Tag: Damage

I remember my first conversation about Yellowstone, the wildly popular western TV show that just wrapped up its fifth and final season earlier this month. This was 2018, and I was sitting in the middle of the dirt street outside the Mint Bar in Livingston, Montana. This wasn’t the Old West, only routine maintenance: Public works was re-doing all of downtown and had closed the streets to cars and ripped up the asphalt. The Mint took advantage of the situation and put some chairs and tables in the middle of the street. 

I had just moved to town, and Livingston seemed to me like a place of dreams. My rent was $450 a month (if my landlord even remembered to ask for it), and I paid it fairly easily on the $13.50-per-hour I made as a reporter for the last afternoon daily newspaper in the country. In a matter of minutes, I could be out on the Yellowstone River in a kayak. Yellowstone National Park lay an hour’s drive to the south and I went multiple times a month. I camped in the Crazy Mountains, in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness and on islands in the middle of the river. 

At its best, Yellowstone flirted with important themes: the cultural battle for the American West, the tensions between development and conservation, the harms of colonization, and how extreme wealth is pushing out families who have lived in Montana for generations.

But Yellowstone rarely delivered on these ambitions. The final episode, like much of the show, failed to resolve its central conflicts — such as ​“Will anyone face consequences for anything?” and ​“Can this place be saved?” Instead, the finale exemplified the show’s deeper flaws: its inability to reckon with the moral weight of its story and its insistence on glorifying the Duttons.

For all its violent posturing, Yellowstone lacked the courage to actually make the characters face consequences for their actions. The Duttons — violent, entitled and remorseless — claimed to protect the land they stole, dumping bodies at the ​“Train Station,” crushing enemies (including the Broken Rock Tribe), and manipulating family members. Yet, the show rewarded these actions with unearned happy endings: Beth plots to murder her brother and rides off with her own ranch; Kayce finds his paradise; and Jamie — adopted and perpetually vilified — is killed without remorse.

Meanwhile, the ranch hands, branded like cattle and dragged into the Duttons’ crimes, were treated as props rather than people. Instead of exploring the realities of laboring on a massive ranch — with no hope of ever owning one — the show glorifies their hardships, ignoring questions of rent, survival or dignity. They don’t question being hung out to dry by the Duttons at the end of the show; instead, after they’re kicked off the ranch and laid off, they go to concerts, reconnect with lost lovers, and are excited to find new ranches where they can be mistreated. They all seem to be having a grand ol’ time.

When I think of Yellowstone, I’ll remember the place it came to dominate in our culture: the way it inspired at least three couples in my Midwestern family to dress up as Beth and Rip for Halloween, the way it mythologized a version of the West at its worst, the way it glorified private property over all else. I’ll remember my next door neighbor in Illinois who had a bumper sticker threatening to take people to the ​“Train Station.” I’ll remember the Duttons demonizing Yellowstone National Park and rerouting the river. I’ll remember how it was set, but not filmed, in Park County.

And I’ll remember the damage it left behind: a Park County warped by gentrification, where an intact ecosystem has been commodified into a backdrop for cosplay and profit.

Yellowstone aspired to be a prestige drama, a modern Western epic. But it failed to capture what truly makes the West great: the land, the wildlife, the clean water and the people who care for it. No wonder Kevin Costner couldn’t be bothered to finish the series (though Horizon, the pet project film series he left to show complete, doesn’t offer any new perspective).

Instead, Yellowstone celebrated greed, violence and wealth. Its ending was as muddled as its message, leaving behind a legacy that Montana — and television — would be better off without.

Now, we have four Yellowstone spin-offs to look forward to. Like the developers busy packaging Park County for sale, it seems what the show’s creators really care about isn’t the place, it’s the money.