese tourists who are on his land and then fires a gun into the air to scare them off this is this is a an episode that I've wanted to do for a long time I wasn't I had no idea whether or not The actual show was going to be worth covering.
I figured if they were advertising it based on the idea of firing a rifle to get Chinese people off your land that it might be a good show to cover for Minion Death Cult.
I talked about it in the Facebook group and I have to give a shout out to listener Kaylin for telling me what episodes were good to look at.
So thank you so much Kaylin.
We are going to be looking at episodes 1, 2, 3, and 7 with a little bit of extra info splashed in here or there because once I watched those four episodes I kind of needed to see more.
I remember you showing me this trailer, this little commercial, a while ago, a long time ago.
And I was so excited when you sent me the text that was basically like, it's go time.
We're doing it.
You've got your Yellowstone bag packed, right, Tony?
Are you ready?
Because we're about to spend $3 an episode.
It's gonna be worth every penny.
Are you ready for this?
You've got your bug-out bag for Yellowstone, right?
I was so happy.
What a beautiful time to be stuck on lockdown.
Like, best time ever is this.
Thank you so much, universe.
Well, I have to also- It all happens for a reason.
I have to also shout out Amazon Prime, because that's where we watched it.
Because for whatever reason, you can't just get a free trial to the Paramount Network.
You have to, like, have it as part of a cable package or whatever.
So, I bought the individual episodes, and then I was like, shit, I should have just bought the full season for $12.99.
But then when I went, it gave me a discounted price for the rest of the episodes.
So, I was like, alright, tight.
Oh, oh, you just changed my whole schedule tomorrow.
Okay, so Chris, so this TV series I think was created, if not created, it was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan.
In total?
Sorry?
In total.
He did the whole thing.
Usually you would have a mix-up of, you know, a couple different directors, a couple different writers.
He did this whole thing.
Yeah, it's usually like the big name writes and directs the first episode, or maybe the first couple episodes, and then hands it off to another director, at least from what I've seen.
It just says directed by Taylor Sheridan every episode, and if you're not familiar, he is the director, I don't know about writer, for Sicario, which is probably the first film I saw from him.
He directed, uh, Wind River, which is the Jeremy Renner, uh, weird... Reservation.
Yeah, well, it takes place on an Indian reservation.
It's like a crime thriller.
I haven't seen that one.
Uh, didn't he also write Hell or High Water?
He did.
Mackenzie, I think, directed that.
Interesting.
David Mackenzie.
I like Denis Villeneuve a lot, but I totally forgot that he's the one who directed Sicario.
But yeah, I knew that Taylor Sheridan had something to do with this.
Now, so you're Chris Cabin.
Aside from doing We Hate Movies podcast, aside from hosting that, you're also a movie critic.
You're a film buff.
So, what is the difference between Taylor Sheridan and Ty Sheridan?
Ty Sheridan is a vaguely... I guess he's technically a star, I guess, because he was in an X-Men movie.
I guess that technically... I mean, that's it, right?
Who is he in X-Men?
I know he wasn't Wolverine.
No, he's the young Cyclops.
Okay.
In the newer ones.
He's actually been in a few interesting movies.
He's in a movie called Entertainment with Neil Hamburger that's pretty good.
It's a really great movie.
But also in the absolutely abhorrent and doomsday prophecy Ready Player One.
Oh, that's that guy.
He's the main guy.
Yeah.
Taylor Sheridan is a guy, like many directors and writers before him, who is absolutely obsessed with his dick and men.
That's like, the masculine code is his thing.
Hell yeah.
That's in all of his movies.
He has some insecure issues, I would say, that come out in a lot of this writing.
I never saw Ready Player One.
I lost the flip of a coin and ended up watching The Lobster that night.
Better movie.
It is technically a better movie, yes I would say.
It was still a brutal experience.
Yes.
There's more eye-gouging and less references to the Iron Giant in the lobster.
And you get a good pig.
There's a nice big pig right there.
I enjoy that.
I don't need to see, like, a Battletoad running into war.
Meat is never the word.
What if your animal that you decide, when you can't find a mate, what if the animal you pick is a Battletoad?
Ooh, I mean, but do you get, oh so wait, do you just get like, can I get like a Ninja Turtle then?
Can I just get any of them?
Yeah, can you just be a Yoshi?
Yeah, oh man, a Yoshi, that'd be great.
I think you should be allowed to be a Yoshi in the Lobster Universe.
Oh absolutely, then I'm definitely going, I'm going with Yoshi for sure.
Yeah, the jumping.
It is interesting that Taylor Sheridan did this.
It's funny because I was reading reviews really quick because I wanted to find out more about the actual, not find out, but refresh my memory about how big this ranch is, how much money John Dutton aka Kevin Costner is worth, and A lot of the reviews, like on Looper.com, it was like, wow, the scrappy show that could has become a sensation.
And it's like, this fucking thing stars Kevin Costner and was written by Taylor Sheridan.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
I mean I think that was probably had to do with it wasn't immediately accepted as part of the prestige TV universe the way that like you put a new FX show out immediately it's like oh yeah yeah that's prestige TV it's on FX it has to be a prestige TV as does an HBO Max or any of that.
Yeah, Paramount really had to, like, you know, make its bones first.
They had to really, like, do the time on TV in order to get... What's up with the Paramount Network?
Sorry, we're getting off track, but, like, what's... Why does the Paramount Network a thing now?
I forget... It had weird origins.
I haven't had a TV in a long time.
Uh, so I don't know.
I did cover TV on Collider for a while, and Paramount always had just like dead-end shows or miniseries.
Nothing that really caught.
This is the first thing I think that really caught.
When I think of Paramount, I think of Indiana Jones.
That's what I think of.
But Yellowstone has titties in it.
It's weird to me to see titties.
I'm only used to seeing one mountain, one peak, with Paramount.
So it's weird for me.
The whole streaming service thing is just that side effect of people and corporations are just too rich.
It's bullshit that there's a Paramount streaming service that has its own original content just as it's bullshit that there's original Apple productions.
What the fuck?
And I'm never going to watch those.
No, don't, I'm trying to think of any, oh, I think, um, isn't, uh, Tiny World, isn't that an Apple original?
That's- I don't know what that is!
It's, dude, it's, it's a nature documentary, it's like a planet Earth thing about tiny things narrated by Paul Rudd.
It's kind of amazing.
I'm really happy that it's not just a show about little people who are even smaller than the people that were starred in Small World, because that would be like, that's not cool.
You get to hear Paul Rudd saying things like, there's like warthogs that are getting cleaned by prairie dogs or like other varmints, you know, and you get to hear Paul Rudd say things like, A new customer has arrived at the Smorgasbord.
And it's like another prairie dog shows up.
It's real cute.
Is he trying to do like an Attenborough type voice?
Or is he just doing his normal Paul Rudd thing?
It's his normal Paul Rudd thing.
And I guarantee you, the only reason they got Paul Rudd to do Tiny World, you know the answer to this, Chris?
Oh no.
Oh no.
Is it Ant-Man?
It's Ant-Man.
Oh shit.
Okay, but if they do have a free trial, I will watch that because I smoke weed and have a seven-year-old, so I think this might be prime time.
It's super cute.
It's like the Venn Diagram.
It's like the entire center part of the Venn Diagram of smoking weed and having a kid.
God damn it.
John Dutton, this character, this rancher, he's sort of portrayed as like, you know, kind of like a tough, hard scrabble kind of guy who's like fighting, you know, fighting to keep what's his or whatever.
What's his is 520,000 acres in Montana.
That's what the Yellowstone Ranch is.
It's worth hundreds of millions of dollars and also John Dutton is the Livestock Commissioner.
He's a cop.
Not only is he a millionaire, not only is he like a business tyrant, He's a fucking cop and a politician because it's an elected position.
So he's like everything that's bad.
He's extremely powerful.
That's what's... He's so powerful in the show.
Way too powerful and he's got like his son is the top cop in his cop uniform.
Like of his squadron, one of his top hitters lives with him.
Yeah.
Are you talking about Lee?
Is that the son you're talking about?
Yeah.
I mean, he's doing that on top of the actual, like, cowboy stuff, right?
Yeah.
So the title of this episode is, of course, Yellowstone, but also I have here Steer Team Six.
No.
Because what this show is, is it's not only about ranchers, it's not only about, like, landowners and hard-working men who are also fucking millionaires, and hey, they had to work that hard to become millionaires, right?
Absolutely.
It's also about, like, top-level operators who are also ranchers.
Yeah.
There's a couple scenes in here that we'll get to That showcase that spectacularly.
Yeah.
The reason we're covering it on this show is it's just good content in general, but it's so Facebook.
It's so like, there's so many Facebook, uh, like touchstones throughout the, just the four episodes that we watched.
But the main overarching thing is that these are highly competent men who are, uh, tactical in nature and also salt of the earth.
Yeah.
Like this show had this amazing effect where it's like, a little background, you know, I'm what people would consider like, you know, traditionally masculine.
I'm like a large person.
I wouldn't consider you that.
Oh, I mean like, I'm a large person who has like a beard and grew up hunting and I also grew up on like, I grew up on like a, I spent some time on a farm.
Yeah, but you got pink hair, dude.
That's the girl color.
Well now, well now, but I, you know, but I, but like this, it was after I watched the show and I realized that I'm in fact not a man.
It's important to learn.
I was like, okay, I can tell my hair pink now.
No, but like, seriously, this whole entire movie was like, even like the women are like tough dudes.
Like everyone's like a fucking greedy ass man.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we're just going to go through like plot points and just like points of interest in these episodes, uh, one, two, three, and seven.
And I will bring up stuff.
And also both of you feel free to bring up stuff from other episodes. - Yeah.
Uh, as they come up and we'll just, you know, sort of like, you know, uh, dissect it, explore it, right?
So, the first episode, episode one, which is titled Daybreak, uh, starts off with, like, the aftermath of a, uh, a huge car accident that looks kind of like a pileup, but you realize that it's just a...
Giant, like, tractor trailer that was hauling, uh, construction equipment that collided with another, like, giant truck that was hauling farm equipment, aka horses.
Uh, it's all, like, bleary aftermath sort of thing, you know, uh, sort of shell-shocked, like, uh, hurt locker maybe style you know cinematography where john dutton is like wandering around this aftermath he was involved uh in this crash and he goes i think does he go to the human the the the driver of the construction equipment first
or does he go to his horse first i I think he goes just to the horse.
I think he looks at the human.
He does look at the human, but it starts with his hand.
And he's putting his hand on the horse.
Yeah.
And like, the horse, by the way, is wrapped, the car is wrapped, literally wrapped around the horse.
I don't know how that happens.
It's a great shot.
It's like almost Cronenbergian.
Very strange.
You see the horse like just basically like almost in a standing position so you see like the the bust what would be the bust of the horse yeah and he walks up to it and he's caressing it and he's like oh it's it's okay well he doesn't say it's okay he walks up to it and he says it's not fair this life
And then it zooms out to like a proscenium shot of him facing the horse and you see the horse's body is just fucking mangled in like the trailer wreckage or whatever and you see like guts and bone from the horse hanging out the side of the trailer.
It's a tight gruesome.
It's a cool shot.
It would have been cooler if he were like walking between pieces of the horse and like you could still see like the organs like you know struggling to function even though they were detached from the body uh basically like that scene in the cell I think it would have been cooler if that had happened um but it's still pretty The thing is, the horse isn't reacting to all this.
The horse is like, it's a normal day, I'm out on the field.
It's not a good horse actor, we gotta call it out.
We're not gonna get too into the quality of acting throughout this entire show, so I'm not gonna beat down the horse for not really bringing the reactions.
I'm not gonna beat a living horse.
So he says, uh, it's not fair this life.
The best I can offer you is peace.
And then he shoots the horse in the fucking head.
Kills it.
I'm usually not this petty at all, but the thing is, I know the type of person that really enjoys this show is gonna notice that the angle that he shoots that horse at is going like through its neck and like not through its brain at all.
Yeah.
But it goes, like, through the neck and, like, just drops dead immediately, but it's like... I know that somebody watching this show is like, that's not how you kill a horse.
That's not it.
Maybe that was me, because that was me, but at the same time, like, I know that a very regular person watching this isn't going to have the same thought.
A revolver wouldn't do it, you know?
That's a shotgun job.
He would know that.
Dutton would know that if he was really a cattle man.
Um, so next we cut to a scene.
This whole first episode is sort of like a montage of different members of the Dutton family, right?
So we get John Dutton who is in this car wreck.
Uh, it's a, it's sort of like a cold open.
It's, it's, I mean, it's really cool cause like you get to see a bunch of blood and you get to see him kill something that he loves, obviously.
And that's really cool.
Um, and we cut to a sort of like courtroom drama where a sort of young, swaggering lawyer is arguing against the state.
Well, I don't know.
I think this other lawyer, does this other lawyer represent the state or represent the private developers?
I think the private developer.
Yeah.
I think it's a Danny Houston's guys against Wes Bentley's guys.
There's a talk of, like, imminent domain.
There's a lot of talk of imminent domain, which makes me think that he's arguing against some sort of, like, state, uh, state effort, but he's... The Dutton family is in good with the governor, so I don't think that's the case.
It's very weird.
It's a difference between they want, uh, somebody wants, like, A development, like houses, high-end houses, versus, I think, the other ones want condos.
Well, the condos is a joke.
The condos is like a cut that Jamie Dutton, John Dutton's son, says to the other lawyer.
They're arguing about how they want to use part of the Yellowstone Ranch to uh develop develop uh property because they want to you know make Montana this like this like vacation hub this like getaway for rich billionaires who want to live under the stars or whatever
And I think the lawyer is arguing for the state to use eminent domain to seize the land from the Duttons or something like that because it would be in the state's interest to continue developing the land to bring more people in, etc.
I think that's what's going on.
Jamie Dutton does a good job of like saying, nope, not gonna happen.
You want to expand?
Go up.
Condos.
Yeah.
And then the other lawyers like, Who's gonna want a condo in Montana?
And that's, like, the end.
So you get the sense of, like, Jamie Dutton.
He's like a, you know, fast, hot, swaggery sort of lawyer.
Then I think we cut to the daughter.
I think we cut to Beth at this point, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
We cut to Beth who's on a phone call and she's in Salt Lake, I think we find out later.
She's in like a skyscraper.
She's in an office.
She gets bothered by some peon while she's on the phone conducting some serious fucking business.
And they're like, we need you.
She's like, fuck off.
You're like, uh, we can't fuck off.
We don't have enough time to fuck off.
So then she goes into the meeting...
Where they, her company is like stripping, strip mining another company that owes them money.
It's basically like a like a Bain Capital type situation where they are just doing a hostile takeover of another company that owes them money and the the owner of the other company is like weeping like you can't take this away from me I built it with my bare hands or whatever
And Beth Dutton is like, oh yeah, well, I'm fucking hot and I have tits, and I'm going to step on you with my stiletto heel until you bleed, or I could step on you until you die.
Which one do you want?
And he's like, bleed, please, mommy.
And that's the introduction to Beth Dutton, the daughter of the Dutton family.
If I were a more cynical man, I might have seen you calling, this show calling the Big Bad Bank, Schwartz and Meyer and Croc and Eyebrow and be like, I don't know about that.
But like, yeah, this guy, you're supposed to understand that she's very smart because she knows how to say things like, I'm going to suspend dividends.
I can go down to race.
I have a 3 to 1 debit ratio and shit like that.
And I'm like, I don't care about any of this, man.
You're just trying to tell me that she's a girl boss and she's badass.
I get it.
Thank you.
This is the first of like many times that she just like shows what a badass she was.
And I like instantly fell in love with her because I thought she was somebody else.
I thought she was, um, uh, I thought she was being, for a second, I thought she was that, uh, do you know June Diane Raphael?
Yeah.
She kind of looks, I love her.
Yeah.
She's great.
I had the, I had the biggest crush on her.
So immediately I was like into it, but then I realized it's like, it's not, it's like bootleg her.
And like that's very much who she is.
She's the actress who plays Mary Watson in the new Sherlock Holmes movies.
I knew her from something.
She's in the Guy Ritchie movies.
Yes, she's in those.
And also, have either of you seen the Denzel Washington movie, Flight?
No.
Who's she that?
She's the love interest.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, that's her.
That's where she got her big break from.
She's great in this.
I don't care that you can tell she's struggling to hide her British accent.
She's great in this.
She does a really good accent.
There's one line that she delivers in this with an accent that's so crazy that we will come across.
But she walks by, the guy agrees to hand over operating whatever control of his company to her company.
And she's like, yeah, that's what I thought, you know, bitch.
And she walks by, you know, to leave the room because, you know, they've wasted enough of her time, you know.
And he says, he calls her a bitch as she's walking by and she's like, uh, I just saved your house.
I just saved your kid's education.
Why don't you say something more appropriate to me?
And he's like, thank you, ma'am.
That's what I thought, you know.
Yeah, she was hard bodied.
Do you want to spit in my mouth now?
Uh, that's her introduction.
Um, we get a meeting between Jamie and his father, Kevin Costner, John Dutton, uh, where Jamie is basically saying, Hey, why don't we sell like, I don't know, a hundred acres of our 520,000 acres so we can get more money.
So we have a lot of money and we have influence or whatever.
Uh, and John Dutton, Kevin Costner says, you got to learn when to think like a lawyer and when to think like a landowner.
Which, I don't know what that means.
Cause like, if you're a good landowner, you probably have a good lawyer.
That's probably what dictates a lot of your choices in real life.
When you're a landowner though, you have like a connection to the soil.
You walk around barefoot a lot, you stay grounded to your property and you have a sort of like
spiritual connection to the property that you can then use to like exploit other people's labor with and it's like well you know I could have money or I could have like the means to make more money I can have the means to enslave boys fresh out of prison yes so I you got to learn to when to think like like like a real man that's true that's true Gotta focus.
And that's, like, I think what a lot of the enticement of this show is.
It's like, yeah, this is a landowner.
This is a guy who, like, controls his destiny because he has 520,000 acres of land.
This is a real man, you know?
Well, this whole show, like, is...
kind of based around like you know exactly like masculinity and like principle and also like badassery and it really the whole thing and I didn't see it coming right away until you kind of get like you know into this episode it has a big like Sons of Anarchy vibe yep like it's very Sons of Anarchy it's like hey listen family like principles like you know like forgiveness knowing when to like do the the gnarly thing it's it's all it's all it's so basic
it's like these weird principles that don't really exist and thank god um but like um and like masculinity but it's very sons of anarchy didn't taylor sheridan have something to do with sons of anarchy i was gonna ask surprise me i saw something When I was doing the minor amount of research for this show that I did, I saw something about Sons of Anarchy.
Well, you know what you saw?
Beth has a British accent and so does Jax.
And they're the same person.
You know what it is?
Taylor Sheridan was an actor and he's a deputy in Sons of Anarchy.
Oh, hell yeah.
Deputy Chief, let me see this, David Hale.
Looks like he has a bunch of episodes.
It's a big role, yeah.
Yeah, he was an actor for a while before he really got into writing.
The next scene that I have is...
Beth has been called back to the ranch.
She's been, she's come home and so she's staying in like, if not staying, she's drinking in a very expensive hotel in Montana which apparently there's a lot of.
I don't know because she's at like a different nice hotel getting drunk like every episode.
And there's another man there who Uh, wants to pick her up, right?
And so he comes over and he tries to do his, like, suave, I know why you're here, you know, and he, like, sort of, he guesses, like, that she's, uh, you know, come home for a family reunion or something like that, and she just sort of entertains him while he buys her a drink or, you know,
Patronizes him basically and then he finishes and none of this is is correct of course and then she does her what I'm calling a sexy Sherlock Holmes routine ironically enough because you know after starring and or after appearing in those movies where she calls him out for all of his
Basically, personal foibles and, uh, you know, uh, personal attachments, you know, he's got a wife, kids that he leaves, uh, he, he, none of his friends are wealthy enough to actually travel, or also they have happy home lives, so they don't need to, but he's pathetic, he's a pathetic loser who, like, needs to get away from his wife every once in a while, uh, you know, calls him out, calls him out head to toe, and he's like, oh, fuck you, slut!
Yep.
Basically, you know?
And then she's like, she says, uh, I have a direct quote here.
Yep.
Good line.
You look like a real soft fuck, Ted.
All you city boys do.
Yep.
And she's not saying that you're a soft fuck.
She's saying you fuck softly and it's not cool.
You fuck like a pussy.
They also make him look like the biggest loser in the world.
They have him in these fucking shorts, man.
He looks like Jack Hannah, dude.
And nobody should be wearing these fucking shorts.
Yeah, she's like, I need a cowboy to plant a dick in me so deep you gotta pull it out with a rope like a breached calf.
You city boys, you probably try to put an iPad stylus in me.
I'm not into that pussy shit.
Once again, just like her like, Her- Claiming her bad- She's such a f- She's the toughest person in this whole show.
Yep.
She's the- She fucking rules.
Hands down the best character.
She fucking rules.
She rocks.
Yeah, she's very homophobic.
Throughout.
Yeah, yeah.
Extremely.
She still rocks.
Chick- Ladies rock, okay?
Girl boss energy.
It matters.
She's like, I'd rather- I'd rather fuck a stalk of corn than you, Ted.
At least a stalk of corn could feed a family.
Country girls make do, is what I'm saying.
So we get into like the main inciting incident for this season.
There is a Native American reservation that borders the Yellowstone Ranch.
And this reservation has just elected a new chief, a new representative, a new head of the reservation.
Okay?
And this head is this newly elected chief.
Rainwater?
I don't have his first name.
Rainwater.
Hold on, I think I have it too.
This is Jeff Bridges' partner from LRI Water.
Oh, okay.
I only started that show, that movie.
I really wanted to finish it.
It's interesting enough.
It's not something I would tell you to run and see.
Okay, it had a lot of hype to it.
Yeah, I know.
I guess I'm the dissenting voice on that one.
I'm not the biggest fan.
But yeah, I can't find the name.
But it was, yes, Rainwater is what he's referred to throughout this show, it seems like.
So he has been elected to lead the reservation, and I don't have the specific tribe that the reservation is made up of.
I don't know if it was his platform when he got elected, but it's definitely his mission to have a fight, to be contentious with America, to be contentious with John Dutton specifically.
Yes.
So, the way that that plays out in these first few episodes is John Dutton's cattle have, quote, wandered on to Indian land.
They've wandered on to the reservation, which makes them the property of the reservation, right?
You can't go on to Native American land and take the cattle back.
We find out that, I don't know if we know that he's a Dutton at this point, But there is another son, Casey Dutton, who is like a real sort of, like, I don't know, he's kind of the most cowboy out of all of them, from my like limited understanding of what that word actually means.
He's living on the reservation with his Native American wife and their child.
He's living in a trailer and he's a wild horse tamer, okay?
Yeah.
And, like, there's a scene where a, like, construction company or some sort of development company is trying to, you know, work on a piece of land and there's, like, a wild bronco in the middle of the land that won't let anybody get near him or whatever.
So they call Casey Dutton to come get the horse or whatever.
And I think, like, Ba with the Ba plays, like, while he grabs the horse.
There are some interesting music cues, I will say.
Some good song choices.
The country in this show sucks so hard, like, the country, it sounds like, uh, that song, like, How to Save a Life, but like, the fray, it just, it all sounds like that, you know, it sounds like the most pop, pop country.
You can think of and so You see like some like it's Casey's brother-in-law say we got a job for you later You find out that it was him who it was he who led?
his dad's cattle on to the Native American reservation in order to like, you know spark this dispute and Yeah.
And he's supposed to be, like, the brother is supposed to be a piece of shit.
Like, I mean, I'm watching this and I'm like, I like this guy.
This is my kind of guy.
But they are clearly trying to tell you he's an asshole.
The brother-in-law.
Yeah, the brother-in-law.
No, it was very confusing.
I was like, oh, this guy's tight.
But you're right, though.
Like, to people like us, we pick up, like, these are good things that he's doing and saying.
But to people watching the show who like these other characters, like, oh, this guy sucks.
It's the scene where they're talking about the medals.
They make him seem like an asshole for being like, how do you get that medal?
And he's like, well you gotta kill someone, don't you bud?
Which I think is a thing to do, it's real.
But the tone of the show is like, we're not supposed to talk about that.
He's being a jerk right now.
He's portrayed as basically a Native American thug.
That's like what the brother-in-law, who's an actor I've seen in other things, but I can't remember.
I didn't look him up.
He's been around for a while.
Yeah, but he's portrayed as basically like a thug or a gangbanger, a Native American gangbanger.
But he's also like a vet.
And he makes a joke at some point, like you need to respect your veterans or something like that.
Yeah.
And then the conversation that you're talking about, Tony, they're in like his home or Casey's home.
And there's like a shadow box on the wall that has all the medals.
And it's very confusing.
You don't know whose home this is or like who the medals belong to.
And there's a third party, a third friend who's like, oh, what do you get that one for?
And he's like, well, you get that for killing people, right?
Right, Casey?
You know?
And then.
The friend also says, well, what do you get that one for?
And he's like, oh, you get that one for, uh, an act of valor, right?
You know?
And so like, I don't know whose medals these are.
Like, like they're both going back and forth over like ownership, like props over the medals.
And I'm like, whose medals are they?
Did they, did they like group the medals together?
Did they like pull the medals?
Um, so, uh, yeah, the cattle, the cattle supposedly wandered onto Indian land.
There's like a showdown between, uh, John Dutton's, you know, uh, his, uh, livestock police and, uh, the, the Native American police.
Oh, the Bureau of Livestock Management.
Which is a note that I have in here because the news just really casually says like BLM operatives versus whatever, whatever.
But that's Bureau of Land Management.
That's different.
Oh, that's different.
Okay.
Yeah.
I thought, I thought it was like, cause I'm like, I'm like no one, if you hear BLM, I'm only thinking one thing.
And like the news, anytime past a certain year that you're going to have to qualify what that means if you're not talking about Black Lives Matter.
Maybe like the Livestock Commissioner is underneath the umbrella of BLM or something like that.
He's definitely the Livestock Commissioner.
John Dutton is.
But BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management, which would make sense.
They would go hand in hand.
Yeah.
So there's like a showdown between, you know, the livestock management and the Native American police, and they leave without getting the cattle back.
And then there's a conversation, right, between John Dutton, Kevin Costner, and like an old Native American patriarch, who we later discover is the grandfather of Casey's wife.
Um, and this conversation is very interesting to me.
Uh, Kevin Costner says, Jesus, I don't see how anyone gains from all this.
Meaning like the dispute.
I don't see how anyone gains from, you know, you taking our, our cattle.
And it's funny.
It's just like, I don't see how anyone gains from enforcing the law when it doesn't benefit me.
I can't possibly see how anyone gains from this.
And then the, I don't have his name here, but you know, the grandpa says, me either, but he don't think like me, meaning the new chief.
He don't think like me.
He grew up in Denver, went to some big university.
Now he thinks like you.
Yeah.
And so there's two things that are very interesting about this exchange to me.
A, this exchange is meant to be like, oh, Kevin Costner has an Indian friend.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is how he's not racist is because he has like a normal Indian friend who was like cool with him and wouldn't have ever, you know, kept his cattle if they wandered on to Native American land or whatever.
But then also it sets up Rainwater as a villain and it tries to justify, in my mind, him being a villain by saying, oh, he's white.
Yeah.
He went to a white university, he went to this, so now it's okay for him to be the bad guy.
There's some reference early on where he's like, I didn't even know that I was native.
Like, I didn't even know I was native.
He thought he was Mexican.
Yeah, he was adopted.
His adopted parents told him he was Mexican because they didn't want him to face even more persecution.
Part of painting him as a villain is painting him as a brutal capitalist.
That's part of the whole reason why they try to make him look bad.
It's because he's not about the land, he's about getting that money.
Yeah.
That's exactly like it.
You can, they paint it that he's doing it for cruelty.
Yeah.
Like he wants to make him hurt.
Like that's his primary goal.
It's not to get his land back that he rightfully should.
It's that he fucking, you know, he's, he, he wants it for the wrong reasons.
He's doing it for the wrong reasons.
Right, he's being like vindictive or petty or something like that, but it's like, I don't know, wanting to hurt this dude, this rancher who owns 520,000 acres, it sounds pretty righteous to me.
That sounds cool.
See, whose family they go on and say like, historically took this land, like historically like stole this land.
Well, Kevin Costner isn't the one, I mean, even if like, Buying up land, even if like cultivating land or however you want to put it, even if that were like a virtuous quality, Kevin Costner's character isn't the one who did it.
Like his father is the one who, like he inherited this land from his fucking father.
Eventually we do meet the father.
Dabney Coleman plays him.
Interesting.
But I don't know when that happens.
Uh, yeah.
I, I was very confused by a couple parts of, because it flashes, it starts flashing back.
Um, and I was very confused by the flashbacks at, at some points.
Um, okay.
So.
Kevin Costner goes to a rodeo, he talks to another old cowboy, another old salt-of-the-earth kind of guy.
The guy wants Kevin Costner to hire his grandson.
Oh, this is the cattle auction.
The rodeo is in the second episode.
This is cause he's up in like the players lounge at the cattle auction with the governor.
Yeah, you're right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
This is the cattle auction.
Uh, the, the old, the old guy who's got some sway, the other old cowboy has got some sway tells John, you know, I want you to hire my grandson or whatever.
And then, uh, uh, John Kevin Costner says, all right, but we're going to do things my way.
I'll hire him alright.
I'll hire him.
And then the other guy says, I remember when your way was the only way and the world was better for it.
We had no clue how grim that line was.
I remember when your way was the only way and the world was better for it.
We drank out of the hose.
We pulled up our pants.
We didn't read phone.
We read book.
We took our hat off when we came in the room.
You'd get your jollies just by having a Laffy Taffy.
Not smoking a jazz cigarette.
That's all you needed for entertainment.
All you needed for entertainment was a Laffy Taffy or a Mr. Goodbar and you were happy to get it.
For hours.
I played Jax for three weeks straight and I was happy to do it.
Okay, so more on that later.
We get John Dutton going to visit Casey, who I learned later, Casey's name is spelled K-A-Y-C-E?
Yep.
Yep, absolutely.
So I'm assuming like Jamie is spelled J-A-Y-M-E?
Undoubtedly, it has to be.
I have to imagine that that's because they allowed Kevin Costner to actually put the names on the birth certificates and he just doesn't know how to spell anything.
So it's Case instead of Casey.
It's like in California you name your kid Montana.
In Montana you name your kid Casey but you spell it all fucked up like this.
Jennifer with a W somehow.
Um, yeah, Jennifer, but it's like G-E-O-N.
I can't talk shit.
My kid has a superfluous E in her name.
That's tight, though.
I remember, like, filling out the birth certificate, and I was like, ah, shit, we gotta spell it this way, because, like, this is how your mom's name is spelled, and all your aunts, and your grandma.
Ah, shit, okay, alright.
Here you go.
Have fun never getting a keychain.
Yeah, but that's your kid.
We're not gonna make fun of your kid.
We're gonna make fun of the fictional dumb kid.
Nah, you can make fun of my kid.
She's tight.
She can take it.
She's got grit.
She'll tell you to suck it like Beth.
John Dutton goes to visit Casey, who is not only living on the Indian Reservation, but also very clearly estranged from his family, from the Yellowstone Ranch, from the John Dutton empire, or whatever.
And I'm assuming it's because he decided to marry a woman.
I think so.
I'm assuming he got disowned by John Dutton because he decided to marry a woman and have a kid instead of being a permanent Yellowstone slave.
I think it was because he married a brown woman.
I think it's because he married a native woman.
I mean, that's the more obvious- And, like, thin the bloodline.
Because, like, I think that's the only thing getting in the way here.
That's the more obvious take, but if you look at every single, like, rancher on the John Dutton property, including both of his sons, they're all bachelors.
Everybody on this fucking plantation, essentially, is a bachelor who just has to answer to John.
John Dutton is, like, their, like...
Like, wife.
They're like surrogate, like, like, partner, essentially.
They're king.
I mean, like, he just, he rules over all at this point.
And it's, and I will jump forward.
Well, no, I'll wait.
Okay.
Remind me to jump forward later with, with Casey and why he was actually disowned because I saw that episode and it's, it's very interesting.
Um, but, and it was just funny because John Dutton visits Casey, uh, to want, he's trying to see his, his grandchild, right?
He wants to have a relationship with his grandchild and I must remind the listener that estranged grandparent grandchild relationship is not natural.
Okay?
The saddest episode, the saddest Facebook group that we never did is about grandparent grandchild estrangement.
Oh no!
And that is what this segment of the episode is about.
It's about not being able to see your grandchild because of your relationship with your own child.
We decided not to do the episode after we found posts from my dad.
It's okay to laugh at that, guys.
It's fine.
That group is all about, like, grandparents diagnosing their children with narcissistic personality disorder.
It's fucked up.
I can't, no.
Oh, fuck.
It's basically like a group therapy, like a legit group therapy Facebook group.
We couldn't cover it.
That would be a lot.
It's where grandparents go when they realize that Facebook is not malfunctioning, that their kids are in fact getting the messages.
That's where they go from there.
It's the final frontier.
They trusted the plan a little too far.
We'd rather not know the truth and just think that Facebook is not working.
Um, so that's that scene.
Uh, Casey is like, no, fuck you.
You don't get that or whatever.
We don't know their reason for their relationship.
John Dutton kind of knows that Casey is the one who rounded up the cattle and moved them on to Indian land.
Uh, but Casey says he didn't know.
He didn't know it was, you know, uh, Yellowstone cattle when he did it or whatever.
Yeah.
Um, next we get a scene where Rip, who is like a big, you know, bruiser enforcer for the Yellowstone Ranch, shows up at a sort of like, I'm gonna say like a, a Breaking Bad Jesse type trailer.
This is like, this is what's, what's Jesse Pinkman?
This is like, uh, Yellowstone's Jesse Pinkman.
Who's living in a trailer his shits all trashed and you kind of infer that it is that Like other ranchers grandson who who asked for him to be hired by John Dutton.
Yeah Rip fucking a perfect circle is blaring out the door Like this guy is already, you know, there's problems You know, he's a bit disturbed I mean like if it's Pewcifier, that's one thing.
They play Pewcifier later in the show.
Is that how you say it?
Hold on, hold on.
I did not know that's how you said it.
That's how I've always said it.
Is it Pewcifer or Pewcifier?
I've heard Pucifer.
The worst relationship I've ever been in my entire life was a huge Pucifer fan and would say Pucifer and I would love it if they were saying it wrong the entire time.
I think everyone of us is wrong.
I think it's Pucifer like Lucifer.
Okay.
As long as they're wrong, I am stoked.
I was saying, I've never actually listened to them.
I've thought it was Pucifier like Pacifier, but I think I'm adding an extra I in there.
I think it's Pucifer like Lucifer.
That makes sense.
That makes sense.
But yeah.
It's like, it's like evil, evil pussy.
It's evil pussy.
I think is the joke.
Yeah.
That sounds like, uh, what's his name?
Maynard James?
I'll tell you what.
That's a Maynard James Keegan joke for sure.
I'll tell you what, that was not a misnomer in this situation.
I've heard they're loud.
I've heard they're a loud band, so I'll give them credit for that much at least.
That's cool.
That's usually enough for me.
Yeah.
So Rip, who's like a big sort of bruising cowboy bouncer enforcer type guy, works for Yellowstone, has like a sick oil black denim jacket with the Y embroidered on the breast.
Yeah, it is a sick jacket.
It's pretty sick.
He shows up at, I don't know this kid's name.
I'm going to call him Yellowstone Jesse Pinkman.
He shows up at his house, you know, he's like a skinny white shaved head like, you know meth guy meth looking guy And he says you're you're on your third strike, you know, what do you want to do?
you know, well, I could call the cops and take you to take you to prison right now or You could go to work for Yellowstone and The kids like whoa, you know, I don't know.
What are you talking about?
And then you find out that that for him to work for Yellowstone in order to get this quote chance to work for the million dollar the multi-million dollar ranch he has to accept a brand on his chest he has to accept the letter Y the same brand that all the Yellowstone cattle have on his chest
And once he understands what's going on, that he's actually being offered a job from John Dutton in the Yellowstone Ranch, and that he will have to take this brand in order to, like, show his loyalty or whatever, his response is, why does John Dutton care about me?
Why does he care enough about me to leave a mark on me?
You know?
It's very much like he branded me and it felt like a kiss.
Yeah.
It's very much like that.
Really creepy.
And then the Rip says he doesn't, but he will.
He'll learn to love you.
He'll earn it.
You'll earn it.
Do you guys know who this is?
The guy who plays Rip?
He looks familiar.
He looks a little familiar, but... He's Cole Hauser.
I've heard that name before, yeah.
He's the... I mean, there's a few things you might know him from.
He was big in the 90s.
He's a side character in Dazed and Confused.
He's one of Ben Affleck's guys in Good Will Hunting.
And he's the villain in Too Fast, Too Furious.
Yes.
He looks humongous in this.
He ate a lot of protein.
He's huge.
Who's the guy who directed Iron Man?
Jon Favreau?
He looks like a buff Jon Favreau to me.
He does a little bit, you're right.
Um yeah so he says he's gonna brand him in order to make him worthy of a minimum wage job on a ranch and he tells him the the kid decides that he's gonna do it instead of going to prison and instead of wasting his life listening to a perfect circle he's gonna he's gonna take this brand uh and uh rip says take it like a man and don't scream
And then they brand him for a long time.
Which leads us to our next discussion which is like the problem of gangs and gang violence and black-on-black crime.
Now that is a problem.
Plaguing America.
This is like the most like gang shit ever.
This shit's nuts.
This is like small business tyrant to the max.
It's small business tyrant but it's a fucking millionaire forcing you to brand yourself for $400 a week.
Which is what we find out later is what the ranch hands make.
The attitude they're saying is like, he's tough but fair.
And I'm like, but he's burning symbols of his ranch into people.
That's not tough but fair.
That's psychotic.
Just plain and simple.
People have like refugee status protection in America for this exact stuff in other countries.
And it's later shown that, like, not everybody who works for John Dutton has the brand.
Yeah.
It's only, like, the most privileged and the most loyal to the family who got a second chance.
But they had to prove that they were worth the second chance by getting branded.
So it's like this weird sort of cult it's a very very cult like mindset among the few people who have gotten like you're you're elevated you're you're more important you're more special because you suffered essentially.
I'm just waiting for the day, like the episode when Casey's son gets branded and he's just got a happy tear in his eyes like finally it's the day.
It's episode 3 season 2 and he turns 10.
So, later on, this is an episode that wasn't on our docket, but I did see.
We see when Rip got branded, eventually.
We see why he got branded, because he opens his chest to show that he also has the Y on his chest.
Uh, and he's like, you know, this is a mark of pride.
Like, you know, uh, it's, it's not a, it's not a violent cycle that we're perpetuating from generation to generation.
Uh, it's actually a mark of pride, you know?
And later on we get a flashback to
A kid waking up covered in blood to see his dead brother on the other side of the room and then you hear a struggle in a different room and the kid like comes to his senses gets a determination grabs a knife and there's an there's an adult man who is like beating a woman to death and like stabbing her and then the kid ends up stabbing the man to death.
That kid runs away.
A younger John Dutton played by a different actor, and this is why a different flashback was confusing to me, because the 90s John Dutton, the 90s Kevin Costner character is played by a totally different actor when we all knew what Kevin Costner looked like in the 90s.
That was kind of like his heyday, you know?
And the actor who plays him from the 90s is Josh Lucas, who people know.
He's been around forever.
Is this a new character?
What the fuck is going on here?
I could see him going on to get Kevin Costner-like plastic surgery later on in life.
Well, it was only in this flashback that I realized he was supposed to be Kevin Costner because he's got the Commissioner badge around his neck.
He's got the Livestock Commissioner badge.
So I was like, okay, this is like Kevin Costner younger.
A different person calls him out because there's a stowaway in his barn, etc.
It's the young kid who stabbed the adult assailant.
That adult assailant was the kid's stepdad who murdered the whole family or whatever.
The kid had nowhere else to go.
John Dutton's like, you know, he's he's a cool like smart guy so he figures out who this kid is based on a police report about a missing son, you know, from a family that was slaughtered or whatever.
And so the kids got nowhere to go.
And so John Dutton, in all his mercy, in all his grace, decides to employ the kid.
Decides to employ this child on his farm.
But, to prove himself, you gotta brand the kid.
You gotta put a Y on the kid to make sure that he's cool before you'll give him an under-the-table, completely illegal child labor job.
And then later be okay with him plowing your daughter, I guess.
Right, because that kid grows up to be Rip.
Whatever.
Rip, uh, yeah.
The name.
Rip Van Buff.
I mean, Jesus Christ.
The thing about people is that people are a lot like cattle, and wild horses are a lot like wild people, and a pedigree is a thing, and that you know that if you were to come across the child of Chris Benoit, you're going to have to break him real early.
Well, I think Chris Benoit already did that.
No, one of them got away and went on to work on a ranch with John.
That's... That's the story you're going with?
Yeah.
Uh, yeah, and I just love that this is our cool guy.
This is, like, our main honorable... anti-hero, question mark?
And this is something that I want to, like, explore at least briefly, because we got two other episodes to get to.
Uh, but...
I'm so curious as to what they're going for with this John Dutton character because I haven't seen a lot of like prestige TV or a lot of popular TV so in my mind I'm like you know I already said Jesse Pinkman my main reference for a lot of this show is like Breaking Bad I'm seeing a lot of like oh a good man forced to do bad things
When I think of that that theme or that cliche I think of like Breaking Bad but when we encounter John Dutton like we get a flashback to where he was bad.
We get a flashback to where he was already an insane piece of shit who branded his employees because they had already experienced hardship.
Like it's not only like Oh, to work on this ranch, you gotta be loyal to us, so you have to take the brand.
It's like, no, you already had to kill your stepfather and watch your family die, so I don't really trust you.
I'm gonna need you to take a brand to prove that you're worthy of, again, a minimum wage job.
I mean, John Dutton, I think the thing I thought of, and it's a big prestige thing, is succession.
Uh, this, to me, this is exactly, it's like Succession Without the Jokes, essentially.
It's a different kind of, you know, wealthy asshole, but it's the same kind of guy.
And whereas that show is like...
Uh, you know, he's a piece of shit and he hits that kid in that episode.
But it's kind of sexy how much of a piece of shit he is.
Whereas this one, it's not.
Like, it's not sexy that he's doing these things.
It's what a man has to do.
Yeah, there's no choice here.
I don't think he's much of an... I think you're supposed to like him.
Absolutely.
And I don't know why you would cast Kevin Costner if you didn't want people to like him.
This is all tough, Dad.
This hurts me more than it hurts you.
I wish there was another way to do this, but I have to be brutal, and it takes a special man to be able to withstand that.
Yeah, and those guys are running out these days.
The Danny Hustons are running things now.
It's not Kevin Costner anymore, and it's sad.
Danny Huston, who is the real estate developer, right?
Yeah.
He tells Kevin Costner, John Dutton, that, like, you know, there's not men like you anymore.
Like, even as an adversary, he has to admire John Dutton based on his, like, virility and masculinity and, you know, his true grit, let's just say.
But it's funny because, like, The sort of fucked up stuff that it happens you know to perpetuate or to further the interests of the Yellowstone Ranch like never seem to come from John Dutton personally.
They never seem to like It doesn't seem like anything he has to struggle with or anything he has to decide on.
It just seems like a matter of fact.
And I think that's, while it doesn't make for, in my mind, good television, It's a more honest portrayal of what it's like to be a fucking multi-millionaire.
It's just like, this is how we do things.
This is how we exploit other people.
This is how we muscle our way into more wealth, more land, or whatever.
But it's Kevin Costner...
who has like glimpses of this darker side where you see in flashbacks where he's like reasoning with a young man like you know you have to like show your but it's not even portrayed in a weird like eerie light it's more like we're all saying it's more portrayed in like a fatherly light you know you have to wholesome there's a wholesomeness to it Yes, exactly.
There's like a traditional aspect to it.
This is tradition in the family.
You have to do this.
The darkest parts of the Kevin Costner character that I've seen are when Beth, later on in the series, is absolutely like breaking down because she's an alcoholic.
She's addicted to pills.
She's like a high-functioning addict.
And the brother, the lawyer brother Jamie is like, Beth is like fucking spiraling.
Like she's trying to do what you want her to do and she is like gonna have like, she's gonna kill herself or she's gonna do something insane and Kevin Costner's like, well we need her.
Well, we need her.
And Jamie's like, why do you need her?
I can do what she needs to do.
And he's like, no, Beth can be evil.
And what we need right now is evil.
That's the closest thing you get to Kevin Costner actually being a Machiavellian type character.
The rest of it is him being like a wholesome patriarch from yesteryear who is like trying to be hard on his kids or trying to be hard on his employees to instill values on them and couple that with the fact that we all know Kevin Costner and he's second only to maybe Tom Hanks in the role of America's dad
That it's just such a strange character that we're supposed to see him as an anti-hero or something when in reality he's like almost softening the image of a billionaire tycoon like big business rancher.
Narcissist.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Is there a scene where he like plays baseball at all yet?
Have you seen a scene where he's like playing catch?
I don't think they could do that because that would totally ruin that image of him.
There's scenes of him with his grandson, with Casey's kid, where he's teaching him how to throw a rock into the fucking horse trough.
You can't put a baseball glove on Kevin Costner and expect that character to be taken seriously as a hard character.
He's not, but he's not even portrayed as a hard character, like he's portrayed as like a strong boss or whatever, but he's like, the whole character is like him being a grandpa, where it's everything about him being a complete asshole is in the past, and like how he fucked up with his children.
and it's him trying to like right those wrongs with the next generation which is mostly Casey's kid Tate or whatever and so it's just all this endearing shit about him taking the grandchild fishing or him like teaching him how to start a fire or like throw a rock into the horse trough and teaching him how to arc the rock correctly it's so bizarre to I think they're going for an anti-hero.
I haven't seen Succession.
I'm imagining it's sort of like an anti-hero like, oh I don't like this character but I respect him sort of relationship between the viewer and the show.
That's what it's trying for, I would say.
I mean, like, the thing with this succession is, I think what it's trying to do is to try to, like, you know, what's really good about these people is that they know how to throw a good insult.
Like, that's what's cool about them, is they have a good line for everything, and they don't have to care about anything.
They don't really get at the ugliness, and when they do, they try to make it sexier than it should be.
Whereas I actually feel like Yellowstone's more accurate in the dispassionate level of it.
Like, Kevin Costner doesn't enjoy anything.
Yeah.
Like really like he's always miserable even when he's like just had sex or just about to have sex he seems miserable and I'm just like oh well that's exactly it because you've been drained of any enjoying anything part of life other than your consolidation of power.
If that were the purpose of the show, to show how like the pursuit of wealth or the pursuit of land was ultimately like hollow or something, I would like this show much more.
The show's entertaining, don't get me wrong, but the show very much seems to be like about a man trying to establish his legacy or perpetuate his
Like, pass along his gains to the next generation and them being sort of unfit for this, like, somehow being a cowboy is portrayed as being, like, a landowner is portrayed as being a mogul.
That's like the line that the show tries to draw, is that being a real man is being a cowboy, is being a landowner, is being a mogul.
That's the line that's being drawn where his son has pursued law and politics, his daughter has pursued finance, his other son, Lee, has pursued management of the land.
But not the desire to expand and manage an empire or whatever.
Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to get this out while I'm thinking about it.
John Dutton, I think I said this before we started recording, John Dutton is a millionaire, at least.
He might be a billionaire.
Could be.
I think he's a hundreds of millionaire at least.
The Yellowstone Ranch is said to be, in the show, the largest ranch, the largest conglomeration of land owned by a single person in America.
He's like the Warren Buffett of ranching, right?
Yeah.
So he's a millionaire.
He's a business owner who's working his people for $400 a fucking week.
They're the only people we see who actually working.
He is a politician in the form of an elected, uh, committee.
Did I say this on this while we were recording or is this before?
Yeah.
No, you said, I mean, you, you definitely mentioned that he's part of the, uh, The livestock commissioner is probably under the umbrella, but he's also a cop.
He's also enforcing the livestock whatever policies.
He is for things that are bad.
He is, in my mind, he is the ultimate piece of shit.
He's the ultimate scum of the earth.
Extremely.
He's a politician, he's a millionaire, he's a cop, and he's a business owner.
These are the worst things you can be in my mind.
And it's Kevin Costner.
It's Kevin Costner playing these.
And it's like, all the anti-hero aspects of this show are just the normal shit you do when you're a fucking landowner, or when you're a politician, or when you're a business owner, or when you're a cop.
And everything else is informed by Kevin Costner, America's stepdad, question mark?
America's, like, second dad?
Yep.
Trying to be a good grandfather.
So, I don't like this show.
I don't know what this show is exactly trying to do.
It's entertaining, but I don't like, I don't think I like what it's trying to say.
It's very bad.
I would say it's terrible.
I mean, you hit it right on the head.
Like if they were more aware of the fact that he's a terrible, or if they were just trying to underline the fact that he was terrible, maybe it would work.
But since they are insistent on him being a good guy, a tough but fair type of guy, it doesn't work.
And the other thing he's clearly trying to do and what they're like the show is trying to do, which is really disgusting, is like, John Dutton clearly thinks he has validated the theft of land.
Yes.
That is a huge thing with him.
He thinks he has made a good case for the white people taking the land.
And you're supposed to believe that, to a certain degree.
You're supposed to think that he did a good job with taking the land.
And I know you want to say something, Tony, but real quick, just to respond to what Chris, you said, is that I think Kevin Costner's a lib.
I think in real life, Kevin... Oh, in real life, yeah.
In real life, Kevin Costner's a lib.
So it's weird that he's chosen to take this like sort of adversarial Republican role.
I think the Livestock Commissioner political slot he's filled is a Republican position.
I think he has the Republican backing.
So it's weird that he would take this role that, I mean, maybe he's just, you know, he just thought it would portray an antihero better than it does.
I don't know.
I think a lot of that too is, I mean at one point he does, he says like get the Republican Party on the line to like get his back at one point in one of the episodes and I think he he wanted to take this role not to be a conservative Republican but to be like a man of the earth and like a landowner and like this like you know this salt of the earth like rancher you know family first type character and he just knew that at any point
and this plot he couldn't say like get the democratic party on my on the line because like we need their help with this like with this cattle we need you know even though i'm sure that you know the democratic party is fucking miserable when it comes to those things um it's just not it doesn't work for that um but like the whole thing with this character it's like we we should have established the beginning we kind of did this isn't really for It's not for me.
It is for like conservatives and like not even conservatives but just like American families who really believe that if I buy 10 acres in Montana my kid can turn that 10 acres in Montana into 500,000 acres You know, it is that American dream.
It's like, if I buy that land and we just put our nose to the grindstone and buy some of the right cows and have a couple good seasons, I can be Kevin Costner's character.
Or my kids can be.
Yeah, and you're, well, I think, like, that's the other thing, is I'm like, do you really want to portray your kids as being these, like, they also all suck.
Like, even, I mean, Casey can't stop killing people.
He's killing people throughout this show.
But of course they suck.
They suck because they're under the age of, like, 36?
Yeah.
Like, so they have to suck.
Yeah.
Like, even other people who are under that age who are of this mentality think that people under that age suck.
So like, of course the kids suck.
You know, even the one who's like a badass operator vet is all fucked up because like his loyalty is weird.
Yeah.
So we get, we get a lot of like pretty good, like Facebook points, like, uh, uh, stuff about how, like it's also, I will say this season heavily mirrors the King of the, the King of the Hill episode where they go to Montana.
Anybody familiar with that episode?
It's been forever since I watched it.
It's a newer episode.
It's like a season 10 episode or whatever.
Peggy's family is from Montana and so they all go to visit and it turns out that Peggy's mom is losing the farm, losing the ranch because of Henry Winkler.
Because Henry Winkler has bought a new million dollar home and is not allowing the family access to the river to transport their cattle or whatever.
It's very similar to this series.
It's very interesting.
Do you guys know anybody from Montana?
No.
People from Montana fucking love Montana.
I think it's cool.
I like everything I've heard about Montana.
Montana is great, but people from Montana love Montana.
Montana is like its own thing.
I mean, Alex, you live in a city where there's two Montana-themed bars.
That's true.
We went to one together.
Yeah.
And we went there with somebody whose family was from Montana, and that family loves Montana, and like, it's God's country.
They live in California, but they love California.
Name a bigger sky than the one in Montana.
I dare you.
Goddamn, that's true.
I don't think you can.
I don't think you can.
I mean, the two places I think of are Montana and Wyoming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like a big guys and like and having similar of this kind of person who like vaguely like doesn't also gives me the sense of a guy who's like into environmentalism only up to the point like he'll buy a Tesla maybe.
Yeah.
But, like, he's not gonna do anything, like, he's not gonna, like, cut emissions or anything, shit like that, on anything that he actually does.
It's just gonna be his car he owns.
There's too many dually dodges in this show for me to believe that Jon would buy a Tesla.
I guess that's true.
I guess that's the thing is the cowboy thing does not allow for a Tesla.
Well, I mean, being as that, you know, cattle in America is one of the number one sources of emissions and it wouldn't do much to, you know, to delete that.
So, you know, just, you know, your friendly vegan chiming in.
Like in the episode, in that King of the Hill episode, they get a rental to drive to, you know, they fly to Montana and get a rental, but they don't get the rental that Hank wants, and instead they have to get like a Lexus SUV or whatever, and so Hank's all embarrassed about driving it to the ranch, and they make fun of him.
They call Hank Hollywood in the episode.
And it's funny because the real estate developer in this series, he pulls up to whatever, like, you know, Main Street is in that area of Montana in a fucking Lexus SUV.
Like, it's very pointedly... Oh, no accidents here.
They saw that episode.
These are the yuppies, these are the developers, or whatever.
I gotta go with this one exchange because it's so fucking Facebook.
Casey takes his son to get ice cream at like the Main Street in in Montana and it's like you know bustling it's it's like it's like basically Melrose at this point right the show wants you to believe that and so they're getting ice cream and the kids like what's ice cream this is great I haven't had any of this because we're cowboys you know I hate child actors and this kid is like the epitome of why I hate child actors.
This kid sucks at acting so bad.
It's the fucking worst.
So they get ice cream and Casey is cursing under his breath about transplants.
Fucking transplants or something like that.
And his son Tate is like, Daddy, what's a transplant?
And Casey's like, oh, it's a really bad super group that had like one hit, uh, but it kind of still sucks.
It's like, you know, I mean, I guess if, if you want to call it punk, maybe it's like pop punk.
Um, no, he says, uh, it's a transplant.
A transplant is a person that moves to a different place and tries to make the new place look like where they came from.
And then the kid says, that don't make no sense.
And the reason the kid's saying that is because he's like, that's what grandpa says you did to me and mom's people.
Grandpa keeps on calling you a transplant.
Which really doesn't make sense.
No, the grandpa I can see, the grandpa that I'm allowed to see says that.
It's very like an old-timers Facebook meme, you know?
And they're outside of like an annoyingly named, like, it's not a Ben & Jerry's or a Haagen-Dazs or a Baskin-Robbins.
It's Churn, a specialty ice cream shop.
And I'm just like, Jesus, man.
You didn't have to go this far.
They nailed it with that.
That was great.
This is like... Go ahead.
I'm just gonna say it is kind of like the bad King of the Hill.
Like every observation in this series has already been made better by King of the Hill.
Like there's whatever fake Cold Stone ice cream like thing is in King of the Hill and Hank is just like like agonizing over the the dreadlocked white kid who says that he has to like sing every time they leave him a tip.
I mean there's a there's a very I I feel like that little like like that's not what real like uh like a transplant's not a real neighbor uh you know a real neighbor is somebody who's from here I feel like that distinction runs throughout this like there later when he gets Kevin Costner together with the grandson they're fishing from horseback
And there's this boat that comes by and there's like these three guys and like they're just like the normal guys and like they're like Casey looks at him and laughs.
He's like having any any luck out there and like the insinuation at least to me was like a real man fishes from a horse not from a boat.
And I'm like that is the most insane thing I've ever heard.
To say, you're not really fishing from a boat, the thing that we've all fished from our entire fucking lives.
It's the horse.
You have to get on the horse and do it.
It's so extreme.
I had this written down, but it's like, they're fishing from horseback, and you see them splashing through the water on the horses, moving around and shit.
They catch a fish in Five seconds off horseback, right?
And then the boat comes downstream and they're like, Hey, any luck?
And then the fucking idiot transplants who don't know a fish from their own cock are like, Oh, I don't know.
Is this a fish?
And they hold up a can of, of diet cola.
And, and then the Cowboys just laugh, you know, they think that's a fish.
It's, it's incredible.
It's, it's like amazing.
Well you fools don't understand like fish are so stew but they think the hooves are also other fish so they'll come to the hooves.
Yeah.
You know that's that's how that is how real men fish.
Yep.
And that's why I stopped fishing.
Uh, and then finally, just before we get to the operator scene, uh, the Indian grandfather tells Casey, like, hey, shit's going south.
The, you know, Chief Rainwater has it out for your dad.
Uh, you should leave the reservation.
You should take your wife and son and go stay with John Dutton because it's going to get ugly here.
There's going to be a battle.
And the quote here is, until they find a cure for human nature, a man must stand with his own people.
Yes.
Meaning, we need to segregate the races until we figure this whole thing out.
Yeah.
Until we get rid of humans, we gotta stick to our own kind.
But it's coming from an Indian, so it's not racist.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is one of the many, like, if this, if you're just listening to Elder right here, Then the whole series would have been different.
True.
This is one of those moments where he's, you see him make the decision like, ah, he told you, he's like, just, please just go take care of my daughter and my grandson.
Like you'll be safer there.
He said, he's like, you're going to be safer there with your family.
Like, this is just a better idea.
Please go do it.
And he's like, nope.
No, I need to kill.
I'm sorry.
I will die for this trailer that I have.
I know I can go back to my dad and just live lavishly and have a really comfortable life, and probably even do things that can help you guys out in the back end, but I can't do it.
It's the principle.
Well, Casey is like, I don't fucking like my dad.
I don't like that shit.
I like you guys.
I like, you know, what I've carved, what we've carved out here for ourselves or whatever.
Uh, and you're my family, like you are my family, like my brother-in-law and all, and all you guys are my family.
And this is like good enough or whatever.
But the whole thing about like, until they find a cure for human nature, we have to be racist.
I love that so much because it is like every dumb guy argument against like socialism against communism against like left populism against you know multi-racial coalitions just like god I wish I wish we didn't have to be racist but that's just the way we are you know we're just We're just so racist and like, uh, you know, it would be nice if we weren't greedy and racist, but unfortunately, like we have to all like step on each other.
We have to have this hierarchy, uh, because that's human nature.
Or we have to be racist to relate to others.
It's the only other way to get other people to like us.
And to be interested in us is to be racist.
It's insane logic.
Insane batshit craziness.
It seems very disingenuous.
Like it's either...
Like delusional or it's disingenuous and I'm wondering which it is from Taylor Sheridan who wrote this.
You know what I mean?
That's true.
I'm wondering whether there's a pointed political message here or whether he's just really dumb.
Like I don't know.
I would say it's more... I err on the side of cynicism in that, like, it's more of a dirtying the waters to make the conflict more richer.
Like, it's equivocating.
Cynicism for storytelling, not cynicism for politics.
Yeah, and because, like, you can't just have Kevin Costner be the piece of shit he is.
Like you have to have Thomas Rainwater be a real piece of shit.
Right.
And now you like Kevin Costner.
And no matter what he does, because in comparison, you know his heart is in the right place where you don't know if Rainwater's is.
You know where his heart is at least.
You don't know if it's in the right place, you know where it is for sure.
That's true, yes.
It's almost like we just went through that as a collective recently.
That exact type of scenario, that exact messaging.
Okay, so this episode's running super long.
I want to get to the showdown between the Livestock Commission and the Native American Police, and then I also want to get to the opening of Episode 7, which I referenced, and then some comments that are very important to me.
We're gonna have to skip over episode two, probably, unfortunately.
Maybe we can, you know, do a follow-up episode on that stuff.
Would be very fun.
Sure.
John Dutton decides to go do, like, a nighttime raid on the reservation using his authority as the Livestock Commissioner to take his personal cattle back from the reservation.
He is using essentially the powers of the state to reclaim his own personal property, right?
And it's like this again is like a microcosm of why I can't understand why this guy is supposed to be the anti-hero.
Like, I don't see anything that would, like, endear me to him.
I don't see anything that would make it seem like, oh, he had a tough choice to make or, oh, he had to do what he had to do.
It's like, no, this is a guy who has all the power in the world using the literal power of the state To go take back a few hundred head of cattle, a couple hundred head of cattle, at the most.
He's flying a fucking helicopter, commanding, like, operators to go into the dead of night and take his cattle back, right?
This is what's going on.
So he...
You guys are going to have to help me.
I didn't take detailed notes.
They're doing like a night vision style raid on basically a setup.
It's a setup that the Native American, the Indian land, uh, the Indian police have done where they do a campfire with the brother-in-law.
And a couple other people who are pretending that they're the ones guarding the cattle, but in reality there's like a fleet of Native American police who have their lights off and shit.
Yeah, and the guys are all in a little campfire semi-circle, right?
Right.
Yeah.
And you get all the Livestock Commissioner people, including Lee, who we haven't talked a lot about because he's not a big part of this show.
You'll understand why in a second.
It looks like Jesus.
He does look like Jesus.
Donning flak jackets and like, you know, AR-15s and other operator style gear.
Go in there to take this cattle.
Oh, it turns out to be an ambush.
They get into an actual firefight.
They're retreating the the uh you know the Livestock Commission dudes are retreating but the brother-in-law is like hunting them down and shooting them in the back as they're retreating and Lee being the man that he is he tells everybody else to go on he turns around to face the danger and gets shot by Casey's his brother's brother-in-law.
Yes.
Yes.
The brother-in-law walks up to Lee while he's on the ground to execute him, and that's when Casey, riding the super, like, fucked-up, hard-to-tame Bronco that Casey somehow was able to tame, rides up on his own brother-in-law, kicks him in the chest.
Out of nowhere.
Yeah.
Out of fucking nowhere.
He's at the campfire, and then we don't see him, and then he shows up right in time for this.
And then he's like grabbing his brother-in-law's fist you know the brother or sorry his own brother Lee he's great he's like you know don't don't die on me we'll get you to safety Lee is like basically dying uh and then the brother-in-law gets back up and is gonna shoot both of them And that's when Casey fucking, it's an, it's incredible.
It's, I was so impressed by this.
Casey grabs the, grabs the handgun out of Lee's holster, spins around and kills the, shoots the brother-in-law like five times in the chest before he can draw on him.
Walks up to the brother-in-law and then before the brother-in-law can raise the gun again, he shoots him in the head and kills him.
Right.
And the brother-in-law's dead, Lee is dead, Casey...
Takes his brother's body back to the ranch, and he's just funny because he drapes it over the horse.
So, like, Lee's head is, like, bouncing against the side of the horse.
Like, his corpse's body is just, like, bouncing on the back of the horse, which is kind of funny.
And then Kevin Costner, like, takes the body and, like, drags it off to, like, an orchard so he can have a godfather moment with the body.
And that's about the end of episode one.
Real quickly, there's a couple lines that I just really need to get out of the way for, like, that exchange between the brothers and brother-in-law.
So, Jesse, right?
Jesse's the one who dies.
Lee.
No, Lee is the one who dies.
Sorry, Lee is, like, facing the brother-in-law.
The brother-in-law is like, He says the line like, but we want them back, talking about the cattle.
So this is all about the cattle, right?
And so then he gets saved.
Jesse saves him.
Casey saves him.
Sorry, Casey saves him.
These names, I don't know these names.
I'm sorry, I apologize for the names.
They're very plain.
They're very bad.
And so, but the thing is, like right before, so he shoots him really accurately, like very well done.
Casey shoots the brother-in-law really accurately, yeah.
And then he goes up to him before he kills him.
He says, mind you, this is his wife's brother.
Yeah.
This is someone he sees all the time.
He lives with, essentially.
This is someone he sees way more than his actual brothers.
He says, in case you don't already know, there's no such thing as heaven, and then kills him.
It's a very interesting line.
Out of nowhere.
There hasn't been any discussion of theology.
Nothing like that.
Nothing like that the entire thing.
Hey bud.
Hey bro.
Hey friend I see all the time.
I have to kill you.
I think what happened was Taylor Sheridan had just watched the commercial for Road to Perdition before he wrote this script.
That adds up.
I think he had, uh, when we chose this life we knew none of us would see heaven in his mind before he wrote this episode.
There are so many tries for epic lines.
Say that to your friend, or your brother-in-law who you split a 30 rack of bush with.
Also, how would you know there's no such thing as heaven?
How would you even know that?
You're not in a position to tell him that.
Because he's the son of God.
Of Montana's God, if there is a Montana God.
Not only that, but in order to get one of those medals he had, you have to be declared dead in combat.
And then revive back.
Um, and so I lied.
I will go into episode two just slightly because I think it's very interesting.
They're doing a medical examination on the brother-in-law and also Lee, who died.
And when the brother-in-law shot Lee the first time, he shot him through the neck.
Which like severed his spinal cord or something.
Proving that Lee could not have been the one to shoot back and kill the brother-in-law.
Because he would have been paralyzed at that point.
so this is like there was a third shooter or whatever and because of the groupings of bullet wounds on the brother-in-law this was a close-up assassination this was not self-defense this was an assassin assassination and the line here is They're pointing at the shots in the chest that the brother-in-law, the Native American brother-in-law sustained.
They said, five shots in a circle like this.
Name a livestock agent who could do that.
Therefore, it had to be a close-up racially motivated execution.
And me, as the viewer, I'm like, looking at this, I'm like, he's not racist.
He's just really good at shooting guns.
Like this is totally unfair!
He's just a really good marksman and they're gonna call him racist for it.
What I really love about that scene in the second episode, though, is that they're bringing that up because they're really worried, like, guys, if we have a racially motivated shooting in our police department, we're going to have to really make some changes.
We're going to be really held accountable.
Things are going to be really bad for us.
It's going to be a shit show.
And it's like, no, not... What country does this take place in?
What the fuck?
I don't think that's what happened, bud.
All you have to do is put him on paid leave.
He'll be fine.
My favorite thing in the second episode is the operator phone call he takes from his buddy where he's like, no no no man, CNN's got it all fucking wrong.
Per usual, it's in Yemen is the real shit.
It's not Syria Riyadh, it's Yemen.
And I'm like, thank you.
I read a paper too, you idiots.
The line is, Syria's nothing, Yemen is the domino.
And it's like, okay, I don't know, we're both fucking around in both countries, like, it's both opportunities for your sick fucking masochistic outlet.
No, yeah, I mean, the whole point was to say CNN's full of shit, the real shit, the domino is in Yemen.
Is that a thing, though?
Like, if you're like a Navy SEAL and you're retired, or you're not doing anymore, can you just be like, Hey fam, I'm kind of bored.
Can you guys send me out?
Ranch is kind of boring right now.
Well, it used to not be like that, but then Donald Trump took over and now there's no honor left in the military-industrial complex.
There used to be though.
Back in the day.
I think it's questionable whether or not, it's probably like private military contract or shit.
Like they could easily be going to Yemen, Syria, or New Orleans.
Like it was just like all up, Puerto Rico was on the docket.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, Eric Prince was, that was Eric Prince on the phone call.
Yeah.
That's who he's actually calling.
Um, I just, I just love that- Check the credits, he's actually listed.
I love that we saw, like, Casey do this, like, quick, like, you know, he's, he's fucking trained, he's a tier one operator, he knows what the fuck he's doing, and these motherfuckers are gonna call him racist for it.
Like that's, that's my, I saw that, I saw the branding when they branded the guy to work for minimum wage.
I saw that and then I saw, uh, this guy's really good at shooting guns.
He's, he must be racist.
Like I saw, I saw those two things and I was like, okay, this is a Minion Death Cult episode.
Yeah.
Um, lastly, uh, episode seven.
So it opens up.
With John Dutton like driving, he's like, I don't know, doing a perimeter observation of his 520,000 acres or something.
And he comes up upon a tour bus that is stopped on the side of the road.
And I'm going to say that these are Chinese tourists because that's what everyone in the YouTube comments were yelling was that they were Chinese.
That's a good way to go, YouTube comments.
They're usually accurate.
I did my research.
I read a lot of YouTube comments for this.
And the people have gotten off the bus and they are on like the farmland observing a brown bear, a grizzly bear.
It's a grizzly bear.
They're observing a grizzly bear who's like, I don't know, digging in the fucking farmland or whatever.
And John has his shotgun.
He gets out of his, you know, hemi Dodge dually truck and he runs over and he's like, get away from the bear.
He's dangerous.
Get away, get away room.
And then the tour guide looks at him over her shoulder and she's like, he looks friendly.
He's fine.
She's like, chill God, he looks real cool.
And John Dutton is like, I said, get the fuck back.
And then he like, he says some like Gran Torino words at them.
And then they're in the tour guide is like, okay, we won't come any closer.
All right.
And then John Dutton is like, at this time, like slobbering at the mouth.
He's like, this is my fucking land!
Get the fuck off my land!
And then he calls them like a word that hasn't been spoken aloud in 58 years.
This is my land.
I own it.
It's all mine.
From the mountains to those other mountains.
This is my land.
And he, like, flashes his badge in their face.
Like, see this?
See this?
It means I can fucking kill you.
I can murder you and it's fine.
Get the fuck off my land.
And then an old Asian man who's part of the tourist group starts, like, you know, sort of combatively, you know, responding and saying shit back to John.
Obviously in, like, you know, de-gaff mode.
And John Dutton can tell he's in de-gaff mode because he's in dill-a-gaff mode.
And he's growling at the tour guide saying, what's he saying?
What's he saying?
And he says, no one man should have all that power.
And then the Kanye song drops.
He actually quotes Kanye West.
He says, no one has to have all those powers.
Kanye West.
He says, no, no man should own all this land.
You should share it with the people.
And that's when John Dutton is like, is like at a loss for words and just begins firing his shotgun into the air.
And then makes all the tourists run back through the gate.
And it's funny if you watch this scene, even on YouTube, you can see this type in Yellowstone tourist scene.
You can watch all of this on YouTube.
All the tourists run back through like the wide open gate that they entered through.
Yeah.
And like John Dutton is still like firing wildly into the air and you can watch over his shoulder.
The old man who, who like tried to test him.
What?
Like realize he's not supposed to go through the gate.
Like the actor realizes he's not actually supposed to go through the open gate and instead walk like 10 feet to the left.
From the open gate and like crawl through the barbed wire fence.
And, and then John Dutton walks up on him while he's like snagged on the barbed wire.
And he says, this is America.
We don't share land. - Good.
And then they're able to unhook the old man from the barbed wire and get back on the tour bus and leave.
Just for the listener, Alex is not making up that last line.
That's a real line.
We're not having fun with that.
It's a real line.
It's the line that made me want to cover This is America, we don't share land, you fucking blank.
We also haven't even talked about Kevin Costner's gristled voice he uses the entire time.
It's like his Batman voice.
It's his Christian pale Batman voice.
The whole time it's just extra grovelly for no reason.
The word you're looking for is grit.
It's true.
He's got grit.
It's the other scene in that episode that there's two Asian tourists who have fallen off of a cliff and Cole Hauser has found them and he's like, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get this rope and I'm gonna give it down to you and I'm gonna pull you guys up.
And like, I don't know what exactly, I took it in my own way.
I don't know what they're trying to say in this, but so he drops it down and it's a couple and the man is trying to take it first.
Yeah.
And while they're trying to give it to the woman, the woman falls off and dies.
And they show it too.
They show her land and a little digital blood print comes out.
Yes, it happens.
And then him, I took it as like, out of shame, kills himself essentially.
And I'm like, why?
What is this?
Why is this?
Is it just another thing?
Usually a show like this would be all about plot and either that or character development.
Why is this little scene here of this Asian man just killing himself?
Are you trying to say he's cowardly?
I don't get it.
Also a little bit of propaganda sprinkled in there with that plot, you know?
What happens is, you're mostly right, but very specifically what happens is the girlfriend can speak English.
The boyfriend can't speak English.
Kohlhauser is like trying to hunt the bear from the beginning of the episode and he hears them yelling and he looks off the edge of the cliff that he happens to be on and they're like grasping to the edge of the cliff
and he says okay hold on i'm gonna throw down the rope to you and pull you up and then throw down the rope to him and then pull him up and he throws down the rope to her and she puts it around herself but she says i'm gonna get both of us i'm gonna put the rope around both of us and he's like no don't you're too stupid you're you're like a stupid foreign tourist you don't understand like In America, a man can only pull up one person at a time.
We're not as strong as your men.
She's freaking out both as a woman and as a tourist, I think.
She's panicking as both.
So she's like, I'm going to put the lasso around both of us.
No don't idiot I can only pull up one of you at a time and the boyfriend is a coward and he's like he's like trying to put the rope around him at the same time and she ends up falling off and then like you said Chris he has like either shame or like he can't live without her and so he like does a backwards swan dive off the
He hits the cliff as well and dies and then right at that moment the bear charges Kohlhauser and he pulls his gun out and shoots the bear right in the head and re-cocks it to shoot a second round but it's not necessary because he shot him right the first time.
Those little touches throughout the show are the best touches.
Those little licks are just so incredible.
All the, like, animal deaths are incredible.
Like, the spiritual connection that Casey has with the coyote who then gets run over by the Mack truck.
I have not laughed that hard in so long.
Because he thinks, like, he's the Johnny Cash coyote from The Simpsons.
He thinks he's about to go on a trip.
Yeah, he's like, find your soulmate, Casey, and then he gets hit by a fucking Mack truck.
And then they pull out to show you the dismembered coyote.
It's fucked.
It's so fucked up.
Mind you, minutes before... Casey's disturbed by this and minutes before this.
I think Casey murders multiple people minutes before that.
But that coyote death was just too much for him to handle.
He was like, fuck, this is heavy.
Yeah.
I've just killed six people in three days, but this coyote, goddamn.
We also find out that Casey, the reason Casey got branded is because he knocked up his current wife.
He got her pregnant, told Kevin Costner that he got her pregnant.
Kevin Costner demanded that he abort the baby and leave her, and he said no.
And so Kevin Costner branded him himself.
For refusing to denigrate life.
For refusing to choose to terminate human life in the form of a fetus.
It's very interesting.
It's nuts.
Uh, real quick, I don't know what your plan is for like the rest of the episode.
I just have comments that we have to get to.
We need to get to these.
Real quick, can we, can maybe we just like go around real quick and just maybe just, cause the, I watched, I did watch 1, 2, 3, and 7.
Can we maybe just talk about like, real fast, mention our favorite scenes?
Well, I know you want to mention your favorite scenes, so just go ahead.
So my favorite scene is, once again, we come back to Beth and Rip, this like romantic entanglement that's happening.
Sorry, we really undersung Beth in this episode.
Beth fucking rocks.
She really shines in like episodes two and three, and we didn't really get to her, unfortunately.
Three is really her episode, I think.
Three is like big time her episode.
I really like 2 and 3, they're really good episodes.
So Rip is like trying to like swoon her and Rip's all like, hey like, I think he's just, do you want to go to, oh you want to go to a music festival?
And she's like, a music festival?
Like I don't want to go to a fucking music festival.
And he's like, but you like music?
She's like, yeah.
But how about we do something more like my own personality?
This is like right after they fucked, like, cause Rip is like an actual cowboy.
He's got that hard fuck, not like a city boy or whatever.
He's a hard fuck, yeah.
And she's like, I don't want to go to a fucking music festival, that's just lame.
I like the music, I hate the festival.
Yeah, right after he asks her on a date, she's like, you always ruin this shit.
Like, they fuck, and then he asks her on an actual date, and she's like, I'm not a fucking pussy, I don't want to go on a date with you.
So Rip is like, okay, let me get my bag real quick.
And Rip says, want to go get drunk and watch some wolves kill an elk in the park?
And Beth comes right there.
Then they go do literally that.
And they, like, they go, like, scare the wolves away from the elk, which I thought was fucked up, because, like, these wolves kill this elk for, like, their feed.
And they go, like, scare the wolves away, but it's just... No, what happens is it's like an actual, like, epic existential moment.
Yes.
Because they're in the car watching the wolves eat the elk.
I don't think they killed the elk.
I think Rip left the elk out there in the woods knowing that wolves would come.
And they're getting drunk and watching the wolves dismember the elk, which is like, yeah, totally in Beth's lane.
And Rip is getting close to home about how crazy Beth is, and he's talking about how she has a death wish, so to speak, and she's the toughest person he's ever met or whatever.
to prove it she just runs outside at the wolves to like say hey fuck you wolves come and kill me or whatever and they they get kind of scared by her and then rip gets scared by it so he runs out after her and then you know scares the wolves off or whatever One of my other favorite lines is when they're watching the elk get eaten, and she's like, you know in the city, when things die, they just block it off, cover it in plastic, and get rid of it.
Like you can't see death.
And it's like, what the fuck do you want to happen in the city?
What do you mean?
Okay, there's also a really epic scene where Beth takes a naked bath in a horse trough in front of all the rich.
Which is so weird.
Because it's the anniversary of her mother's death.
The mother's death.
My fucking god.
The mother's death.
So, like, at the beginning of the third episode, Gretchen Mole plays the mother in the flashback.
See, I didn't know this was a flashback.
That's why I was so confused.
Not for the longest time.
Not until she's basically like, Beth, you killed me.
That's what's so crazy.
She gets crushed by a horse.
She gets crushed by a horse and as soon as the horse crushes her, she's like, oh, okay.
Beth, you bitch.
How could you kill me like this?
And just starts laying into this baby.
She's laying into her the whole time.
Cause it's a flashback where the mother is like, you know, 30 or something.
The two kids are Beth and I guess Casey.
No, it's Jesse because Jesse fucking hates Beth.
At the end of, remember at the end of the third episode, they fight.
I looked it up and it's Casey.
Really?
Yeah.
The information says that it's Casey, but the kid's got dark hair.
I don't understand.
It could be Jesse.
I think Jesse also hates Beth for killing his mom.
Jamie, not Jesse.
Jamie.
Jamie, please.
They're like a family.
It's a mom, 30, and two kids who are both adolescent.
I guess the girl is older, who is Beth.
Beth is like 12.
No, she's got to be older than that.
She's got to be like 13 or 14.
She's having trouble with the horse.
She can't guide the horse.
And she's like, Mom, I'm having trouble.
And the mom is like, Yeah, that's because you're a fucking piece of shit.
And the horse knows you're a piece of shit.
She's like, my horse is spooked.
She's like, the horse is spooked because you're a fucking pussy.
Like, it's your fault.
If you weren't scared, the horse wouldn't be scared.
It's like insane how much the mom hates this daughter.
And the daughter is like, and it's Beth, I guess.
I didn't know it was Beth when I first watched it, but she's like struggling with the horse.
and the mom open or the Jesse or Jamie or Casey or whatever it is opens the gate for them to go through and the mom goes through but like Beth's horse is like coming up too and mom is like getting so impatient on her horse that her horse freaks out and flips over on her she so she's squashed like a tube of toothpaste laying down under the dead horse Jamie and or Casey is like I'll go ride to get help yes
And the mom is like, no, make Beth do it.
This was her fault.
Literally, literally.
And Jamie is like, I'm the better writer.
And she's like, no, it's Beth's problem to undo.
I want to make sure that she will fail in her next objective too.
I need to double up on failures.
Which she does fail on because he's a fucking child.
Yeah, and she gets like lost along the way or something and the horses go back to the ranch without riders.
And then we get the young Kevin Costner seeing the horses come back without riders and go look for everybody.
Finds Beth.
Beth is a hysterical woman so she can't tell you where the mom is.
She can't tell you anything that's going on.
Also an eight year old.
Yes.
No, she's older because we get another flashback where Beth has her first period on Christmas and the mom is like, wonderful to her.
Yeah.
The mom is like, the mom is like, uh, listen, like you've changed now.
Like, let's get you a bubble bath, like this, that, and the other.
And like, you've changed now and men are going to like, look down on you, but you're stronger than men.
And, and so I don't know when she started hating Beth very obviously.
There is so much like the mom is instantly painted as a monster and like there is so much awful parenting and like toxic relationships between like the nuclear families in this movie and this show it's so fucking crazy like But that's cool though, that's like epic.
That's what you want to have.
But yeah, Beth's response to the mom's dying anniversary is she gets, she gets like an electric, an electric brander, throws it inside of a feeding, a water trough.
To heat it up.
To make it hot, to heat it up.
Grabs two bottles of champagne, goes out there butt naked and is all like, I'm gonna, I don't care who's gonna see me.
And she's like, makes a bunch of like homophobic jokes for her little brother.
Yeah, she's like, turn around because you're not gonna see a dick like you like.
You're gonna see my pussy.
And you don't like my pussy because you're gay.
Yeah, you wouldn't be into incest, would you?
Like, I'm like, what the fuck are you doing here?
Yeah, what are you going for there?
And uh it's and Rip is like trying to get her out of the tub or like trying to cover her up and she's like no everyone is gonna suffer today and it's like yeah I think only maybe like one person is gonna suffer yeah by seeing your busty figure get into the horse trough Her like glistening butt just walking away and everyone just suffering just like this is the worst.
This is the worst day that's ever happened to me.
There's so many things in that those like moments one of them is uh is that Rip has like his jacket out where she walked out in a robe the robe is right there he could have grabbed the robe but the shots are so gratuitous like you see she's still got the robe on when she's walking out but the robe is hiked over her ass so you see her bare cheeks like rubbing together while she's before she's even gotten naked it's amazing One of my favorite teens involving a robe in this is that the dad... We're doing so many scenes, dude.
I'm sorry, just real fast.
The dad has this other woman over... It's the governor!
It's the governor of Montana!
She's the governor, and she's wearing this regular-ass robe, and he's like, take that off.
That's my wife's.
But it's like a regular-ass bathrobe that you wouldn't just keep around.
It's like a terrycloth, regular-ass bathrobe that if you had next to your bath, and it's been stained, this is your wife's been dead, it's covered in dust, first of all.
Well, not if you rub it on your dick every night.
That's true.
Episode 3 is an incredible episode.
Yeah, we haven't even gotten into the kidnapping.
Okay, let's get into comments because this is where I feel like it really, like, everything that we've talked about comes to fruition.
This is a comment on the scene with the tourists in Episode 7.
Rick Sanchez, C-137, who if you're not familiar, Rick Sanchez is the name of Rick from Rick and Morty.
Whoa!
Rick, and the avatar is also Rick from Rick and Morty.
Rick Sanchez, C137, comments, there is a solid reason why the word, quote, tourist sounds so much like the word terrorist.
There's a solid reason.
And that reason isn't because I'm fucking dumb.
That's not the reason.
The reason is because they both start with T. That's it.
That's it.
It ended in T.
I love that.
There's a reason they called tourists tourists.
It's because they're all terrorists.
Yes, terrorists always put money into our economy at the local level.
I remember terrorists doing that from the beginning.
It's also very funny to me with this guy who's touring America or whatever is basically trying to be a communist to John Dutton.
He's basically like, you should give up your land.
You know, you should submit to the Maoist ideology of whatever.
And it's like, there's a lot of non-communist Chinese folks in America. - Yeah.
It's kind of like one of the main reasons to come to America.
Like the majority of Chinese folks in America, yeah.
In order to come to America, you kind of have to have money.
That's kind of a part of the deal.
you know, part of the deal.
Um, K W O L says, uh, I got in a shoving match with a Chinese woman in Yellowstone a few years ago after waiting 15, after, after waiting 15 minutes for her to take selfies and move on.
So others could use the overlook.
She came back and decided she wanted more pictures and the most logical thing was to forcibly shove me away from the area.
I wasn't moving.
We thank you, KWL.
We thank you for standing your ground against the Chinese woman.
Yes, and the picture-taking.
I mean, it's gratuitous, really.
Yellowstone, of all places.
Thank you for saving us.
This show is so true because I, myself, have gotten into a shoving match with an old Chinese woman.
Yes.
Over pictures.
What a wild thing to say, like, publicly.
It's like, I got into shoving matches with an old woman.
I did that.
That's how awesome I am.
What the fuck?
I just, it's amazing to think of that as, like, being your, like, if you were, I mean, I'm not sure if these people would ever go to a dinner party, but if they did, that's the story they feel they would tell.
Yep.
It's just like, at the time I shoved the Chinese woman at the Yellowstone over a picture.
Yeah, that's interesting.
That tells you about me, right?
Tell him the story about the old Chinese lady.
Tell him the story about that one.
Tell him.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Let me tell it again.
Yellowstone 2012.
Overlook.
Starting a story with already like, yo, so this Chinese lady was really annoying me.
And then it graduates to, I was physically in an altercation with a Chinese lady.
A girl named Dean comments, when the man said, quote, one man should not own all this land, reminded me of a story my friend told me.
He was a Christian missionary in China, parentheses, who has since fallen from grace, by the way.
He told me when speaking to one of the locals, the local did not believe that at 23 years old, he owns his own house.
He was under the impression the American homes he saw on TV shows was solely there for TV.
The local Chinese mans did not believe that Americans live the way we do and lived more like them.
When on leave my friend took a video tour of his house.
The local was shocked to find out it was the truth.
Made me wonder if his upbringing in his country ingrains in him that one man shouldn't own that much land What's good is that we're better than other people.
what wealth there is.
I've been to third world countries and seen firsthand the way a lot of the world's population lives.
Sure, we have our problems.
Sure, it's pretty fucked up right now.
But no matter how bad it gets, I always feel lucky I was born in America and won't take that for granted.
What's good is that we're better than other people.
What's good is that we are the ones extracting wealth from these nations.
Yep.
That's what's good.
That's cool.
So I'm only like 10 years behind on like the American plan of owning your own house at 23?
That's very much- And then I can go to China?
I mean I guess so because this is the way we all live in America.
This is the way we all live in America is at 23 you have your own house.
Yes, it happens all the time.
Like, do you think a girl named Dean has their own house?
Do you think they're 20?
Maybe they're 22.
Maybe they're only 22 and next year they think they're going to get the house.
No, I follow them on Twitter and they took a picture in front of their house and they told me this.
They said, I'm 22 and own my own house.
What are you doing?
And they have a lot of bless this mess paraphernalia in the house.
It's a fun time.
Work hard, play hard.
What's the worst they're talking about in China?
This is my limited understanding.
Maybe you live in a very modest domicile you know a somewhat small it's not a track home or whatever you live in or you live in an apartment you live in like some small unit or whatever um it's kind of where like most Americans live yeah it's kind of what most Americans are also dealing with and it's just very funny to be like oh yeah this this wealthy Christian missionary he had his own home and that's what America is to me somebody renting out a studio
Also, it's still like, what is your life to where you think that your 23-year-old friend owning a house is the norm of America?
Right.
Well, I think that's probably why this person is only 22 and a half, you know?
Oh, that's... They just know they're gonna get their house any day now.
They learn... Well, they also learn a lot in those five months.
Those five months left over, they'll really center themselves.
And that's often how long escrow takes.
Um, last comment I will get to was on the scene where Beth took the naked horse trough bath.
Um, this comment is from Kill Akami for Mommy.
Okay.
The comment is, MGTOW!
M-G-T-O-W!
What does that mean?
You know what it means.
You just have a bad memory.
Do you know what this means, Chris?
I'm trying to suss it out in my head.
Okay, you don't know.
That's right.
It's a movement.
Before QAnon, before Incel, whatever, there was MGTOW, which stands for Men Going Their Own Way.
I've heard of that.
I've heard of that.
This is like black pill incel shit.
Men who have decided that they're too unlovable.
Their women are too craven and greedy and whatever.
And they only like, you know, black basketball stars.
So they have to, you know, do their own thing.
They have to choose to go their own way and stop putting the pussy on a pedestal.
And I'm wondering why this comment is underneath the Beth bathing in a horse trough scene.
Are they saying that Beth is the problem or do we need more Beths?
Beth is the problem.
He's with Rip.
He's really sad for Rip because Rip is a good man but he's corrupted because he's attracted to this devil woman, Jezebel.
Totally.
I think it's like, Killikami for Mommy is watching this scene as like a form of self-flagellation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he has to shout into the void, MGTOW, to remind himself of what's important.
Because he's seen, you know, Killa Akami from Mami has seen too many of his friends, I mean their friends, turn into guys who like fall for women who bathe outside in troughs and sip champagne.
He's seen it all.
And you know, he can't deal with Rip going through it too.
That's too much.
This was a very fun episode.
It ran long.
I think I'm going to keep it all, though.
This is a Patreon episode.
People can get their money's worth on this one, I think.
I think so.
Thank you so much, Chris Cabin, for joining the show today.
It was a pleasure having you.
Oh, thanks for having me, guys.
Absolutely.
Reminder, check out We Hate Movies.
Wonderful podcast.
I know you're a writer.
You work on other things.
Chris, where can people check out your work?
I've actually, I mean, most of, I've been taking a break from TV and film writing.
I've mostly just been doing the podcast these days.
So, I mean, we have a Patreon.
Go there.
We have a lot of content there.
And then we're, we have a weekly episode.
So check us out on whatever, wherever you get your podcasts.
Absolutely.
And with this show, you know, we appreciate your folks' support a lot.
You can write to us at MinionDeathCult at gmail.com, follow us on social media at MinionDeathCult.
We love hearing from your folks.
Submissions are always welcome.
You can follow me on Twitter at FLELD, F-L-I-E-L-D-Y.
