“Yellowstone” is one of those mysteries of the television business, a series that garners big ratings but, like the late comic Rodney Dangerfield, doesn’t always get much respect. That dynamic was summed up last year by a Vanity Fair headline that read: “Here in Yellowstone, the most-watched show everyone’s not talking about.”
Success is usually the best revenge in television, even if it doesn’t come with Emmy nominations. The new season of the Paramount Network series, however, approaches something that feels a little more relevant by taking a sharper turn to politics to follow all the soap operas surrounding John Dutton, the character played by Kevin Costner, and the huge his ranch. .
Admittedly, Montana politics have been a part of the series from the beginning. However, last season Dutton threw his hat into the ring in the governorship race, putting him in a position that, as he says in his acceptance speech during the season five premiere, “was never my plan.”
Already considered a modern Western, “Yellowstone” never strays too far from its cowboy roots, and Dutton makes clear his suspicions of big-city interests and wealthy vacationers who want to turn Montana and its pristine mountains into a playground for contrast with House.
Indeed, Dutton brings the same quiet, square values to politics that he does to business and dealings with his family, boldly saying, “I fight for what’s right. I don’t care who supports it.”
There’s a lot more to the line than that, of course, but this new role for Dutton as the kind of principled, no-nonsense public official that almost anyone would hope to have on the ballot, regardless of political preference, could help distinction of the series’ most recent dramatic arc amid Paramount’s onslaught of spinoffs related to it. In addition to “1883,” which was released last year with Sam Elliott in the saddle, another prequel starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, “1932,” will premiere in December on the streaming service Paramount+.
“Yellowstone” patriarch Taylor Sheridan is also behind another new heartland Paramount+ series, “Tulsa King,” with another veteran movie star, Sylvester Stallone, playing a New York mobster exiled to Oklahoma after leaving prison.
In a sense, “Yellowstone” and its various spin-offs seem to prove that no matter how much the entertainment industry changes, some things never go out of style — in this case, star power, which Costner ( who has done more to keep westerns alive than any other modern actor) provides in abundance; and old-fashioned soap opera plots.
Throw in a dollop of “The West Wing”-style patriotism and who knows? The new season of “Yellowstone” might even get a few more people talking about it.
“Yellowstone” premieres its fifth season on Nov. 13 at 8 p.m. ET on the Paramount Network.
