Things are about to get very, very tense.
Dutton Ranch S1
The first seven episodes are now streaming on Paramount Plus. The series also airs Fridays on the Paramount Network at 8pm ET/PT. Subsequent episodes in the nine-episode series will debut every Friday.
The series completed its middle third with last week's episode. Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and her husband Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) are both now employed by Beaulah Jackson (Annette Bening), the big ranch that looms over Rio Paloma, a small town in South Texas.
Beth is working closely with Beaulah on business strategy; they worked together to close a major deal to supply beef to a fine dining establishment in Chicago. Rip took control as ranch manager, firing troublemaker Chet (Hart Denton), who promptly reunited with Beaulah's oldest son, ne'er do well, nothing but mean Rob-Will (Jai Courtenay).
Following Rob-Will's directive to eliminate Rob-Will's younger brother, Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba), Chet injured him, but before he could deliver the kill shot, he ended up dead himself, shot by Beaulah's head of security, Miguel (Berto Colon). Rip arrived in time to get some answers out of the badly injured Joaquin before taking him to veterinarian Everett McKinney (Ed Harris).
After their successful meeting earlier, Beaulah sly sought to maintain the upper hand with Beth by noting how strange it was that her brother Jamie Dutton disappeared after the death of their father. Yellowstone viewers know, of course, how, exactly, Jamie "disappeared," so Beth claims she never thinks about Jamie anymore.
Note: spoilers ahead.
Episode 7 begins with a flashback to young Beaulah and three friends, out for a wild night at Billy Bob's Texas, a large drinking, dancing, and mechanical bull-riding night club in Fort Worth, Texas, that typically fills up with thousands of rowdy customers looking for a rowdy night out. With the watchful eye of family minder Mariano, the father of a young son, Joaquin, upon her, she feels safe, dancing and flirting, until Mariano is intentionally distracted, and Beaulah falls prey to a vicious attack.
In the present, Beulah is all dressed up for the ranch's 190th anniversary event later in the day. She sets her ranch hands free to enjoy the evening with an open tab at a local bar, which makes the men happy. At her house, she micromanages the workers who are finalizing the arrangements to make sure everything is just right. Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind) makes an appearance and is all dressed-up, to her grandmother's delight.
All dressed up and entirely uncomfortable in formal wear, Rip asks his adopted teenage son Carter (Finn Little) to help out at the 10-Petal Ranch on the weekends. At Beth's initiative, all three ride to the ranch on their horses.
At the ranch, Beaulah puts the finishing touches on her speech. Joaquin expresses his gratitude to her, and her expected announcement of his installment as her heir apparent. Beaulah is cagey about her speech.
The 10-Petal boys are relaxing and drinking at the local bar, when one of them gets into a dispute with a hand from another ranch. They nearly come to blows, but the presence of so many 10-Petal ranch hands dissuades the rival ranch hand, who can't help but make snide comments about the ranch being "corrupt."
Joaquin approaches Rip to thank him for the previous week's help, and to assure him that no one would come looking for the murdered ranch hand Chet, whose body was 'disappeared.' Taciturn as ever, Rip doesn't want to talk about it. Chicago restaurant owner/manager Zane makes a surprising appearance to celebrate the anniversary event of his new business partners.
At the local bar, the dissatisfied drinker returns with his fellow ranch hands, and they start a fight with the 10-Petal boys, resulting in a good, old-fashioned bar fight. Fists, bodies, chairs, and tables begin to fly. After the fight, which the 10-Petal hands win, Austin speaks up; he agrees with the other ranch hands that something is "wrong" with 10-Petal, citing the 'disappearance' of Chet as the last straw.
The temperature at the 10-Petal Ranch increases dramatically when Oreana asks Beualah to return to her office, where she finds Rob-Will sitting in her chair. Surprised, Beaulah realizes that Oreana knew that her father had escaped the facility, where he was supposed to be rehabilitating. (Now we know what the mysterious phone call that Oreana received on the lake in the last episode was all about.)
An extremely tense meeting follows, leading to even more, well-earned tension in the remainder of the episode.
Eyebrow-raising moments abound in Episode 7. Even though the show makes a few explicit references to events that took place in Yellowstone -- and many more that are implicit -- Dutton Ranch continues to motor on its own cumulative power, in large part due to the performances by Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser, Ed Harris, and Annette Bening, who makes a surprisingly convincing Texas ranch owner.
While I would expect no less from those four, excellent actors, I gained newfound appreciation for Natalie Alyn Lind as Oreana. In appearance and personality, her character appears to be a rich girl who is accustomed to exerting her power over others by means of her physical appearance and financial standing. In this episode, hints of something more began emerging. Does she have more of her daddy Rob-Will in her personality than her sweet(er) grandmother Beaulah? And who is that tall fella she's talking to so much?
Time will tell. Only two episodes remain, and I'm expecting more fireworks to explode before the season concludes.
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