In the latest “Yellowstone” recap, Jamie receives more shocking news, John runs into a protestor and Beth exacts her revenge…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Things are about to get really complicated for Jamie Dutton.
The outcast Dutton child on “Yellowstone” spent the first two seasons trying to earn his father’s approval only to discover in season 3 that he didn’t share blood with John Dutton.
Rocked by the news that he was adopted and his birth father had murdered his mother, Jamie was at a crossroads that ended with him leading a portion of the Dutton Ranch to Market Equities in order for an airport to be constructed, which was very much against his family’s wishes. He then shunned his father and sought out his birth parent, Garrett Randle, who took responsibility for killing his wife in order to save Jamie from a mother addicted to drugs who was bound to leave him for dead.
Now in “Yellowstone” season 4, Jamie is embedded as the attorney general of Montana and he’s still looking after the Dutton family following a coordinated attack that nearly wiped all of them off the map.
Last week, Jamie discovered that a man named Terrell Riggins was responsible for putting the parties together in order for the attack on the Dutton family to take place and in the latest episode, he found out the terrible confirmation that his father was the man giving those orders.
But before he could lash out at Garrett’s hubris for attempting to assassinate the only family that Jamie’s ever known, he was faced with a surprising return that could force him to cut ties with the Duttons forever and put them in peril after they were nearly all killed just a few months before.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “Yellowstone” titled “Under a Blanket of Red”…
What You Believe In
It’s a lonely day for John Dutton at the Yellowstone ranch as he can’t help but notice an empty house without any family members living there any longer after Kayce moved his wife and son back to the Broken Rock Reservation following the attack on them.
John does just about as much self-reflection as possible before grabbing a hot shower and preparing for bed when he’s greeted by his daughter Beth, who is there waiting for him before he goes to sleep.
Beth knows that no matter how much her father might pretend that he likes an empty house all to himself, this is absolutely the last place he wants to be right now. So she decided to come stay with him for the night so her father wouldn’t be quite so lonely.
The next morning, John wakes up for breakfast while Beth is preparing for her day that involves her first assignment after officially taking the job offered to her by Market Equities. John still doesn’t quite understand how her working for the company trying to take his ranch is going to help the family but Beth is nothing if not incredibly cunning.
“It helps us when I run it into the fucking ground.”
~ Beth Dutton
As for Monica Dutton, she’s found peace being back at her father’s house while her son Tate spends time in a sweat lodge alongside her father and Chief Thomas Rainwater. It’s a different kind of therapy that Chief Rainwater believes is exactly what Tate needs to heal his wounded soul after he killed an attacker trying to go after his mother.
Rainwater believes a few more sessions in the sweat lodge along with a trip up the mountain with his right hand man Mo and Tate will return home with the peace he needs to get past what he’s done.
“When he comes down he won’t think of himself as a killer. He’ll think of himself as a warrior, like you.”
~ Thomas Rainwater
Monica doesn’t feel much like a warrior but when she admits that her only guilt is that she didn’t kill the man breaking into their home, Rainwater says that’s all the proof he needs to know her inner spirit.
As for Kayce, he wakes up the next morning for breakfast with his family as Monica peruses sites online to find them a home to rent together. As welcoming as Monica’s family might be towards them, Kayce says they’re done living under the roofs of their fathers.
While Kayce doesn’t seem all that comfortable with the situation, he sees the improvements in Tate and the happiness bursting out of Monica and that’s all he needs to know he made the right decision.
Sadly that will be the best part of his day after Kayce heads into work and finds a group of protestors outside his office. The group is battling against factory farming and they don’t mind pouring buckets of red paint on themselves to prove their resolve while standing up for the animals that can’t stand up for themselves.
When Kayce tries to clear a path to his office, he ends up getting into a fight with one of the protesters, which then leads to more officers drawing their weapons just as the sheriff arrives. The lead protestors are taken into custody and John gets a call about what’s happening at his old office.
John arrives to see the protesters angrier than ever after several of them have been handcuffed and a volatile situation was only made worse after Kayce got physical with one of the people involved.
“Son, if I spent a week thinking of ways to fuck up my day, I could not have come up with this.”
~ John Dutton
John finds out that the protest leader is a woman named Summer Higgins (played by Piper Perabo) and she’s led demonstrations like this in multiple cities across the United States, which often end with her in handcuffs although the charges are always dropped. While the sheriff believes it would be better just to cut her loose and move on from the entire ordeal, John prefers to let her spend a night in jail with the prospect of a five-year prison sentence for assaulting a government official as punishment for this particular protest.
Of course, John’s conscience eventually gets the better of him and he returns to the jail and actually pays Summer’s bail so she can be released. After preaching to her about the hypocrisy involved with protesting to save some farm animals but not the others killed when plowing the fields to provide her with the vegetables she surely eats, John decides to show her a different side of Montana.
He invites Summer to return to the Yellowstone Ranch with him to see how the Duttons handle farming and while she scoffs at him at first, she eventually relents and decides to take him up on the offer.
On the drive back to the Yellowstone, Summer remarks how this part of Montana looks like the land time forgot, which is exactly what John is trying to hard to save. While they don’t have much common ground, John and Summer can agree on one thing — the Earth has been abused for far too long and eventually the planet is going to shake loose humanity as its greatest enemy.
Crime and Punishment
Down in Texas, Jimmy is finding out the hard way that you shouldn’t sleep on the ground after he wakes up to a centipede gnawing on his skin. He’s then greeted by an old cowboy from the Four-Sixes Ranch that offers him some breakfast.
The cowboy is played by veteran character actor Barry Corbin, who many might recognize from his role in the 1980 film “Urban Cowboy” when he played John Travolta’s uncle in the movie.
This time around, he’s once again giving some life lessons out to Jimmy while reminding him that being a cowboy is the greatest work in the world that nobody will ever see much less praise him for doing. He also advises Jimmy to find a bench to sleep on next time to avoid the critters wandering around on the ground.
The next morning, Jimmy wakes up to see that old cowboy and another chatting together before the lead ranch hand arrives to put him to work.
Jimmy is told to jump on his horse because they’ll be breaking colts today and this will be his first lesson in order to become a real cowboy. He also asks Jimmy if he learned anything listening to one of the three gods in the state of Texas — the almighty above, George Strait and Buster Welch.
One of the men in that barn was Buster Welch, who is an actual legendary cutting horse trainer with a ton of championships under his belt.
Jimmy jumps on his horse and heads out for his first day of work on the Four-Sixes Ranch where he’ll learn to be a cowboy or die trying.
Back on the Yellowstone, Lloyd is still very much in Rip’s doghouse after he got into a fight with Walker over his relationship with Laramie — the young rodeo girl who flirted with the old cowboy before jumping into bed with the stud who could play guitar.
First, Lloyd is left out when the ranch hands are sent out on the ranch for work that day and he’s ordered to teach Carter how to saddle a horse. When the ranch hands return, Rip hands out assignments for each cowboy to break a colt so they can add even more horses to the Yellowstone stable.
Once again, Lloyd is left without a job as he watches everybody else do the work he’s supposed to be doing.
When Lloyd finally confronts Rip over his treatment, he’s reminded that he’s supposed to serve as an example to everybody on the ranch and he forgot that when he got into a fight with Walker. Rip tells him that nobody wants Walker dead more than him but Mr. Dutton wants him working on the ranch so that’s the only word that matters for now.
Later that night while the rest of the ranch hands are watching rodeo competition on TV, Lloyd decides to head outside where he checks on Carter sleeping in the barn. It’s clear Lloyd intends on taking Carter under his wing as a project since he’s on the outs with Rip right now.
As he wanders around the darkness, Lloyd spots a fire burning near the trailer where Walker sleeps except this time he’s laying out under the stars. Walker is soon joined by Laramie who informs him that they won’t be sleeping much tonight as she removes her clothes and climbs on top of him.
Lloyd looks on from a distance as he continues to seethe with anger over the way he was spurned by Laramie and now Walker’s just spitting in his face everyday by being with her.
Secrets Don’t Stay Secret Forever
Following a seven hour drive across Wyoming into Utah, Beth finally arrives at the Schwartz and Meyer main office where she bursts through the door to speak to her former boss, Bob Scwartz.
She informs him that she’s taken the job of President at Market Equities in Montana and now she will oversee the company’s entire expansion into the state. Beth then tells Bob that she didn’t take a huge salary or stock options or anything of the sort in order to get lured into the job.
Instead, Beth only asked for one thing — the controlling interest over Schwartz and Meyer that Market Equities owns now. For her services to help the company expand into Montana with far less resistance, Beth accepted the controlling interest over her former employers and now she’s decided to pay Bob a visit to pass along that message.
Bob’s assistant even got caught by the shrapnel of the bullets that Beth was firing.
“You bet on the wrong horse. You are fired … you’re fired, too, you nosy bitch. All this shit is moving to Montana.”
~ Beth Dutton
While Beth is celebrating a victory over her former boss, Jamie Dutton is dealing with his own inner turmoil after discovering that Terrell Riggins — the man who helped set up the hit on the Dutton family — used to be a cellmate of his father, Garret Randle.
As Attorney General, Jamie requests a meeting with Riggins and his lawyer but there’s no negotiating for this particular encounter — he offers full immunity as a reward for whatever information provided.
After assuring Riggins that he’ll be placed into protective custody and then potentially moved to a medium security prison for serving as a state’s witness, Jamie then turns his attention to the matter at hand. He hands over a photo of Garrett Randle to Riggins and asks if he knows this man and if he was the person behind the attack on the Dutton family.
We never hear Riggins’ answer but it’s clear what he was about to say, especially after Jamie returns home enraged as he confronts his father about what he’s done.
But Jamie doesn’t get a chance to throw accusations at Garrett because he seems to already know why his son is so angry and he’s also got a surprise waiting for him that should calm the waters rather quickly.
“That’s the problem with secrets. They don’t stay secret forever.”
~ Garrett Randle
Before Jamie can say another word, Garett reveals that Christina — the woman who left after she got pregnant with Jamie’s child after they were together during the first season when she was acting as his campaign manager for Attorney General. Christina left Jamie because he refused to stand up to John Dutton and become his own man.
Now Christina is back with a baby in her arms and she’s followed through on her promise to reunite with Jamie now that he’s cut John Dutton out of his life. She then hands over the baby to him and he’s overjoyed to finally meet his son.
Christina’s return with Jamie’s son will certainly complicate his moral high ground when it comes to punishing Garrett for ordering the hit on the Dutton family. Will Jamie even attempt to prosecute his own birth father for attempting to kill the family that raised him now that he’s been reunited with Christina and his child?
Time will only tell but it’s clear that Jamie’s decision won’t be an easy one.
“Yellowstone” will return for a brand new episode next Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET on the Paramount Network.
