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Yellowstone Recap: Summer Higgins Returns to Stir Up Trouble
And John Dutton has his worst day in office yet
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 4, "Horses in Heaven" Read at your on risk!]
Turns out being governor of Montana actually kind of sucks. It's not like John Dutton (Kevin Costner) ever really wanted the gig, but on the latest episode of Yellowstone, he found out exactly how tedious it really is, and how much of a liability his family and ranch might actually be. First, he fired all of his policy advisors because their policies were, in his opinion, stupid, and then he found himself confronted by cops with evidence that Yellowstone park wolves had been killed on the ranch. Then, he learned of Beth's (Kelly Reilly) arrest, which threatened to ruin everything if she were to get convicted of assault.
Luckily, Beth's still got Jamie (Wes Bentley) under her thumb, and he worked his magic on the woman she assaulted when she came in to file charges. In a bar fight, there's no self defense, so there was nothing to protect this woman from being prosecuted for threatening Beth verbally. It weirdly worked, and the woman left in a huff with no charges filed. That's one of Governor Dutton's problems solved, but only one. He still had to attend the funeral of his recently deceased baby grandson, where Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) begged him to come to the reservation to answer for the jobs he eliminated. Plus, there's still that wolf thing. Rip (Cole Hauser) had to apologize to John for failing to outsmart the park rangers with their wolf collar scheme, and you could almost see how hard it was for him to do.
John was able to make time for lunch with Lynelle (Wendy Moniz), where she advised him on a few key things. Those things included hiring an environmentalist to help with environmental policies, and be careful with the pardons, because that's a can of worms you don't want to open too early. John naturally followed that first piece of advice by ignoring the second. He pretty immediately pardoned Summer Higgins (Piper Perabo) and hired her as his new environmental advisor, though she needs him to know she's not going to have sex with him. (Is it weird that I'm shipping it? Because I think I am.)
Elsewhere, Jamie tangled with the women in his life. After freeing Beth from jail, he reluctantly agreed to drive her home, but that drive went horribly south when she saw the carseat in his car. How dare he get a son to name after himself when he destroyed her ability to even choose whether or not to have a kid? Jamie screamed that arranging Beth's abortion/sterilization was the biggest regret of his life, but there's no getting over that for anyone, really. Beth ended up storming off down the road and getting a ride from a stranger.
The Yellowstone Universe: Every Show, How to Watch, Dutton Family Tree, and More
Later, Jamie had dinner with Sarah (Dawn Olivieri), who then had sex with him in a bathroom (Jamie, are you an idiot?) while Beth snuck in and took a picture of her drivers license. Beth was attempting to do some Google searching on Sarah until she was distracted by the presence of Summer, so that went nowhere. It's unclear where any of this is going, but it's definitely nowhere good, which was made clear by the look on Beth's face as she prepared to watch the sunrise from the porch. She looked like she was ready to burn something down, but the question is what. We'll have to wait to find that out.
Yellowstone continues Sundays at 8/7c on Paramount Network. Seasons 1-4 are now available to stream on Peacock.
