Join or Sign In
Sign in to customize your TV listings
By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.
Yellowstone Recap: Beth Pulled a Fast One and Still Ended Up in Handcuffs
The latest Dutton victory doesn't yet feel very sweet
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 3, "Tall Drink of Water." Read at your on risk!]
Once again, Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) is the MVP of all of Yellowstone, for better or worse. This week, that means a variety of things. She finally pulled one over on Market Equities by giving her controlling share of Schwartz and Meyer to a Market Equiities competitor and putting all the Schwartz and Meyer land into a conservation easement, which basically makes all of ME's lawsuits pointless. Caroline (Jacki Weaver) is being sent back to New York, and the airport is dead and gone. The Duttons have won, for now. Of course, this is Episode 3, and there are problems a'bubblin'.
One problem is the other big thing Beth did this week, which happened after she opened a tab for all the ranch hands at a bar in Bozeman to celebrate Lloyd's (Forrie J. Smith) birthday. A young lady approached Rip (Cole Hauser), and thought she could convince his wife to share. Beth responded by breaking a bottle on the back of the woman's head, and it started an all out bar fight that ended with Beth giving the finger from the back of a cop car. While the whole incident seems plausible, something about that brazen girl in the bar makes me wonder exactly what Caroline meant when she asked for the Duttons to be ruined, starting with Beth, and when she said to let Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) loose. Anyone who even kind of knows Beth would know how easy it would be to get her arrested. Either way, there's no way this is good for the governor's chief of staff.
Elsewhere, Kayce (Luke Grimes) made his choice between his family and the ranch and handed in his livestock commissioner badge to John (Kevin Costner), leading everyone to wonder who will replace him and whose side that person will be on. Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) offered him a job with the reservation, but he's in his own hot water as tribe members are protesting the deals he's been trying to make for land off the rez, and lawyer Angela (Q'orianka Kilcher) told him she plans to teach him a lesson and remove him.
On the ranch, the wolf problem continued. Some cops arrived and told Rip they had found a wolf collar attached to a log, and they politely demanded he join them on an awkward patrol. Rip doesn't know anything about any wolves, officer, especially if you're suggesting they hung out here in this freshly plowed plot of land!
Somehow, at the end of it all, it feels like even though the Duttons have won, we can't exactly call this a victory. The hammer is coming down on somebody sometime soon, and so far only Kayce has been smart enough to get out of the way. Plus, there's the question of "now what?" John has managed to do all the things he wanted in the job he otherwise does not care about, and he pissed off a lot of people in the process. Where does the reluctant governor go from here? Nowhere good, probably.
