Yellowstone Season 4 Review

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SPOILER ALERT!

This season opens with sweeping shots of a show that is finally shot in the state it is set in. Last season ended on a terrible cliffhanger with the Duttons under attack. Beth got blown out of her old office and her father was bleeding out on the side of the road. In the opening of this season, Rip arrives just in time to save the elder Dutton and Beth comes stumbling out of the office building covered in soot, glass, and blood. The show ratchets up the action from there.

The Dutton family are people with nine lives

Life and death plays quite heavily in this season. The Dutton family truly is a family of cats, complete with the nine lives that comes along with it. We see the story-line about Beth and Rip come full circle, and we see her try to get revenge on Jamie. She gets her revenge and the perfect blackmail to keep Jamie in line during his run for governor. Jamie ends up killing his father and disposing of the body in the usual place, and she manages to photograph the entire thing. In fact, the season ends on her line, “Now you own him, Daddy.”

Just as it seemed like Jamie had finally escaped the clutches of this dysfunctional family, he is irreparably pulled back in. He has re-made himself as a rancher in his own right and won back the mother of his child. Season 5 will tell us how that whole thing will play out.

John Dutton doesn’t stay quiet for long and after recovering from being shot immediately sets about getting his own revenge for the attack and turns right around and builds a professional horse team to go around the country and win every rodeo being held between Montana and Texas. Now not only does he want to save the Ranch and save his beloved Yellowstone from becoming a resort, but now he wants fame and a reputation. It is a new life for the Ranch.

Beth continues to be delightfully awful and finds new ways to screw over the people looking to turn the area into the next Aspen. However, this time, she gets in way over her head and might actually have finally gone too far. John Dutton says as much when he finally reins her in from her activities. However, her story is far from done and her latest financial dealings could land her and the Ranch in big trouble, more on that in Season 5.

They Finally Broke Jimmy

John Dutton gets around to punishing Jimmy for getting back into rodeo when John told him to stay out of the arena. He ended last season with his face in the dirt, injured again. After being sent away with the new Yellowstone rodeo team, John dispatches him to Texas, where he is summary dumped so that he can be turned into a real man and a real cowboy. When I say this arc is happening, I had high hopes for his progress as a character. I would be bitterly disappointed.

In the process of Jimmy becoming a true cowboy and indeed a full on man in the tradition of the old west, something was lost. Quiet, reserved, skilled, tame, responsible all became his calling cards. But somehow he seems like a shadow of his former self. I disliked his transition. He’s unrecognizable to his old love, and her heartache is truly felt. Jimmy started out as a dynamic wild card and as his arc came to a close, he somehow lost all of that dynamism and became boring to me. What once was exciting and interesting had all of his personality sucked out. He was an empty shell where a real person once stood.

One way of being a man

In this season, we see a different sort of masculinity in the show. This is especially true when Beth and Rip take in a young man with nowhere to go. In this season, he is required to grow up quickly. The problem of growing up fast is simple: there is no time for proper development. We see this in the story with Rip and Beth’s young charge. The message is explicitly said, “You deserve nothing, and you’d better like it.” Self-care? Taking care of yourself after injury? No need. Yellowstone plays into the always tough, masculine mystique. We see this in Jimmy, who is finally transformed into the ideal man. We also see this in barn under Rip’s watchful eye. A young man is already beginning to slot himself into the world of Yellowstone and fitting himself into the one-size-fits all approach the ranch offers. There is only one way to survive Yellowstone.

Kayce doesn’t figure that widely into this season, but his journey is interesting none-the-less. He is moving out on his own. After the attack, his wife demands that they get off the Ranch, and he finally consents to the idea. Not only is she pregnant, but Kayce ends up going on a “vision quest” to discover what the spirit of the wolf has to say to him. It’s not clear how that is going to play out exactly, but that whole journey for him is an impressive bit of TV and is also an intriguing place for his character to go in season 5. He is more successful at being a Dutton than Jamie, but engaging in the tradition of his wife’s people will pull him away from the Ranch. What will that mean for him in the future?

Final Thoughts

Season 4 was a bit slow for me. We really dig into the characters this season. There are fewer flashbacks. The season keeps moving and plenty happens, but much of it is wrapping up season 3 and setting up things for season 5. It is a classic in-betweener season. Paramount knows that they have a hit on their hands, and they are stretching it out. This is fairly common in episodic series. The biggest thing we see this season is Beth getting caught up in her bullshit and Jimmy finally moving on after 3 seasons. I have a feeling that Beth is in for more difficult times ahead, and Jimmy might pop up again in the future when things get dire. He still wears the brand we know that means something in the world of Yellowstone. Overall, enjoyable, and I will eagerly await the next season in the fall.