Remember that thrilling great plains drama of “Yellowstone” that focused on the epic, multi-generational struggle of the Duttons to keep hold of their family ranch and single-handedly keep the cowboy way of life from going extinct? After almost 7 months off the air, one of the biggest shows on television is starting to feel just as fleeting as the age-old traditions it’s trying to preserve. Since the season 5 mid-season finale, “A Knife and No Coin,” the hit Paramount Network series has been mired with reports that Kevin Costner will be exiting the show, effectively nixing plans for a sixth and final season. Fortunately, a sequel series has already been ordered with hopes of a debut in December of this year and Matthew McConaughey finally confirmed to star.
Until just recently, though, we’d heard exactly nil word from “Yellowstone” creator and head writer Taylor Sheridan, who has since become a mega-rancher in his own right down in Texas after acquiring the famed 270,000 acre ranch known as the Four Sixes (or 6666). “Life imitating art was never my intention,” Sheridan told The Hollywood Reporter. “We haven’t killed anyone in weeks.”
That colorful quip aside, life did actually end up imitating art when Sheridan told THR about the earlier days when the writer was shopping the concept of “Yellowstone” around to prospective networks. Sheridan, who had already penned the acclaimed dramatic thrillers “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water” by then, originally pitched his family saga as “‘The Godfather’ of Montana.” The idea ended up as a series in development at HBO, but was ultimately deemed too low art for the network’s trusted brand of prestige TV.
Big mistake. Huge.
A small act of revenge
Once HBO passed and “Yellowstone” became a smash-hit elsewhere, Taylor Sheridan and co-creator John Linson snuck in some lines of dialogue that were based verbatim on something an unnamed HBO executive had said. After Sheridan took a big swing and supposedly got Robert Redford to agree to star as John Dutton (per the request of HBO’s execs), Sheridan thought he finally had his green light.
“I call the senior vice president in charge of production and say, ‘I got him!’ ‘You got who?’ ‘Robert Redford.’ ‘What?’ ‘You said if I got Robert Redford, you’d green light the show,” Sheridan told THR. “And he says, and you can’t make this s**t up, we meant a Robert Redford type.'”
Desperate to find out why there was so much pushback to “Yellowstone,” Linson flat-out asked the executive in question why there was so much reluctance. Sheridan recalled them saying:
“‘Look, it just feels so Middle America. We’re HBO, we’re avant-garde, we’re trendsetters. This feels like a step backward. And frankly, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone should be living out there [in rural Montana]. It should be a park or something.'”
For fans of the show, those words may sound familiar. In season 2, an undercover journalist for New York magazine named Sarah Nguyen makes some very similar comments about Big Sky Country, dismissing Montana as a flyover state. After Sarah gets Wes Bentley’s character Jaime Dutton to go on record about his family’s misdeeds, he winds up strangling her to death. That’s pretty telling.
Currently, the off-air drama surrounding “Yellowstone” is taking up all the oxygen. But after two of its flagship series, “Succession” and “Barry,” ended on the same night, HBO might be regretting letting Sheridan’s monster hit go out to pasture.
The last half of “Yellowstone” season 5 is tentatively planned to premiere around Thanksgiving 2023.