How much money would it really take to save a ranch like one on “Yellowstone”? If you believe Beth (Kelly Reilly), the Dutton clan owes the government something like hundreds of millions of dollars in estate taxes following their father’s death, something that doesn’t seem like it can be right but also might be, because who really understands the tax code anyway? Either way, the Yellowstone’s in hot water, and the Duttons are having a fire sale.
That’s really the crux of this week’s episode, “Give The World Away.” The Duttons are selling basically everything not nailed down at the ranch, from $3 million horses bought by sucker Brazilians to chuck wagons and tractors. Cattle ranching, it seems, relies on a precarious mountain of loans and financial bets and one slight twist, one wrong move — brucellosis in a field or the death of the governor/ranch owner, let’s say — can throw the whole thing careening toward catastrophe.
While Rip (Cole Hauser) crosses t’s and dots i’s at the ranch pre-sale, Beth heads down to Texas to supervise Travis (Taylor Sheridan), who’s really the star of this whole episode. He gets a lot of juicy dialogue, showy horse riding scenes, and comes off like a playboy who any woman would love to be with. His girlfriend in the episode is played by supermodel/super horsewoman Bella Hadid, for crying out loud, and she doesn’t even seem to mind that he’s also wooing about 10 other horse-loving hotties.
Beth hates Travis almost immediately but is in awe at his bullshitting skills, so she enlists him to come up to Montana for their sale. There’s some strip poker involved and a lot of wisecracking back and forth, but he agrees to do it for free, something that you’d think he should have done right out of the gate considering how much he loved John and respects Rip. But he just wanted to see Beth sweat.
Either way, when Travis hits the ranch he does his job and the family makes about $30 million in the sale, enough to get them through another year according to Beth. They won’t be making any money in that year — they don’t have cows to raise or really anything else to grow or do on the ranch — but as we learn at the end of the episode, they also have a plan for how they’re going to get out of this whole mess.
The scheme involves either giving the ranch away whole cloth or selling it for $1, and it really seems like it’s going to involve Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham), Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) and the rest of the indigenous crew over at the Broken Rock Reservation. They’ve been dipping in and out of each episode talking about how a pipeline is about to ruin their land, and it would only seem right if the Duttons sell the land back to them for next to nothing in exchange for the rights to work and live there. What goes around, comes around and all that.
And speaking of just desserts: It’s becoming increasingly doubtful that Wes Bentley’s Jamie will get what’s coming to him. Though it looks like the walls are closing in on him at the beginning of the episode, with the cops raiding the offices of Market Equities in an attempt to really pin John Dutton’s murder on Sarah Atwood (Dawn Oliveri) and more, weirdly specific information getting out about their sexual escapades, Jamie makes the smart move to enlist his ex Christina (Katherine Cunningham) to help, ostensibly because she doesn’t want to see their son’s legacy tarnished.
As a former DNC operative, Christina seems to know how to get out of a tricky political situation, telling Jamie he should distance himself from Sarah, open a very public investigation into his father’s murder, and sing his pop’s praises to high heaven, saying his murder meant that the citizens of Montana weren’t allowed to exercise their right to choose their elected officials. It seems like it could work if Jamie can pull it off, but here’s hoping Beth had Christina’s house wired for sound or something, because there’s no way this series closes in a satisfying way if he doesn’t get what’s coming to him.
And it is going to end soon. Next week is the series(?) finale, and it looks like it wraps up with John’s invite-only funeral, the sneaky sale of the ranch, and (hopefully) very little bloodshed.
It might be the end of “Yellowstone,” but it could be the beginning of something entirely new at the Yellowstone ranch, and that’s a very good thing.
“Yellowstone airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Paramount Network