Yellowstone, S3

By Sergio C. Mu?oz at Intelatin

A white man (Kevin Costner as John Dutton) inherits an enormous territory of land in Montana. He is the seventh generation to control this land which would place the initial theft at around 1810. Montana didnt become a State until 1889 but regardless, it was the era of expansionism by British immigrants. I imagine that Dutton's ancestors were one of those marauders. Cut to 2020 and he lives on this land with his three adult children (Jamie, Beth, Kayce) and a grandchild (Tate). It seems to be a working ranch but the majority of the land remains untouched. They don't seem to be growing anything but they do work with horses and cows.

Kayce, his youngest child, is a military assassin who has come home and is attempting to work with his father. In Season Three, he is corruptly deputized as a Livestock Commissioner and in his first order of business, he kills a cow thief. Cows and horses being a form of currency in Montana, this action is judged as righteous by his community. Kayce is married to an Indigenous woman from the local reservation named, Monica. She used to work as a professor of Native Studies at the local university but somehow her career fell off a cliff without letting the viewers understand why and now she is becoming an informal spokeswoman for her reservation, Broken Rock. She is adapting to this new role alongside the Chairman of the reservation, Thomas Rainwater, and his right hand man, Mo. (pictured above)

There are three factions that all want the Dutton land for different reasons: The Duttons, Thomas Rainwater and a multinational conglomerate called Market Equities. In Season Three, Chairman Rainwater articulates his position:

“There’s two futures for this valley.  One, with the land stripped of the second homes and the hobby farms and returned to the way it used to be. You can drive twenty miles into Yellowstone Park and that is how our whole nation looked at one time. Modern society wants people to go to school, learn a trade to make money so they can buy clothes, food and a place to live. But on land that hasnt been ravaged by man, you dont need to buy food, you just go find it. You dont need to buy clothes, you make them. You dont build a house, you seek shelter. You dont live on the land, you live with the land. The first future is the only future.”

The Duttons want to retain ownership of the land and keep it wild. The Market Equities Group wants to build a luxury resort-style city and an international airport. They offer $500,000,000 to the Duttons to sell a significant portion of the land. If the Duttons don't sell it, it is likely that the State of Montana will use legal action against the Duttons to take the land and then sell it themselves to Market Equities. Attorneys being funded by financial institutions are the highest order of assassins in Montana.

To fight these attorneys and the multinationals they represent, John Dutton is sleeping with the Governor, his eldest son is (corruptly) the Attorney General and his youngest son is (corruptly) the Livestock Commissioner. His daughter is a rogue Wall Street style executive that uses financial warfare to try to battle Market Equities. John Dutton's three children know that even with this perfect storm of corruption at City Hall in Montana, they cannot fight Wall Street for longer than two years. The three children advise the father to sell and the father refuses. At the heart of John Dutton's resentments is that he only has one grandchild who could never be a powerful enough one man army to retain the land in the family. This grandchild, Tate, is half Indigenous.

So, the struggle continues on a weekly basis. The show is hinting that John Dutton and Thomas Rainwater might collaborate to become stronger against Wall Street. However, they do make it clear that John Dutton is not a very good collaborator. He has this system that has been working for him in the past which is to warn his enemies and if they don't get the message, to kill them. Because he is above the law, folks congratulate him when he does these type of things so since its been working for seven generations, why change it now? His children, the eighth generation, seem to be following along in daddy's footsteps too. But Tate, the ninth generation, is being raised with a pinch of morality by his mother so corruption and assasination as the go-to way forward will likely die with Kayce. And to be fair, Kayce relays himself to the audience as a man who is disturbed by his own immorality. He doesnt seem to want to be the way he was raised. For two seasons, he fought to stay away from daddy but in Season Three, he has joined the dark side which ironically makes him the likely hero in the eyes of the show. In every episode, he performs one act of kindness as penance to counterbalance his one act of badness. And the other two children, Jamie and Beth, are content with being evil as long as they are loved by daddy.

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When I came to the United States in 1978, I unknowingly came to live in a planned city built by the Phillip Morris Company. They made so much money selling cigarettes worldwide that they dedicated a percentage of their total budget to building communities on virgin land in southern California. When we showed up fifteen years into the plan, there were a few roads coming off the newly built freeway but the majority of the setting was homes, grass, brush and bunnies.

It wasnt until I was in my 40s that I began to question any of it. There was no way that I, as a three year old, could have been complicit in this land theft but when you develop a conscience, you do begin to question these realities. In watching Yellowstone, I am now wanting to see the world from Tate's perspective. In Season Three, he is probably ten years old. (In the pilot episode, Tate is 4) He doesn't go to school (5th grade), he just pals around with his grandfather in the wild. They fish, admire horses and camp together. His favorite food is the biscuit. He was recently kidnapped but he was returned unharmed, yet traumatized. He loves his mother and his grandfather and is old enough to understand that his father has some emotional issues. He doesnt really get much time with Kayce and the viewer understands that there is an unresolved tension there but we dont understand why. The men on the show are built to be strong, silent, walk quietly but carry a big rifle types. Tate, as inquisitive as he was about reservation life (in the past) and is about luxury ranch life (in the present), he doesnt turn to his father for communication. He does turn to his grandfather to allow John Dutton to say some cryptic deep affirmations about life on the plains. He talks to Tate like he is a very salt of the earth hard working blue collar cowboy type and Tate soaks it up. He dreams of one day being a cowboy. In Season Two, I remember there was a reference to Tate identifying as Indigenous, as in, the best cowboys are Indigenous. John Dutton reminds him that he is half-white. The rich half.

What is going to happen for this ten year old? His mother is drowning in sorrow because of the realities of reservation life. His father is drowning in sorrow because of the realities of his life as an assassin with a heart of gold. His grandfather is drowning in sorrow because of the realities of the "frontier" evaporating in front of his eyes. His aunt is drowning in sorrow because of a forced hysterectomy that she had when she was 15. His uncle is drowning in sorrow because he was adopted and seemingly unloved by his foster daddy, John Dutton.

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In one of the episodes this season, Chairman Thomas Rainwater meets the Market Equities attorney on land near the reservation. This scene resonated with me the most because as I advance in corporate circles, I see how this scene plays out in my lfie. Chairman Rainwater is arriving to question a state sanctioned legal notice that he received about his land, presumaby written by the attorney. The attorney informs Chairman Rainwater that unless he has an attorney present with him, they cannot speak to each other because the law consider legalese to be its own language. Attorneys can only speak to other Attorneys. If the Attorney speaks and Chairman Rainwater claims that he can't understand what is being said, the courts will side with Chairman Rainwater. So, they don't speak at all. Or, they speak through documentation which is subject to interpretation.

Later, back at his office, Chairman Rainwater shows the document to an Attorney to try and understand what the document really means. The Attorney informs him that it doesn't really mean anything. It is just a warning to let them know that Wall Street is on the land and they have the capital to turn out the reservation's lights. Chairman Rainwater asks when and the Attorney informs him that the end will come once his capital is exhausted. When that time comes, sooner rather than later, Market Equities will still have billions in dry powder to own and develop the land.

As a soap opera, it is pretty standard stuff but in-between the lines, there is a lot of depth and complexity to Yellowstone. Chairman Thomas Rainwater is not the type of person I'd like to be but I am rooting for him to win.

#Intelatin #Yellowstone #ParamountNetwork #KevinCostner