Would I make it on the Dutton Ranch in ‘Yellowstone’?
Like millions of viewers, I am excited to watch season five of “Yellowstone”, which premieres Sunday evening on the Paramount Network. The popular neo-western drama centers around Montana’s Dutton family and its eponymous ranch.
The series, like a bullfight, leaves me enamored with the surrounding beauty but troubled by the gore. Gifted creator Taylor Sheridan paints so mixed blessing a picture that after each episode, I wonder whether I’d make it on the Dutton Ranch. Could I thrive on so demented a demesne?
I could not be a ranch hand, that much is clear. The bunkhouse - with whiskey, women, and song - looks like fun when the work is done, but there’s an awful lot of backbreaking labor throughout the day shift. Then it all starts again just after zero dark thirty, day after livelong day. Rip Wheeler, Dutton Ranch’s fearsome foreman, hardly seems inclined to abide hired hands hitting snooze.
This ursine enforcer clearly must factor into the calculus. After all, when I make mistakes at work, nobody like Rip breathes down my neck. Nor do knife-fights figure prominently into my conflict resolution, so ranch-handing is out. It’s clear that to make it on the Dutton Ranch, I’d have to be a Dutton. This is where things get complicated.
The Duttons also work the land – a minus - but it’s their land, so they’re not exactly mucking out the Augean Stables. They stay smartly tailored throughout, and sign me up for all the fly-fishing and horseback riding opportunities that sumptuous Dutton Ranch affords. Maybe it could work. There is, however, a gating issue, and not the back forty variety. Much cold-blooded killing goes with being a Dutton, something frowned upon by my conscience. Counting myself among the bloodthirsty Duttons hardly seems worth eternal hellfire.
Speaking of roaring blazes, what about that stone hearth in the main room of the big house, or those glorious sunrise views from its front porch? I bet even the coldest heart is warmed fireside, or under those ubiquitous outdoor-throw blankets. I won’t get into the presumed thread count of paterfamilias John Dutton’s bedsheets. You know something? Perhaps all their enemies had it coming to them.
That cannot be right. I couldn’t kill thieving rivals just to protect my family’s homestead, howsoever rustic-chic. Surely it’s wrong to dump bodies just across the Wyoming border in the dark of night. But having an in-house chef who stands ready to pour fresh-squeezed this and grill shot-or-caught that? If loving that culinary setup is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
Ultimately, “Yellowstone” is a fictional show with sensationalized characters, so I don’t have to make a choice. For the record, I would not want to be a Dutton. I don’t think.
This story was originally published November 12, 2022 at 6:41 AM.