The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Yellowstone’ Episode 7 Recap

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Chris Ryan and Ryen Russillo team up to discuss the latest in the Paramount+ drama, including the lack of a main antagonist, Teeter’s development, and where the season could be headed. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Ryen Russillo Associate Producer: Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to home depot.com slash price match for details. Hello and welcome to the Ringer Prestige TV podcast. My name's Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Ryan Rissillo. What a week for TV fathers fucking over their sons. Ryan, what's up? What's good? Makes me not want to be a dad. Um, yeah, seriously. No tikes running around my apartment. I'm not mad at that right now. Um, look, with this season of Yellowstone, when, when the episode was about like 15, 20 minutes in, I was like, are we seriously in episode seven? And, Carter and Jimmy are like the two main characters of this show.

You know, I was like, where are we with this? And I think by the end of the episode, they gave a tip, they tipped off like what this season should have been about, which is like the governor's race and the political aspect of welcoming in infrastructure and modernization to Montana. But like, where's your head out with this season in general? Because I think for a little while we've been sort of treading water. And when the highlight is jacking off a horse,

I'm not really sure. I feel like we're deviating from the source material. Well, to stay on that topic real quick, though, for a moment, you know, once Jimmy was told, you're going to go in there and handle the ejaculation part of a horse, which is a known job. You know, people know that's people that have any farm experience. And they didn't really give Jimmy much of a heads up. I'm not sure if that's normal protocol. Like, hey, there's a horse dick.

Like, here's your mechanism. And get to work. Yeah. You think there might have been a little bit more of a heads-up, but that was the TV part of this. On a personal note, I do remember 4-H camp when I was about 13, 14 years old. And then we had a counselor, of course, who was like 16 or 17, who was going to be a high school senior, which by itself sounds messed up. You know, in the moment it seems normal that your camp counselor could only be a couple

years older than you. And again, those years are massive gap years. They count like for dog years. But we found out that the camp counselor, his girlfriend, that summer, that was her job with the horses. And once the 13 and 14 year olds in us found that out, that poor guy, I think left camp. Like he left because he was getting hazed so bad by his own cabin about the girlfriend part of it because we were 13 and 14 year old kids.

I mean, if you, you want to think we made it two minutes on a bus ride without somebody making a horse sound in the background? No. So we ruined that guy for summer, late 80s, feel bad about it. So it brought back a lot of personal memories because there's this camp counselor out there who had one of the worst summaries he's ever had because a bunch of 13 and 14 year old kids made fun of his girlfriend the whole time. Do you think that that guy left child care altogether? Do you think he went into something more solitary, like Forest Ranger or something? I don't even know if you can get in medical sales because it's like too much of a crossover.

It's too close. So I think somebody may have said trigger 500 times at some point. That might have been someone's nickname. You know, again, we were 13, 14. I think statute of limitations for being shitheads, but it was bad. It was really bad. So when I saw that scene,

that's all I can never think about is this camp counselor who literally was ready to kill all of us, but he didn't. Well, I mean, Jimmy has his meat cute with Emily. I mean, that was actually like, there's Rams. I thought that was like really adorable. I thought like the, you know,

like there's only six guys on this ranch who are, who are viable material. And I'm scooping up you before you get drafted. I liked it. You know, I like the horse stuff. There's all this parts of the show that I like. You know, I could watch Casey and Moe just chasing down Mustangs for like 35 minutes.

I think that there's just, I don't know whether it's Beth. I don't know whether it's the ongoing saga of Carter or whether it's just like, I don't think that this show has ever settled in on what was supposed to be like the antagonist of the season, whether it was supposed to be Jackie Weaver, whether it's supposed to be market equities, or it's supposed to be Jamie's biological. father, but it just feels a little bit all over the place, even though I'm still enjoying myself. Yeah, because that's the thing is I think whenever you're a little disappointed in this episode, you know, it's not going to go down as one of my favorites. And I understand that it was kind of

like transitional, although I would agree with you on the timeline. It felt like, okay, you know, where are we going? Because the very beginning of it, it's like, all right, we're doing a lot of familying here. All right. We got, we got Jamie and his kid. Nameless child, right? We don't have a name for this kid. We should name it. Yeah, trigger. No, too many bad memories. She's stunning, by the way. Christina? Yeah, I don't know that I've ever really processed.

Like, she probably still could have done better than this setup, right? Like, I understand it's a decent house, good acreage. You know, Jamie's not a bad looking guy. And I, you know, I'm sure it's a little tougher to date, but it's an infant. So I still think she could have done better than her current setup. So you got that part of it. Um, anytime Monica's giving Casey shit, it's almost, it's borderline fast forward. You know, it's like, okay, you're just, you're getting this guy.

And then Tate's kind of letting it go where, what was this line? Pickled ass. Yeah. Tate's letting it fly. And then you've got Beth and Finn Little there. So it was, we had a lot of parenting, not much scheming. Yeah. And so for Yellowstone to go the first half of the episode, parenting dynamic, less scheme.

And, you know, I think a lot of us that are huge Yellowstone fans, you're like, okay, when are we going to get the payoff? Which I do think we got a taste of at the end. And that's maybe what we finally have. Maybe we finally have that transitional, the foundation being laid for what this season is going to be about, which feels a little late. Yeah, we've got, I think, three more episodes left. And John throwing his hat into the ring to be the governor after the sitting governor and his sometime girlfriend decides to go be a senator. And, you know, initially it was going to put her support behind Jamie. But I guess the fact that Jamie, murdered a reporter and possibly was complicit in the planned assassination of his entire family and a myriad of other things makes him unfit for office according to John. So John's got to go be governor. And of course, Beth immediately slides into the campaign manager role. And I just thought it was kind of like that that had like the old school Yellowstone weight when John is like,

I am the wall to stop progress. Like I liked that speech. I thought that was. I thought that was really interesting to have like a guy who's essentially a land baron who in in bed with conservationists that he's basically trying to keep Montana the way it is against all this money coming in. But yeah, a little late and I don't know how much time they're going to have to maybe maybe this winds up being what season five is about is the actual governor's race or perhaps there's a violent confrontation because we haven't actually had one of those since the first episode of this season. Yeah, they gave us so much that maybe Sheridan and the crew were like, look, we gave you, we gave you a ton of sugar, a ton of sugar early on. And we can't just have you having these sugar

frenzies every single episode. And I do think that there's true to it. You know, it always reminds me the Sopranos stuff because that was like one of the first premier television things that we had access to, even though I think Oz was first. But we didn't really know, like, we probably weren't as sure of what we were getting with Oz. Then when it was the Sopranos, it's like this real thing. And you couldn't just have everybody killing each other the entire time. It's not a well-rounded-out show. But I'm in total agreement with you because the end of this was really strong and almost salvaged it in a way because Koster's speech where he says, quote, I'm the opposite of progress. I am the wall that it bashes against and I will not be the one who breaks.

That was awesome. That was really well said and it was very on point. It wasn't, it felt totally honest. And yeah, it was a little TV switcheroo there at the end where Jamie's like, again with the shit. Like, again. And so, you know, they're trying to plant another seed for why Jamie may decide, all right, I'm going to try to take down the Dutton's on my own on this one, which is a line. I don't think he's ever really crossed, even though he's been tempted to think that he was

capable of doing it. Yeah, even though he's been hanging out with the guy who did do that. Yeah, because like the four six stuff, I'm with you, Chris. I've enjoyed it all. You know, I feel like, I feel like Jimmy kind of had a hot girl summer here where he's, he has a glow up here a little bit. Yeah, he looks good. He looks good.

I got to tell you, Jimmy looks better now. Yeah. Texas suits him. He's got the cowboy hat on. He's got a little bit of color in the skin. He's out there with the shirt tucked in jerking off horses. I mean, you write letters about shit like that. And Emily's an upgrade over Mia.

I'm sorry. She just is. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's going to struggle with that one. Ooh, the Jimmy love triangle. Just cute brunettes all over it. It's true.

Well, I wonder if Mia's going to pop up at the four sixes. Like, hey, just thought I'd check in, you know? She definitely is. She definitely is. I like the, I just like watching people work on these shows. Like, I actually like, I mean, I think that my, the parts where I get a little itchy are the, you know, watching like over and over again, you know, hangouts at the lodge, big glass of scotch before dinner, before bed, I mean, and discussing, like, the sort of ways of the universe. I like watching Casey out on the planes. I like watching Jimmy work.

I even don't even mind RIPP showing Carter how to tie a knot for five minutes. These are the things that you get when a show enters into season four, season five. You've got to show a little bit more life. But yeah, just the what is this about part of it, I think is interesting. After the end of season three and the beginning of season four, where you kind of have everybody brought to their knees, there's been this incredible rash of violence. It makes sense that the varying components of the show

are essentially trying to build up their own version of a done. family. So, you know, Jamie's starting his family out and, like, crawling around to meadow with this kid and his father. That's what? A 30 day, 30 day close on that? They've got some really, it's also just like interesting to watch Jamie in like a black denim outfit, like just crawling around in a grass field with his infant. You know, in Casey's trying to, you know, create a world for his family and make my happy. Oh, Casey 30 day clothes. Oh, they're in there. Yeah. that was her dream home. And, you know, they're chipping away at that with Avery, but I'm not really sure.

What did you make of like Avery being like, I've been in love with you since season one? Well, I didn't even look. They got to figure out some way to spice this whole thing up. I don't know if this is going to get like weird or what. Yeah. You know, Monica's really annoying. Monica's a tough character. And I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't, you know, I always, I always kind of wonder about this where, like, if you have men writing women, and then you would be like, okay, we'll do men struggle writing women? And then in this case, do you have a man struggling to write Monica with more depth? And it's like, man, they've taken some swings with Monica, you know, whether she was a professor and then that storyline that they went deep into. And then, you know, ever since everything's gone crazy, I mean, look, just a few episodes. She was telling Casey, I absolutely hate you.

and then they went on Zillow and bought a house. Just being that she doesn't, she didn't really hate him, but she's back there now. But then I also think like if I were going to point that out and say, well, sometimes men can cannot write women with enough depth because right now there's no depth to her. She's just annoying wife saying predictably annoying things. But there's plenty of roles where I could see a guy being a typical guy cliched out as well. So I don't think it's a it's a cross-gender thing where people struggle to write for the opposite sex. I think we all predictably would write somebody away that we want to to function as whatever it is, that is Casey going to get sick of Monica if she keeps giving him shit about stuff all the time, which was irrelevant at the breakfast table about the woman where he's saying like, oh, the pouty woman, you're going to go save her horses. I don't know what's, I don't know if it's, if it's just one of those little distracting storylines, Chris, or if there's going to be like some real thing that develops out of this where Monica goes crazy.

I don't know. the thing I like about it is that there is an element of truth to the idea that if you're in a couple and the couple is essentially defined by the struggles that you've had you know what I mean? Like trying to get through bad times,

the trauma of whatever you've been through and with cut in the case of Casey and Monica, it's obviously multiple hostage situations and shootouts and Monica being like, there was that brief spurt where Monica was like a double, like she was out, she was essentially an undercover cop

for like a little while. Remember that? That seemed dangerous. She was like setting guys up. Yeah, yeah. That seemed a little more dangerous than it needed to be. But I kind of get it if it's like, well, what if Casey just wants a regular old school like girlfriend and not have like all the history and all the pain wrapped up in every

breakfast he has and constantly needs to be sort of hitting like this perfect utopian Zillow location to make his wife happy. Like I kind of understand dramatically. But yeah, you're right. They really kind of have like handcuffed Monica to a. of different weird plots that haven't gone anywhere. Yeah. And I'm not saying like everybody is going to be nailing and everything's perfect the entire

time. But like how can they, it might be a complete or a very simple mechanism to spice up whatever Monica now has something real to react off of instead of just being annoying at times. Yeah. She's had too many episodes now where she's been a nagging wife. And that's what we got hit. Like the first three kind of scene setters for this episode were, okay, here's the Monica and Tate's involved, and then here's, you know, again, Beth and a little guy.

And then, of course, Jamie. And then it's so that was like, I looked up. I'm going, man, I go 25 minutes in this episode. And this is kind of where we're at. Let's get back to Jimmy. That's kind of where the four sixes has been this thing. Because as you said before, too, like Casey and Mo going to chase down Mustangs, I can watch it all.

I'm consistently shocked how entertained I am by just a simple thing of watching these guys run around with the horses. So a couple other things here that I thought were important. How did you feel about Teeters, emotional, it's not my fault, goodwill hunting, you know, like I didn't do, I'm first up, last one to go to bed deal. I think that was supposed to, she was crying in it. I'd like that we can understand Teeter more than when we first met her a little bit. They've done a little bit of market testing with her. They were like, hey, maybe it'd be a good idea if we could understand any of her lines at some point. She's not like, I, a character from snatch anymore.

We're just like, I have no idea what Brad Pitt is saying. I enjoy Teeter. I think that I have gotten everything I need out of like the sexual politics of, you know, bunkhouse relationships. Like I'm glad Lloyd gave Walker the guitar.

Everybody seems to be on the same page. John has found out that all these people are branded so we can't really fire them anyway. You know, like I think that we have arrived at a good point with this story. If Lloyd had actually bought a gun to go after Walker, I think I would have just, it would have been just beyond belief.

Teter herself, I'm into it. You know, she seems like a good hang. You know, I think she can drown her sorrows and cores and seems like a fun night out. What do you think? Yeah, because I think at first they were kind of like, can I not have a huge long cut in all over my face and, you know, no one can understand anything I'm saying?

Can I have a little bit more depth to what my character is here? So now I don't always have a dip in and I'm not just here trying to give literally everybody a hand job. So, you know, because that's kind of what her deal was at the beginning. And everybody's like, all right. So yeah, there's a little bit more to it. And it kind of would have been wrong. I mean, not that we're sitting here being like, well, the bunk house, the politics are very inconsistent. But it would have been wrong if she were bounced from the house.

So I get kind of like they wanted to balance it out a little bit. and they put her in a role that's really tough. You know, it's a tough spot to be like, oh, we're going to, you know, balance out the gender on the casting here a little bit by having a female in the bunkhouse, which is a hard sell to begin with. But I think they pull it up. Like they just made her a crazy Texas person who's obviously, there's no point where she's unlikable, you know, there's other characters that have had stretches where you're just

like, I don't even know if I like watching this. With Teeter, I'm fine with it. I guess they just let Laramie stick around, which was a bit of a pivot. So I'm confused. Did you, did I miss something? Or did you, did you catch that? I think that John, John was like, all the women have to leave. Like, this is clearly not good for morale.

And then I don't think that there was ever a conversation about it until Teeter, because we got distracted by the stabbing. You know, there was like a whole, like, violent assault that happened. And then I think Teeter's like, just so we can circle back to the gender politics of the bunkhouse, I want to just point out that I have been branded. And I'm supposed to have a home here for life. Teeter's LinkedIn would be great to see though. You know, like skills, dip, hand jobs, wrangling.

I didn't really think of her as a rise and grind character. Like she was just like, everybody knows I outwork everyone here. And I'm like, that never jumped off the screen to me, but I'll go with it. Maybe. I don't know. I mean, Lloyd was clearly having a really tough stretch at the cubicle there for a few weeks. Let's talk about Lloyd getting the guitar. Because I don't know if this is good or bad, but there was not one second of me that

thought he was buying one of those guns. They set up the shot for us to see the guns, but also the guitars. It's like, what's Lloyd going to do? So Lloyd has to trade in a belt buckle from, I believe, his rodeo days, which is worth a lot and is very sentimental. And even the pawnbrokers, like, are you sure, all right? As we're not sure if he's going to get the gun or the guitar. And he hands it in.

I have one simple question. What's Lloyd's savings situation? Oh, so how liquid is he? Yeah. what are we talking about with assets? Like you have to, you're at a point of this stage of your life, you're that old,

you've been ranching for this long and you don't have enough to pay for a guitar that you've got to give up one of your rodeo buckles? This is a great fucking question. Because like, how much do you think, if you work on the Dunn Ranch, is like the ranch taking back

some of your pay for room and board? And they're like, look, you know, the job pays $800 a week, but it's $400 a week service fees. for like the three squares a day from Gator and, you know, your, your saddle maintenance fees.

Like, what are you actually taking home? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's why Cowboy left because Cowboy, they're like, cowboy hadn't paid his HOA in six months. But like, do they have a credit union?

Like, where are these guys dropping off their checks? That I don't know. I can't imagine the ruling board is actually deducted from your check. I don't think Yellowstone would have done that. Sure. Not the Yellowstone.

I know, Chris. And look, clearly they were going for, or he's doing something. Nothing repairs a relationship quicker than him using the buckle to get the guitar as opposed to just paying for it, right? Just cash out of hand.

It just was one of those deals where you're like, clearly this buckle means a lot to him. So that's why we're selling the purchase of this so dramatically. But I don't know. Like, I want to know does John Dutton match? You know, like up to what? Yeah, right. Like, what's the 401K situation?

Because Lloyd is about to be able, he's about to be able to cash in his Vanguard account. You know what I mean? Like, he's got to be pushing 60. And he just got his ass kicked. I know. Yeah. Urgent care bills at all alone.

I have another question, which is, how come none of the counter arguments to protesting have ever occurred to summer? This is like the fourth time where she has been like completely dressed down by a member of the Dutton family this season. Just so you know, like harvesting soybeans also hurts the environment. But like when Beth is just like, you know, nobody gives a shit if you protest and like a plastic surgeon's wife buying a mink. Like if you really want to get after it, like we need to go, you know,

occupy this airport that's getting built. But summer, it always seems like shocked that there is like a counter argument or her protests. I actually thought that was pretty accurate. That's probably it is. Right.

It's like, you know, there's a lot of causes out there. Some are great. Some are not as great. This, you know, I'm not sitting here saying and kill animals for furs. But, I mean,

have you spent a lot of time talking to somebody who's like, really obsessed about bigs with some sort of thing and you're like yeah but if you ever thought about this they don't want to listen to that shit so her not listening is actually like as as accurate as you could have made it right like no i had a cause you're going to be we're going to be in park city in a week doing the same thing like what are you're trying to tell me that all this planning is useless i like the fact that like she's just really decided that this era this like geographic areas where all of her protesting concentration needs to be. There's no other global

hotspots that need more attention. It's the Yellowstone Valley. It's the luxury shops and it's the ranches that need her fire. Yeah. And I expect, I don't know. I don't know what the loop on her is. Because that's kind of like when I get done with the episode, I was like, okay, all right. So it took a little while to get into it. Now we have the John Governor thing. We have whatever Casey's new thing is going to be. like Casey should always be on 11. And then Beth, which that one, you know, look, I'm not 100% sure how that all played out with her not understanding the full scope of the plan for market equities. Basically, there were, there were, what do we have actual runways and taxing and gates on the ranch. And so she's like, who approved this?

Yeah. Like, they're looking around. So the guys like, we built two terminals, Beth. Jesus. Like, where do you think these were going? Yeah. Just straight to the ski mountain? Like, what are you talking about?

Whitefish? Wasn't it going to work. I think they kind of, you know, I think we finally have like the seeds that are playing. I just wonder how it's all going to play out with only a couple episodes ago. I think that's kind of been my thing with it, you know? I'd like for us to get like a real like Garrett-John showdown. I'd like that for those two sides to like fully emerge out of the shadows. for John to understand what Garrett is doing,

that he is the one who came after his family. That whole thing where Jamie went and saw Terrell Higgins and like, I saw a couple of other recappers pointed this out, but like, so Casey never asked like a follow-up with Jamie. Like, hey, man, you, you wind up talking to that, uh, jailhouse stooge that I asked you to chat with about who tried to kill the family. He was just like, no, no, no. Okay, forget it. I'll text you later.

Don't forget to set your fantasy lineup, you know, like. Yeah, right. Now, we had some fences that needed fixing. Like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. We'll get to it. So, yeah, I think we're all excited for the last couple of episodes. Anything else from this one that you wanted to chat about? I do like that Beth, you know, made a ton of a million great points to John to set up the value of him becoming governor.

Yeah. Oh, this won't be here in four years. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought that was, because some of the Beth just, you know, firing the assistant, smoking a cigarette, getting mad at everybody. This looks like my gynecologist's office. Right. And then you've been banging the other girl. I'm a Jedi. You know, I can read minds, all that kind of stuff. So we've seen, we've had so much of that from Beth. And that I thought, oh, wait, this is, this is also the other point is that she's so smart. And that's her real value, not just being abrasive and scaring the shit out of everybody. But I thought that that moment with John, I thought this, this episode closed really, really strong. Yeah, me too. It really made me more excited for the next episode of Yellowstone than than almost any other one this season. We'll, we can wrap it up there.

We'll be back next week with episode eight. And I think we might miss nine because of the holiday, but we'll be back for the finale, for sure. We can figure it out. I could do solo one, not a big deal. I'll leave you with this. Rip when he was teaching the not lessons. Yeah. Not missing many meals.

Rips looking thick. Yeah. Well, he's got it all. It's all turning up Rip, man. He's got a wife now, like, or a wife to be. Like, he's got a surrogate kid. his spot at the ranch is solid. Like he doesn't need to worry about

Casey moved away. He's just going for double dips. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not hating on it. But when he was in that chair, I was like, man, he's getting,

I'll talk to you next week, man. I'll talk to you next week, man.