Yellowstone (2018)

Fist-clenching may be a novel approach, also a self-negating one, and Yellowstone--good writing, solid cast, nice views aside--can also be a bummer at times. Nicely done series that can also, from a viewer perspective, be depleting.

This series is a visual feast, with stunning mountains, lovely vistas and spectacular camera work. "Yellowstone" will make the Montana Office of Tourism proud. .... While John Dutton is a bit of a mystery, I'm invested enough to see how the character and "Yellowstone" develop.

Though “Yellowstone,” at least in the early going, has its flaws--please make scenes of people having sex standing up against a wall go away forever--it’s a solid piece of work.

Yellowstone basically offers conflict for the sake of conflict, and character for the sake of character. TV's family epics run from the absurd to the serious; Sheridan's sits comfortably between them--it's elevated comfort food, well conceived and well prepared, but still, you know, hamburgers and hot dogs, fried chicken and waffles. People find that very satisfying.

It's jam-packed with the contents that have made Sheridan's previous stories so exciting to wide audiences, but it’s also more of a mess. And yet, “Yellowstone” still prevails as a compelling study of power, while it chews on what really makes a cowboy in 2018.

The two-hour “Yellowstone” pilot is both talky and somewhat predictable as it establishes the characters, their relationships and conflicts. But future episodes offer more surprises and deepen the characters--flashbacks help establish why Beth is the way she is--making “Yellowstone” an enticing summer diversion.

Sheridan’s movies are familiar but tight and thoughtful genre pieces. Expanding his stories out to eight hours gives them a more mechanical, wearying feeling as the characters keep cutting new heads off of the narrative hydra.

Costner's years of playing leathery, down-home figures lend gravity and comfortable familiarity to the role, but Dutton remains a rote exercise. ... The Dutton children are more intriguing characters than their father, perhaps because being lorded over by such a demanding figure has afflicted them with rather nuanced flaws.

Watching a man, even a man who looks terrific on a horse, trying to hold on to what he already has can take Yellowstone only so far. It’s the son who got away who could help Dutton stay interesting, and maybe even teach him something about fatherhood.

Through its first three episodes, Yellowstone is big and broad and a little too full of misfires. But it’s never as determinedly over the top as Dallas or Dynasty, both of which can be seen as ancestors.

Co-creator Taylor Sheridan has written and directed every episode I’ve seen so far, and when he’s not indulging himself with random gunfights, he has a weakness for wannabe poeticism, letting his characters muse darkly. Everybody gets one portentous line per scene.

The story refreshingly shirks Dallas-style melodrama, but its violent, tragic twists often lacks the intended impact, because it feels we've ridden this dolorous trail too many times before. [25 Jun - 8 Jul 2018, p.11]

There are larger-than-life characters and then there are impossible-to-believe roles, and “Yellowstone” runs deep with the latter. ... There’s a much easier way of summing up “Yellowstone”: Horsepucky.

It's all very pretty, but it doesn't conceal a rather pokey and dull series. Yellowstone is a rote family drama that's too self-important for its own good.

Yellowstone, of course, has the right to be exactly the show it wants to be, but for now (I’ve seen three episodes, including the double-length pilot) it’s an unsteady mix of several, held together by the sepia of basic-cable grittiness.

Yellowstone’s weaknesses is its failure to teach viewers why (or why not) we should root for his independence; his Western entitlement alone won’t cut it, and the character Costner plays is unfortunately averse to explanatory monologues. ... Sheridan mostly resists the temptation to turn the series into a soap opera, relying on his knowledge of what today’s West actually looks and feels like, which gives the series its authentic air. The Montana and Utah locations help, too, supplying plenty of high-def beauty.

The clashes between the indigenous population and the Duttons--personified by Kayce, a man more at home with horses than either the white family of his birth or the American Indian one into which he married--are fascinating stuff. Less so are brother-on-brother rivalries that feel drawn from a show with less ambition. Yellowstone is stunningly shot, and yet beneath its mountain vistas lies nothing new, just more squabbling.

Costner delivers one of the most leaden performances in the recent history of marquee stars coming to TV, operating from a baseline of mild irritation that’s modulated only when he’s, say, in mourning, or being shot at in a helicopter. (And even then, just barely.) Much of the cast is out to sea here. ... Part of the show’s failure to connect might have to do with Sheridan (who co-created with fellow Sons Of Anarchy vet John Linson) crafting his characters primarily as symbols.

So much of Yellowstone seems needlessly morbid and painfully paced.

For every horse galloping across the plains, there’s a rattlesnake attack, or for each successfully delivered calf there’s a tractor accident. The balance that Sheridan finds here can be a good thing, but it can also be emotionally exhausting. There’s no clear direction, or much hope for how things might turn out for our key players.

Yellowstone gets bogged down in minutia and politics, and generally winds up being about as exciting as watching a zoning-commission meeting.

The more these characters talk, the thinner they get, until, ultimately, they resemble nothing more than cardboard figures set up on those splendid Utah and Montana locations. ... Yellowstone crawls when it should gallop, making for something of a dull ride. It's sort of like "Dallas" without the winking sense of soap-opera fun.

A series that begins as a ponderous horse opera and develops into a somewhat preposterous soap opera.

What's particularly disappointing about Yellowstone is that just about everyone who isn't a Dutton is the enemy, even the Native Americans who are only where they are because they were kicked out of everywhere else by the government generations ago. The Duttons are portrayed solely as the victims here, which doesn't allow for the level of nuance a good television show needs.