Even the subplot this week involving Kayce and his loyal livestock agents chasing down a gang of rustlers, while exciting, is somewhat abbreviated, and ends with the semi-cliffhanger of Kayce’s men getting shot during an attempted arrest. Similarly, while John has a good long scene at a local diner with this season’s latest new recurring villain - that buffalo-herding coot we now know is named Wade - all we learn from that encounter is that Wade stole something from John decades ago and that the standoffish Wade doesn’t think he’s under any obligation to give it back. In fact, while “The Beating” is spending about a fifth of its running time on a few sequences aimed at illustrating for Jimmy (yet again!) that the rodeo is no life for someone like him, some of the more major narrative threads are getting dispatched this week in short scenes - or less.įor example, what’s up with the huge standing offer for - and perhaps covert legal threat to - the Duttons’ ranch? We are Roarke-less in this episode (which automatically gets it docked one star in my book) but we do get Market Equities updates in passing: first when Jamie looks into who actually has the power of attorney for the Dutton estate, and later when Beth finally meets with Chief Rainwater’s personal mischief-maker Angela, and the two of them agree their situation is “a real pickle.” It’s important to note that at no point in this episode does anyone propose plans or take action related to Market Equities’ clients. But the graveness with which first John and now Rip have addressed Jimmy’s aspirations seems way out of proportion to the character’s overall importance to the larger Yellowstone narrative. Now, Jimmy’s a sweet kid and Mia has a fun energy.
The Rip scenes are also a rehash of all the moments from earlier this season when John made rude comments about Jimmy’s rodeo dreams. (“When the fuck did the bunkhouse become Paradise Island?” he gripes to Lloyd, before warning him of a future where all the ranch hands are fetch-and-carrying for the barrel-racers and feeding their yappy little dogs “like fuckin’ assholes.”) First off, it’s meant to give Rip some quality time with Mia … and by extension to alert Rip to just how out of control Yellowstone’s barrel-racer invasion has become. This particular subplot is intended to serve two purposes, neither of which - in my estimation - is especially vital. But as it turns out - in what’s perhaps a metaphor for this episode as a whole - the horse isn’t quite wild enough for the bronco riders to pony up.
Jimmy and his motor-mouthed, free-spirited girlfriend Mia come along to help out. But the more prominent storyline sees him trucking a seemingly unbreakable horse to the nearest rodeo, to see if the busters down there want to use the animal in their show.
Rip is heavily involved in two storylines in “The Beating.” One’s about his relationship with Beth, naturally. A lot of the credit for that is due to Rip (and to Cole Hauser’s performance as Rip… and, to be fair, to Sheridan’s writing for Rip). The whole birth certificate sequence - loaded with white-knuckle document-requesting action! - is grating in part because before then this episode sports a pleasantly easygoing hangout vibe. Yet even then, Jamie doesn’t reckon with the revelation that his whole life has been a lie until the final scene. A few minutes later in the episode, the clerk finally returns, and delivers the not-so-surprising news. Then we cut away to a different scene with other characters. Then we see a clerk walk down a corridor of file cabinets. (Because if we didn’t see that we might wonder, “Wait, how did he get downstairs?”) Then we see him at a desk requesting the birth certificate. Then we see Jamie getting into an elevator. First we get a scene where Jamie’s secretary tells him his official hiring paperwork requires a birth certificate. In fact, the big reveal of Jamie’s secret adoption seemed so obvious to me that I wondered why writer Taylor Sheridan and director Guy Ferland (and, presumably, the episode’s editing team) spent so much time building it up. So in this week’s Yellowstone episode “The Beating,” when Jamie Dutton has to go downstairs to the Montana statehouse records room to retrieve his proof of identity … Well, I’m sure most of us anticipated what he was about to learn. Because this isn’t something many of us do on a regular basis, it’s also not something that comes up much in a drama, unless there’s some narrative reason.
#YELLOWSTONE SEASON3 TV#
Generally speaking, it’s never good when TV characters take a look at their birth certificates.
0 kommentar(er)
