4 Reasons Why I Hate to Admit I Watch Yellowstone

Which ain’t no Bonanza

I’m kinda an old guy and I like westerns. Hell, I write westerns. My main demographic is old guys who like westerns. There are still a few of us around.

Grew up in the genre’s golden age — John Wayne, Gunsmoke, Louis L’Amour. But westerns are passé now. Every once in a while, an attempt at a new western will pop up on one of the channels. But they're not enough of us old guys to make it worth the trouble and expense, so the producers, directors, and writers (in that order) heavily blend in the trends of present-day culture to attract a younger crowd. That’s true with the current series on the Paramount Channel, Yellowstone. But it fits What Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes:

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be… there is no new thing under the sun.”

I think Solomon was an old guy when he wrote that. Sounds kind of cynical and crotchety.

Willing to bet many Woke-ists and/or Millennials, Gen X’ers, and certainly Gen Z’ers have never heard of the ’60s-’70s TV show Bonanza. Its story line was about a widowed cattle baron with three adult children who fight to manage their vast landholdings in a picturesque western state.

Ergo, Yellowstone.

Trade Lorne Green (Pa) for Kevin Costner, Northern Nevada for Montana, 19th Century big cattle ranch with 21st Century same, and you’ve got the unchanged premise.

But that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. TV westerns in the mid-20th Century were a lot tamer. The protagonists were pure as the driven snow, except when they shoot somebody. By that I mean you knew who the good guys were because they acted like it — never a discouraging word and as far as those who were shot, to borrow a line from the Schwarzenegger movie True Lies, “They were all bad.” Wish I could write it with Arnold’s accent.

In Bonanza, men were men and women were women and it wasn’t difficult to tell the difference, mainly because of cleavage. Hoss Cartwright (the late Dan Blocker) may’ve had some cleavage, but he never showed it. It just wasn’t done among the men.

So, I watch Yellowstone now, because it’s the closest thing I’ve got to a TV western and it doesn’t involve Simon Cowell or Katy Perry or reality which isn’t really reality (Did I just hear my old English teacher shout at me from the grave?). Now there has been a little singing but, so far, no dancing on the show. Which I’m okay with because I haven’t seen decent singing and dancing in a western since Gordon McCrea did Oklahoma! (Google it, Z-ers).

As a western purist, there are some things about Yellowstone that concern me, though. Things that sort of make me cringe.

Bad Guys, Bad Girls

In the three seasons I’ve watched Yellowstone, it has been very hard to find even one sympathetic character. They’ve done better the past couple season, but, man, that first season nobody was likable. If they weren’t killers or amoral neurotics, they were just turds. There was a time or two I started cheering for the villains, once I figured out who was which. Even Kevin Costner — the rancher patriarch — is a rectal orifice. Have to admit some of them have grown on me. Don’t think they’ve gotten much softer in three seasons, though. Maybe I’m just a latent rectal orifice.

And his offspring, awph! To quote Joe Biden, “C’mon, man.”

· The oldest is a slick lawyer, which in itself is enough to boo, but he’s also impacted with a thousand other disagreeable characteristics. He whimpers a lot.

· They changed the middle from a big goofy cowboy comic relief character to an attractive woman. However, she brings no comic relief with her but we do have more cleavage. She is a caustic, hard-drinking (and smoking), promiscuous, angry b-word whose language would make a submariner blush. No schoolmarm, this one. Anyway, not one I’d want to send my kids to.

· The youngest is a rebel on the outs with his old man because his daddy is a rich, powerful capitalistic rancher and that’s just how Hollywood rebel sons are. And, of course, he has scraggly facial hair. He even married a Native American woman and in the beginning lived in a trailer on the reservation, both of which we’re led to believe his pa didn’t approve. One more strike against Costner’s character — he’s a bigot. This son is the closest you can get to a sympathetic character, and he almost won me over until he shot an Indian in cold blood in one episode. It was his brother-in-law, I think. Now that did draw out some sympathy because I’ve known the feeling… about brothers-in-law, not Indians.

· The show is loaded with baddies, but there’s one other I should mention: Rip. He’s is the young ranch foreman having an off and on an affair with the slutty daughter, and whose main job is to beat the crap out of any of the cowboys who don’t get the job done. Also, to throw any off a remote cliff in Wyoming if Costner tells him to. They don’t get voted off the island in Yellowstone. Rip throws them off a cliff in Wyoming. He totally scares me. At least he does wear a black hat.

Native Americans

The show does have American Indians and they are in direct opposition to the cowboys. That’s a basic feature of the American western. And it’s still the Indians main intent to get their land back and run off all the whites. However, it’s never mentioned which American Indians these are, that is, their tribal ancestry. According to my research, there are six designated reservations in Montana, and the Yellowstone Indians do talk about it, just not which one. I guess they represent a composite of the Blackfeet, Flathead, Cree, Gros Ventre, Sioux, Chippewa, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne.

The Yellowstone Indians seem more like Mafia characters than noble First People. The headman runs the casino, rides around in a chauffeured black Mercedes, and never meets with anyone unless flanked by two burly bodyguards.

Soft Porn

Not an episode goes by without at least one lurid semi-nude sex scene. Not that I turn off the TV, but nothing like that ever happened on Bonanza, not even kissing. Yuck. But cleavage, we did have cleavage. Costner even doinks the Governor of Montana now and then, but not for political reasons, I don’t think. Not sure how that got started but there are left-handed suggestions it involved something in the cattle business a few years back. Bulls and cows can be horny.

Language

Now I’m no saint when it comes to swearing, but I have learned to tone it down over the years after leaving the military, after raising kids. The dialogue in Yellowstone is bluer than a doughnut shop next door to a police precinct. They spew more F-bombs in one episode than is required at an Antifa pep rally. It’s like Portland after dark, except without the burning and looting. I don’t know why they do it. It adds nothing to the show except a Mature Audiences rating. Which is kind of ironic because people who like to say and write the F-bomb every four words aren’t all that mature, in my opinion.

TV westerns come and go and so will this one. But I’ll watch to the end because I’m an old guy who likes westerns, even though it gives me nightmares about being thrown off a lonesome cliff in Wyoming.

Thanks for tuning in. I know there are many great articles you could choose to read, so I appreciate you choosing mine.

Speaking of great articles and writers, I’d like to recommend you check out Bebe Nicholson. She’s a humor writer extraordinaire. Here’s an example:

Other great writers you shouldn’t ignore: Jacquelyn Lynn, P.G. Barnett, Ann K Frailey, Nathan White, Anne Young, Terry Mansfield, Tim Maudlin, Tree Langdon, Libby Mitchell

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