The Best Character on <em>Yellowstone </em>Is Also Its Worst Person
Many songs about cowboys double as warnings to the women left behind. Their lyrics speak to mothers and wives of “broken bones” and broken homes. They apologize, but refuse to yield. The songs summon the dusty mythology of the American West—supposedly empty expanses, giddy possibilities, manhood tested and proved—while admitting its cost: For the cowboy to have his freedoms, countless others will sacrifice theirs.
, Taylor Sheridan’s , is a new version of those old anthems. It is a show about a ranch that sprawls across southern Montana—the Yellowstone, owned for generations by the Dutton family—and the lengths the family will go to in their fight to keep the land for themselves. is also, as its central female character proves, a show about men: cowboys both literal and aspirational. Beth is the only daughter of the land baron John Dutton (Kevin Costner), and she is one of the three surviving children struggling with the inheritance John will—or will not—leave them. Played by the English actor Kelly Reilly, Beth is that too-rare figure in the world of prestige TV: an antihero who is also a woman. She is an agent of chaos. She is mercurial. She is cunning. She is funny. She is wise. She is cruel. Her father loves her
