‘Yellowstone’ Season 5 Episode 2 Recap: “The Sting of Wisdom”

The first big trauma of Yellowstone’s new fifth season concerns a Dutton we never got the chance to know. We’re in the immediate aftermath of Monica’s collision with the buffalo, as an injured Tate cuts his way out of his safety belt and clambers from the wrecked vehicle to find his mom thrown clear. “Stay there!” she calls through gritted teeth. “Find your phone and call an ambulance!” Monica is in all kinds of pain, and has gone into labor at the scene. It’s an awful mess, and we already know the tragedy of what transpired with baby John.

At their rambling farmhouse, Kayce comforts a heartbroken and bruised Monica before joining Tate to take him to school, and the boy wonders if his mom is gonna be OK. “You lost a brother,” his dad says, “and I lost a son. But she lost more.” And he thinks again about what the visions showed him, last season when he submitted to the warrior initiation rite of Monica’s tribe, in a tortured haze of fasting and mental agony. “The end of us,” he told his wife, when she asked what he saw, and Kayce can only wonder if this trauma of losing their infant son was predetermined.

Out on the ranch, Carter (Finn Little) is now a beanpole. The troubled boy Beth took in, who it sometimes feels like is her de facto son with Rip – Beth will never have children of her own, having been sterilized years ago on the indian reservation, in a solution arranged by Jamie, after a pregnancy neither she nor Rip were prepared for – has clearly been “eating the fertilizer,” as John put it. Carter is now a lean young man. “Go saddle Mr. Dutton’s horse,” Rip commands; “gotta keep him legged up.” And Carter has also been a committed pupil around the ranch, learning horsemanship in addition to cleaning the stalls. He joins Rip, Lloyd, and the rest of the ranch hands on a cattle drive. 

In Helena, John is in his office, groaning over gubernatorial rigor morale. “If you don’t play the game, the game plays you,” Lynelle advises, but John is already sick of the daily agenda, and meetings that could have been emails, or better yet, held on horseback. He jettisons a political appointee with the quickness, installs Beth as his chief of staff, and continues to dwell angrily on the Paradise Valley project. But just like the new governor’s required raft of political schmooze fests and photo ops, it won’t be so easy to make the airport and housing deal disappear. “Canceling the lease?” Jamie says. “That’s how they end up with your ranch.” But Beth thinks they can press pause on Market Equity’s deal with an executive order and some creative zoning particulars. And Governor Dutton dismisses Jamie’s continued protests. “As we speak, they’re raping the land our family’s bled into for over a century. We’re already at war.” 

Beth is also playing hardball with Jamie. “Say ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Good boy. You’re in my prison now.” Beth! But doesn’t it feel like saying stuff like this will come back around to bite her? It certainly does from the perspective of Market Equities, where Caroline has unleashed her new corporate killer, an import from the coast named Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri). (“I love it when she gets really mad,” she says of Caroline; “it means I’m gonna make a lot of money.”) It’s likely Atwood’s going to eat Jamie for breakfast, but it’s even more likely that she’ll then come for Beth. Can’t wait!

Wolves have brought down a steer, and Rip tasks bunkhouse boys Ryan and Colby (Denim Richards) with finding the pack and neutralizing them. But you can’t just shoot a wolf, especially not ones that are protected with radio tracking collars applied by the game wardens in nearby Yellowstone National Park. Rip’s improvised solution is to send the collars on logs down a river, away from the ranch. But what about the wolves’ stored geolocation history? A protected species getting shot and killed on the governor’s land? This could get dicey. (“These wolves have Facebook pages!” Ryan exclaims when he realizes what they’ve done.) Still, Rip’s pivot has historically been part of doing business on the ranch, as a flashback reveals, when a younger John Dutton (Josh Lucas) had Rip and ranch hand Rowdy (Kai Caster) destroy the equipment of some doofy construction guys poisoning the land with pesticides. 

Kyle (James Remar, always welcome) and Ronnie (J Downing), two of the governor’s business buddies from the community, aren’t happy that he killed the airport and housing deal with MKT. That tax revenue was coming in hot. But John and Beth point out the ancillary costs of increased public safety, sewage treatment plants and the like, all stuff that would cut into those profits. And to his daughter’s surprise and chagrin, John declares that he’ll put the land in a conservation easement. The move will protect the parcel from the clutches of Market Equities or anybody else, including the Duttons. “But it would be whole,” John tells her. “And that matters more than a name on a deed.” 

Hooked Rocking Y’s:

• She was only mentioned in passing in episode one, when Caroline Warner knew that John Dutton becoming governor meant it was time to call in somebody special, someone comfortable with wet work. But now, Dawn Olivieri’s Sarah Atwood is fully on the scene in Montana and licking her chops. (Watching Sarah and Beth battle is going to be sublime.) Olivieri is a veteran of Heroes, House of Lies, and Navy SEALs. But the real heads know she’s also a veteran of the Yellowstone Universe: Olivieri appeared in 1883 as Claire Dutton, the widowed sister of Tim McGraw’s James Dutton, who committed suicide during a particularly powerful early episode.
• ”The Sting of Wisdom” also marks the return of Josh Lucas to Yellowstone, who we haven’t seen playing a younger version of John Dutton since he appeared in flashbacks during the show’s first two seasons.

     

• So what is a “depredation tag,” anyway? When Rip sent Ryan and Colby to deal with the wolves suspected of tracking the cattle herd, the ranch hands were without this official documentation, issued by the federal government, which under certain circumstances allows for individuals to shoot and kill protected or endangered animals while on their property.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges