In the “Yellowstone” recap, John is forced to make a move against Jamie, Kayce realizes his wife was right and Beth discovers some disturbing news…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The battle lines have officially been drawn in Dutton vs. Dutton for control of the state of Montana.
The latest episode of “Yellowstone” finally brought the ongoing tension between John Dutton and his adopted son Jamie to the breaking point after Governor Lynelle Perry told her old friend and part-time boyfriend that she was planning to leave her role in order to run for the Senate.
That meant somebody had to take over for governor and while some ranch owners actually pitched Kayce Dutton on that idea a season ago, John Dutton ultimately decided to throw his hat into the ring this week for no other reason than to prevent Jamie from landing that coveted job.
Elsewhere, Beth started her new job at Market Equities and she found out rather quickly that the company’s plans for expansion into Montana went much further than she ever expected. That’s not necessarily going to test her loyalty — we all know Beth would die for her father — but how she’s going to stop them from making this expansion is going to be the truest test of her skills.
Kayce also ran into some of his own issues this week as he continued to help the reservation search for some stolen horses and he once again ran into a familiar face after Avery made her surprising return a week ago after she disappeared from working at the Yellowstone ranch back in season 2.
There’s a lot to get into this week so let’s recap the latest episode of “Yellowstone” titled “Keep the Wolves Close”…
Family First
Ahead of her first day as the new head of the Montana office at Market Equities, Beth first gets a visit from Carter with a handful of flowers as he makes an attempt to apologize to her for his behavior in the clothing store a few weeks ago. Before he can even hand the flowers over, Beth shuts him down and teaches the kid a lesson that a gesture such of this should only be done for no reason at all — never for an apology.
Frustrated that he can’t seem to make things right, Carter asks Beth to take him into town because the way things are going right now, he has no home, no friends and no prospects for the future. By that standard, Carter would rather just take his chances in foster care.
Beth finally relents by pointing out that at 14 years old, Carter is close to being classified as an adult and it’s not likely he’ll find any kind of real home in foster care. She then offers him an alternative — he has to listen to her and obey her ever word as if it came from God. If he’ll agree to those rules, Beth will forgive and forget but this is his last chance at redemption.
Carter agrees and shakes her hands as a sign of her commitment.
Later that morning, Beth heads into work and introduces herself to the staff at Market Equities as only she’s capable of doing. In fact, Beth makes quick work of her assistant after figuring out that he’s screwing the receptionist and she just doesn’t have much need for him in her new work role.
So she fires him before heading off to her first meeting of the day.
When Beth walks into the room, an executive is already laying out plans for a massive expansion in and around the new airport that’s being planned for the land leased on the Yellowstone ranch by her brother Jamie. But Market Equities isn’t just building the airport — they have designs on a massive infrastructure overhaul that will build roadways, sewage, electricity and everything else before then expanding with hotels, shopping and other businesses.
In other words, Market Equities is essentially expecting to take over the entire Yellowstone ranch for their expansion into Montana.
Beth is understandably shaken after she was never told about this planned expansion, which would all but eliminate the land that her father covets so much. Her new co-worker Ellis tells Beth that this is the time when her loyalties will truly be tested.
Of course, Beth has no problem figuring out who has her devotion because on the way home, she happens to run into Summer Higgins and her group of protesters outside of a fur store. Beth approaches Summer and educates the activist how she’s aiming way too low to actually make any kind of real difference in the world.
Shaming a few fur buying customers isn’t going to shut down the fur industry.
Instead, Beth tells Summer to aim much higher but in order to do that she’s going to have to take some real risks and orchestrate the kind of protest that could actually make significant changes.
“This is a little above your paygrade. This one takes effort, strategy, sacrifice, risk. Real risk. Not that bullshit you pulled with my brother.”
~ Beth
Beth then gives Summer the lowdown on the planned expansion by Market Equities, which will wipe out thousands of animals from their natural habitats in one of the only untouched lands left in the United States. She gives Summer everything she needs to make a real environmental headache for Market Equities and she hopes that will be enough to slow them down from actually taking over her father’s ranch.
It Means Something
Down in Texas, Jimmy is actually learning how to be a real cowboy — he’s even ditched his baseball cap for an actual cowboy hat. He’s roping and wrangling but today Jimmy gets called back to the barn to help out a veterinarian named Emily, who is tending to some horses.
Jimmy arrives and he soon discovers that he’s being used to help masturbate horses to catch their seed in order to breed them. It’s a disturbing piece of work but after 16 horses, Jimmy seems to get the handle on it even though it’s probably the last thing he ever imagined he’d be doing.
When the job is done, Emily properly introduces herself to Jimmy and then promptly asks him out on a date.
Seeing as Jimmy is one of only a handful of single men worth a damn on the Four-Sixes ranch, Emily feels like she’s got to scoop him up before somebody else does. Of course, Jimmy still feels a sense of loyalty to Mia — at least momentarily until remembering that she dumped him after he agreed to move to Texas for the Dutton family.
Rather than allowing Emily to buy him dinner, however, Jimmy agrees to go out with her as long as he’s the one paying.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Teeter returns and asks to speak to John about getting her old job back.
She tells John that she was always the hardest worker in the whole bunch — a declaration that Rip agrees with — and this was the only life she ever wanted. But after John confirms that she was sleeping with one of the other cowboys, he believes that Teeter will just end up as the next person somebody ends up fighting over.
Before he can leave, Teeter shows him the brand that she got for the Yellowstone ranch after helping to track down one of John’s enemies last season — the vile Wade Morrow —and exacting revenge on him.
“So all that this is my home forever is just talk? Fucking scarred for life, it don’t mean nothing?”
~ Teeter
John is understandably upset that nobody bothered to tell him that Teeter had been branded before he fired her but after Rip tells him that Kayce was aware that she had been given the one thing that ties her to the Yellowstone-Dutton ranch forever, he changes his mind about her leaving.
Rip tells Teeter to get her stuff and go back to the bunkhouse — and she can’t help but to hug him as a thank you.
As for the fight last week that saw Walker and Lloyd nearly kill each other, that finally got put to bed with a peace offering.
Lloyd heads to a local pawn shop to sell his one of a kind winning rodeo belt buckle in order to exchange that for a guitar to replace the one he smashed before stabbing Walker with his knife.
After returning to the bunkhouse, Lloyd finds Laramie back in bed with Walker but this time he’s ready to make peace as he hands over the guitar and hopes that will settle the score between them once and for all. Walker then plays a song for Lloyd as his own sign of forgiveness as the cowboys put the past behind them.
They may never be best friends but at least now Walker and Lloyd can be in the same room together without trying to kill each other.
Love at First Sight
When Monica wakes up in the morning at her new house, she’s a little scared when Tate is nowhere to be found.
She’s relieved after discovering that Tate is out with his father as Kayce teaches his son about tracking animals as he prepares to help the Broken Rock reservation find those horses that were stolen.
Kayce heads off to work where he teams up with Mo to track the horses and it doesn’t take long before they run across the mustangs all herded and corralled in a pin run by the Bureau of Land Management. It seems after the thieves were unable to control the horses while corralling them on dirt bikes, they just let the animals run free and that led to the Bureau of Land Management herding them into the pin with helicopters with plans to put them up for auction in a matter of days.
Mo provides proof that the horses belong to the Broken Rock reservation but the agent warns him that he only has until Friday to move the animals or the government will maintain ownership to sell them at auction. That’s when Mo tells Kayce that he’s got a plan to help herd these horses back to the reservation because there’s no way a truck will make it over this terrain to drive them back.
Later that day, Kayce and Mo return with a group of men on horseback and after opening the pen, they all combine together to essentially chase the animals back to the owners’ land.
The horses finally get corralled back at the owner’s pin and the entire family is overjoyed — including Avery, the attractive former ranch hand who once worked at the Yellowstone ranch.
Thomas Rainwater warns Kayce that Avery has a look in her eye when it comes to him but he’s just not buying it. Kayce should have listened because as he’s loading up his own horse to head back home, Avery approaches him to confess that she’s always had feelings for him.
In fact, Avery asks him if he believes in love at first sight — and Kayce answers back that he does because that’s exactly how he felt when he set eyes on Monica for the first time.
Well it seems Avery had the same flood of emotion when she first met Kayce but he just can’t believe that she’s actually in loved with him.
“It can’t be love. God wouldn’t let you love something that can’t love you back.”
~ Kayce Dutton
Avery disagrees but she walks away heartbroken after realizing that Kayce will never be hers. It will be interesting to see if Kayce confesses this information to Monica, who had her suspicions about Avery from the first time they ran into each other a week ago.
The Devil We Know
At Jamie’s new ranch, he’s playing with his son while Garrett sits down for a conversation with Christina about the kind of father his son is going to make. Christina can’t help but wonder how Jamie is adapting to this role after 40 years spent under John Dutton’s thumb but Garrett assures her that he’s the one teaching his son these days and he’s a much better man for it.
But now Garrett needs a favor — he wants Jamie to become the next governor in the state of Montana and he needs Christina’s help to get him the job. Remember, Christina was originally the head of Jamie’s campaign to become Attorney General back in season 1 and she believed in him more than anyone else.
Christina seems legitimately intrigued by this possibility and it’s safe to say Jamie would love nothing more than to graduate to become the governor.
Before Jamie can start polishing up his new name plate, Governor Lynelle Perry arrives at the Yellowstone to tell John that she’s leaving her job to pursue a Senate seat and she’s planning to endorse his son to take over.
That news hits John like a ton of bricks because he knows a thousand reasons why Jamie shouldn’t be governor but Lynelle says unless he’s going to run for the job — and she would gladly give him her endorsement — then his son is the best one available right now.
That’s when John tells Lynelle that he’ll take her endorsement because if he needs to run for governor in order to stop Jamie then that’s what he’ll do.
“If you want a devil you really know, here he is.”
~ John Dutton
That night with Carter invited back into the ranch house where he’s learning the tricks of the trade from Rip, Beth gets a call from her father asking her to come up to the main lodge.
After she arrives, John tells Beth that when his great grandfather originally built this massive home it was done with the intention that his children would never have to leave. Now John is all alone and he wants to be surrounded by family.
So he asks Beth to move into the lodge with Rip and they can even bring Carter along as well.
But rather than just accept, Beth tells her father that she needs to ask Rip that question and she insists that he actually asks him because she knows the man she loves would dive off a cliff if that’s what John told him to do.
John also informs Beth about her brother running for governor and how he volunteered for the job just to stop Jamie from winning. While John is hoping that Beth can come up with alternate plan that won’t involve him actually trying to become the governor of Montana, she’s overjoyed by the news.
Beth tells her father that winning the election and taking over as the governor solves all of the problems they’ve been having in recent years. As governor, John would control state funds as well as maintain the kind of power that could stop Market Equities from crossing into Montana much less stealing land from owners and building airports, hotels and shopping centers under what was once the Yellowstone ranch.
While it’s not the answer he was hoping to hear from his daughter, John knows running for governor is the best possible solution to an impossibly difficult situation.
The next day, John calls Rip over to speak with him and he lays out the reasons why he and Beth should move into the lodge.
“The lodge is where family belongs. Didn’t sound like a question did it? It’s a question.”
~ John Dutton
After John agrees to take in Carter as well, Rip appears ready to call the main house his new home where he will begin sharing a breakfast and dinner table alongside his future father-in-law.
Finally the time has come for Governor Perry to announce that she’s going to run for Senate and there’s a candidate she wants to endorse as her successor.
Jamie is summoned down to the press area where he runs into John and Beth, who are there waiting for him alongside the governor. He’s stunned to see them both there as he expects his coronation as the next leader of the state of Montana but Jamie has no idea what’s about to hit him.
Governor Perry then descends down the stairs where she makes her announcement and then prepares to introduce the person she wants to take her job — but just as Jamie smiles and prepares to join her, she declares the best man for the job is none other than John Dutton.
Jamie looks like someone just gut punched him as Beth whispers in his ear that this is just the beginning.
John then introduces himself to the media in Montana while telling them about the kind of progress that will see the state torn apart and land taken away from them. Land that they’ll never get back again and he’s going to do everything in his power to stop it.
“So if it’s progress you seek, do not vote for me. I am the opposite of progress. I am the wall that it bashes against and I will not be the one who breaks.”
~ John Dutton
John has not only declared himself as a candidate for governor but he has the most important endorsement in the state on his side while Jamie is left in shambles wondering how he once again didn’t see this coming. Of course it can’t be forgotten that Jamie has already protected his birth father Garrett Randle from prosecution after he orchestrated the hit that nearly wiped out the entire Dutton family while proclaiming that he will keep trying until all of them are dead.
Given what just happened to him, Jamie might soon embrace Garrett’s mission to destroy the Dutton family once and for all.
The stage is now set for John Dutton to run for governor and all signs are pointing towards his son as the man he’ll be going up against. It looks like one hell of a big fight brewing as “Yellowstone” heads into season 5 and beyond.
“Yellowstone” will return for a brand new episode next Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET on the Paramount Network.
