Yellowstone

Desire is all you need

Season 5

Episode 9

Editorial review

2 stars

**

Photo: Emerson Miller/Paramount Global, 2024

Long time no see! Much has fallen since then Yellowstone was the last episode to air. In January 2023, I was excited about where the second half of this fifth season would go: the civil war between Beth and Jamie was flaring up, John was facing possible impeachment, and half the cast was moving to Texas. The stage was set for an exciting conclusion when the show returned that summer.

The show did not return that summer. In fact, two summers have come and gone since I wrote that, but we’re still in season five and the momentum generated during the first half has completely disappeared. Aside from the impact of last year’s strikes, much of the delay stems from scheduling issues; I won’t repeat it here, but the long and short of it is that Kevin Costner almost certainly will not appear in these six episodes. Just as importantly, these are the last six episodes of Yellowstonebarring a surprising renewal or new sequel series based on Beth and Rip. We come to Season 5B with a very different understanding of its meaning.

So this mid-season premiere has a lot on its plate. The funny thing is, though, that a lot of “Desire Is All You Need” just feels like another episode of it Yellowstonewith its strange and peculiar blend of political thriller and low-stakes ranch drama. It can be exciting, it can be boring, it can be silly, it can be meditative. Are Yellowstone.

The episode (technically the ninth of the season) is divided into three chapters, with the middle (and longest) section taking place before the other two. The first is a lengthy 12-minute cold open: a flash-forward that almost immediately answers Kevin Costner’s question by revealing that Governor John Dutton has been shot and killed in the bathroom of his governor’s mansion in Helena.

Beth and Kayce explore the crime scene themselves, with the former reacting as you’d expect: guttural screaming, sobbing, and immediately insisting that Jamie was responsible. He was the one who called for John’s ouster and finally wants to sell the ranch, and the trial was supposed to start that morning. When we see Jamie, he is deeply distraught by the news, and he certainly knows it seems surprised. But with Jamie you never know; these could easily be the guilty tears of a man who just killed his second father in a row. Beth definitely thinks they are crocodile tears.

All of this is quite fun, and at first I thought the subsequent flashback to six weeks ago would be exciting: we’d get to see the build-up to the murder and confirm Jamie’s level of complicity. Indeed, we get a scene where Sarah Atwood puts the hit on John and, in a mysterious windowless room, meets the “professionals” who can make it happen. It’s quite ridiculous, like something out of a completely different show, but it’s always fun to indulge in some business intrigue involving a shadowy organization of hitmen. ‘Grant’ has a lot of blackmail footage of Sarah and Jamie fucking, and he’ll use this to throw them under the bus if anything ever goes wrong with the hit.

However, most of this long flashback segment is pretty boring. Look, I’ve always appreciated this show’s focus on natural beauty, and I don’t mind the frequent languid scenes of herding cattle and photographing the shit after a long day of work. But the momentum Real slows down in this episode’s sagging middle half-hour, focusing primarily on Rip’s trip to the Four Sixes ranch in Texas with Ryan, Walker, Jake, and Teeter. First of all, most of the chatter doesn’t really catch on. We get it: Teeter has a goofy voice, the boys’ affectionate bickering sounds gay, and Jimmy acts mentally retarded. Oh, and you can’t say things like that these days.

The Texas story certainly has its moments. A change of location is appreciated, and compared to the mountain life our boys are used to, the state is disturbingly flat, empty and indifferent – ​​as Walker says, Texas “forgets you.” Ryan gets smothered by a scorpion, it’s fun. And even though famed trail maker Billy Klapper wasn’t the most natural performer, I respect Sheridan’s continued efforts to spotlight these Texas legends with appearances on his show. (Klapper’s death last September adds another poignant layer to the line “When he’s gone, we’ll all be left without legends,” and a card in the end credits commemorates him.)

I also laughed at the fact that Rip let a kid pet his horse during a pit stop, only to flat out reject the similar request from an approaching young couple – it’s just classic. But that scene exists to rekindle Rip’s anxiety about the death of cowboyism, which is getting pretty old at this point. Cole Hauser shared monologue duties with Costner, who was able to deliver them with gravitas and a healthy degree of self-awareness from the grumpy old man. I like Hauser a lot, but it’s not that dynamic to see Rip grouse talking about solar farms and staring admiringly at one-piece tracks.

Certainly, this kind of nostalgia and wistful reflection often speaks to a real community not getting attention on TV, which is part of the reason this show gets such great (to some critics, mind-boggling) ratings. However, none of the characters here really grapple with these larger philosophical and cultural questions in a meaningful or interesting way. There is no discernible change in Rip, no concrete attempt to preserve an old way of life or build a new one. This conflict has existed since the beginning, but at this point it feels too abstract, too static.

Back in the present, we get confirmation that despite Jamie’s initial comment agreeing to the hit on his father, Jamie was unaware that Sarah was behind this; For the first few hours, he was actually convinced that his father had committed suicide because of him. This all works pretty well enough as a way to write John Dutton out of the show, and it makes sense that Sarah can still manipulate Jamie into seeing an act of parricide as justice.

However, does it tie in seamlessly with what we saw in Season 5A? Not really. In case you forgot, Jamie suggested putting in a hit Bet in the mid-season finale, feeling that his sister had planned the same thing for him. But any real mention of John’s murder was secondary and implied, at least the way I looked at that conversation. Returning to the Beth idea and positioning John as the main (sole) target feels like a retcon, or at least an event that was pushed forward several episodes due to Costner’s premature departure.

Either way, I’m curious to see how this storyline develops, even if future plans for the franchise make it seem clear which side of this civil war will ultimately win. I’m really happy to have Kayce and Beth in the same room again – the show often seems to forget that they’re brother and sister – and it should be interesting to see Kayce struggle with how to handle the Jamie situation .

The only concern is really how to fill the rest of the time. There’s not much reason to spend time at the ranch: the cattle are gone and the remaining ranch hands (mainly Lloyd, Colby, and Carter) are bored out of their minds. Kayce, Monica and Tate are happier than we’ve ever seen them and move into a dingy cabin that they’ll renovate beautifully. The most I can ask for in these last five episodes is some real conflict, soapy drama, and violence, probably of both a physical and emotional nature. With Costner gone, the seams are more visible than ever, but with five episodes to go, I’m in this until the end.

• It is pretty stupid to label John’s death a suicide even though it’s supposedly the ‘cleanest option’. With the surveillance footage missing, it’s even clearer that something strange is going on.

• So, um, is summer just over? Maybe we’ll see her at John’s funeral or something.

• Chief Rainwater and Mo are still figuring out how to handle the pipeline under the lake, risking serious contamination. So pay attention to that.

• Yeah, I mean, there’s no hiding Tate’s growth spurt.

• It makes sense that Beth falls apart in Rip’s arms at the end, but her screams lose some of their power when she did early in the episode. I’m afraid to say I didn’t feel much in those closing moments.