Series / Yellowstone

♫I don't know why I act the way I do
Like I ain't got a single thing to lose
Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy
I guess that's just the cowboy in me...♫^note From left to right: Kayce Dutton, Jamie Dutton, John Dutton and Beth Dutton.

"It's the one constant in life. You build something worth having, someone's gonna try to take it."

— John Dutton

Yellowstone is a New Old West drama series airing on the Paramount Network, co-created and written by Taylor Sheridan.

It stars Kevin Costner as John Dutton, owner of the Yellowstone Ranch, a 300,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana, the largest in the nation. Unfortunately, even so far from the big city, the Dutton family faces challenge after challenge. Not only must John keep his dysfunctional family together despite their individual problems and difficulties, he faces threats from outside, from ruthless land developers intent on taking the Dutton ranch out from under them, to the local Native American tribe, whose borders with the predominantly-white ranch causes no end of friction.

John, however, is no stranger to hardship, and if his enemies play dirty to get what they want...so will he, to ensure the safety of his ranch and his family at any cost.

Premiering in 2018, the series has aired five seasons. Two distant prequel series, 1883 and 1923, have premiered on Paramount+^note the former premiered on December 19, 2021, the latter on December 18, 2022., while a third spinoff, 1944, is in development for the same network.^note Yellowstone itself is not available on that platform, as streaming rights are held by Peacock.

On May 5th, 2023, Paramount annouced that Yellowstone will end with its 5th season in November 2024, and will be replaced with an as of writing untitled Sequel Series.

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Yellowstone contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • The scenes set at the Heartsong Middle School in Season 1 suggest that the show is setting up for a longer arc, as it introduces several characters, including its principal, Littlefield, and an assistant named Alice who liaise with Rainwater and are trying to figure out what to do with the Troubled Teen that hit Monica during the fight. After this, neither the student (who was told by Rainwater to choose between turning to a life of crime or finding something better for himself) nor the school are seen again, with Monica's plan to work at both Heartsong and the local university eventually giving way to solely teaching at the latter by Season 3. In turn, the plotline about the university students learning to get past prejudice and learn more about Indigenous culture (with Monica's help) is functionally dropped in Season 4 once Kayce and Monica move to their new house, with Monica taking maternity leave by the time Season 5 begins.
  • Beth makes plans to destabilize Jenkins' development corporation by buying up all the shares of his company and working her way onto his board to raid it from within in Season 1, with the last mention heard about the company coming from Beth and Jason as they discuss how the stock has tripled in price, and to keep buying until there's a downtick. This angle is dropped completely by the following season premiere, with no further reference to Beth's machinations (and her attention turning elsewhere to buying up land to lease it to the government).
  • The plotline of Melody (The Fixer) leveling multiple subpoenas and lawsuits against the ranch is dropped entirely after being briefly discussed by John and Beth at the beginning of the first-season finale. Though it's presumed that the legal attacks stopped once the Duttons threatened (and nearly hanged) Jenkins, no confirmation is given either way, and no further episode brings up the issue again.
  • Season two sets up a schism between Those Two Guys, Ryan and Colby, when Ryan takes the brand and Colby does not. Ryan's branding doesn't factor into the plot at all in season three, and by the end of the season, all the Dutton ranchers, including Colby, become branded after their revenge against the Morrows.
• Accidental Murder: Livestock Officer Hendon is sent after a couple of cattle thieves in Season 3, and decides to "send a message" by tossing them in the back of a horse trailer and driving at high speeds with sudden braking and swerving to send the guys bouncing around the metal container. Parking at last with other cops, Hendon jokes on the duo "learning their lesson" as he opens the doors... and finds that the two are now dead of broken necks and internal injuries brought about by being flung around this trailer with no protection.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Dan Jenkins proves to be no match for the Duttons, but his business ideas have merit and attract the attention of much bigger players. In season 3, the Duttons are challenged by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that develops and operates resorts all over the world. While Jenkins only wanted to build a few golf courses, they want to create an entire city with its own airport. This would create thousands of new jobs and bring billions into the Montana economy. Their lawyers are able to shut down Rainwater's casino development in a matter of days and it's just an afterthought for them while they are gearing up to take on the Duttons.
• Ambiguously Gay: This is Jamie's initial characterization. Beth accuses him of being a closeted gay man and tells him that their father will love him less when he finds out. Jamie weakly claims that he's not gay, only celibate because the world is too cruel to risk fathering a child. Beth continues to make the same accusation in a few later episodes. When Christina virtually throws herself at him, Jamie seems uncomfortable and perplexed but does get into a physical relationship with her and eventually impregnates her. The characterization seems to be completely abandoned by season five, when he's easily seduced by Sarah Atwood.
• An Aesop: Playing games in relationships never ends well, and will only hurt your significant other.
  • Mia does this to Jimmy in Season 4, completely ostracizing him and seemingly ending their relationship when he is forced to go to Texas by John. Except, this is really just her attempt to get Jimmy to "fight" for their relationship. He doesn't fall for it. She's actually angry when she finds out that he took her word for it and ended up getting engaged with someone else, and Jimmy tells her off for her selfishness, and how his love for her wasn't enough.
  • In Season 5, it's revealed that this is what led to Rip getting his brand. When he and Beth were teenagers, she purposely hurt him emotionally by hooking up with another rancher in front of him, who also happened to be one of his main bullies. This led to Rip getting in a fight with him, and being forced to kill him in self-defence. John takes this opportunity to force Rip into devoting the rest of his life to the ranch. Early on in Season Five, Beth tearfully apologizes to Rip for treating him this way.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Caroline Warner is able to intimidate Beth with a completely legal (and legit) SEC Investigation for all her antics. Then she immediately gives her another option, a name-your-price job offer to be their corporate raider which she accepts but with the intention of destroying them from the inside.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: The firearm instructor who teaches Dan Jenkins how to shoot a gun doesn't wear any ear protection, even though it's pretty standard procedure for a firearm instructor. Jenkins even covers his ears when the instructor is firing, acknowledging the need for ear protection. The instructor also teaches him an improper grip.
• Artistic License – History:
  • When she teaches the American history course in college, Monica begins by explaining how she intends to teach the real history, written even by those who were defeated. Too bad that more than one of the facts she says during her lectures are not true at all:
    • She reads a passage from the journal of Christopher Columbus. The passage is actually a heavily edited version of the original text, with the edits obviously made in the service of the larger message of Native American oppression.
    • She states that Europeans brought slavery wherever they went. This statement is not only false, since only a few European countries were involved in the slave trade, but also seems to imply that slavery did not exist in the Americas before Europeans arrived. It is rather strange that a professor of American history would not know that slavery was common among the Maya, Aztecs, and some Native American tribes.
  • Rainwater calls President Obama a hypocrite for visiting the Standing Rock reservation and then two years later "trying to run a pipeline through it." But the Dakota Access Pipeline was built and is owned by a private corporation, not the federal government. Obama was criticized for not doing enough in the final months of his presidency to prevent the pipeline's construction, but he still had no hand in building it and was politically opposed to it. It was President Trump who signed a memorandum that allowed the pipeline's construction through the reservation to be completed.
• Artistic License – Law:
  • In season 5, Montana Attorney General Jamie Dutton watches a man bump into his secretary with coffee and jokes, "That's called battery!" However, in Montana, "battery" is not a crime. There is assault, aggravated assault, and assault with a weapon. This instance is odd since this very distinction comes up in season 4 when John Dutton tries to tell a woman who attacked a cop that she's actually charged with "battery" rather than "assault," only for her lawyer to correct him and confirm that the charge is officially termed "assault."
  • In season 5, there is a subplot hinging on whether a woman will "press charges" against Beth for aggravated assault. Jamie talks her out of it by reading from her police report, and the matter is dropped. However, private citizens don't determine whether someone will be prosecuted for a crime. They choose whether to file a police report, and the district attorney decides whether to prosecute in response to the report. So with the report already filed, Jamie should have had to convince the district attorney not to prosecute.
• Artistic License – Politics:
  • Dutton's original position as Commissioner of Livestock is treated as a partisan elected office. In reality, it is a governor-appointed position.
  • As Governor, John makes several decisions and has assumptions about political office that would probably get him impeached in Real Life. He fires his environmental advisor (and entire policy advisory team) after one meeting, citing bad advice (which was actually sound) and poor character (for not introducing himself sooner). A Governor can't just do whatever they want, at least without getting into legal trouble. He also assumes that the fact he doesn't know the advisor's name is his fault, when as the new Governor, John should be introducing himself to everyone, not the other way around. They were working there before he did, and while John was Commissioner of Livestock, these sections of government would have been completely separate.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Rainwater's driver, Mo, starts out as a glorified enforcer whose main role in Season 1 is to stand around or sit in the background of various scenes, with barely a word coming out of his mouth. Starting in Season 2, he starts to get more screentime and lines, functionally acting as the Sixth Ranger for the Dutton's assault on the Montana Free Militia during the season finale. By the time the fifth season rolls around, he's been Promoted to Opening Credits.
  • Taylor Sheridan's Creator Cameo as horse tamer Travis Wheatley is a one-off occurrence in Season 1, as he shows up solely to introduce a handful of horses for the Duttons to pick from and exchange some friendly banter with John. By the time Season 4 begins, he gets his own extended plotline, via John ordering him to cultivate a multi-generational winning suite of horses in order to bring more revenue to the ranch, and he gets several scenes of dialogue interacting with various characters.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Something of an Enforced Trope in the macho world of Yellowstone Ranch. Rip is the toughest bastard among the wranglers, and he enforces his authority by kicking the shit out of anyone who crosses the line. When John asks Rip to step down as a leader of the wranglers in favor of Kayce, Rip has to fight Kayce in full view of the rest of the workers and lose the fight so that they will accept Kayce as the new boss.
• Author Filibuster:
  • As his other films, such as Wind River, suggest, Taylor Sheridan is very sympathetic to the plight of Native Americans, and he gives various Native American characters plenty of time to bitterly complain about their history and current predicaments. It goes up a notch in season 2, when Monica takes a job as a history professor and uses the opportunity to deliver lengthy monologues railing against European imperialism, particularly dumping on Christopher Columbus.
  • Monica's self-righteous diatribe at her students in season three for browsing the internet on their phones while awaiting her arrival in the campus quad comes across strongly like a writer venting a pet peeve about kids these days.
  • City folk, especially tourists from the coasts, are universally portrayed as shallow, selfish and stupid people who just don't understand the honest, traditional values of rural America. Whenever they interact with a native-born Montanan, they rarely escape the scene without either a beatdown or a lengthy "The Reason You Suck" Speech, leaving them shamed or humiliated. It's pretty easy to see what message the writers are trying to get across.
  • In season five, John gets a number of opportunities to tell environmental activists and academics how stupid they are. In flashbacks, he listens to a government environmentalist insist that it's impossible for wolves to stray into local ranches, and then he proves that they not only can but have. After meeting Granola Girl protestor Summer Higgins, he effortlessly shreds her shallow arguments against ranching. As governor, he listens to a staff member claim that solar panels have no negative impact on sage grouse, and then he points out that sage grouse habitats are destroyed to install solar panels. On the flip side, he gives numerous monologues about how ranchers are more respectful of the environment than anyone.
  • In season five, John makes it his one and only platform issue to stop tourists from the coasts coming to Montana on vacation. He gives numerous speeches about how coastal elites are making a ruin of their own cities, fleeing to rural communities, and destroying the traditional lifestyle they find there. Given how uniformly negative these coastal elites are characterized, it's clear that this is the overall show's position as well.
• Bar Brawl: The local watering hole is full of pugnacious cowboys itching for a fight, leading to a few of these. Yellowstone men are supposed to be untouchable, but this sometimes isn't the case.
• Big Damn Heroes: When a attacker overpowers and is about to shoot Monica, Tate shoots him dead with a rifle.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Duttons share a lot in common with their enemies. Both are willing to engage in financial and political intimidation ("owning" local law enforcement) as well as good old fashioned violence to achieve their ends. However, while the Duttons (usually) act in a reactionary and self-defensive manner, their enemies are actively out to ruin people's careers and lives, steal land and business (often from Natives), and go so far as to hire white supremacists to brutalize families and kidnap children.
• Black Comedy: In "Coming Home", Beth's ringtone on Jamie's phone is an eerie theremin tune that sounds like something out of a horror movie.
• Black Sheep: Jamie is a Harvard-educated lawyer who constantly experiences a culture clash with his ranching family. Even his sister, who is also something of a city slicker, is more at home among the ranchers than he is. It's sort of justified since he's adopted.
• Book Dumb: Jimmy is as dumb as a bag of hammers, but he makes up for it with enthusiasm and a genuine desire to learn his trade. Rip tells Kayce that he's 'a favorite.'
• Both Sides Have a Point: Beth and Jaime's feud. Beth accuses Jaime of being spineless and selfish, while Jaime accuses the rest of the family of making him the way he is and hating him for it. They're both essentially correct, though Beth almost always wins the verbal sparring between the two.
• Broken Aesop:
  • The constant theme that rural America is more honest and superior to big cities and the coastal states comes off as rather silly when rural Montana is portrayed as being just as corrupt and violent as any city. So far, this hypocrisy has not been brought up.
  • The Tough Love way new ranchers on Yellowstone are treated (which often crosses the line to bullying) is always justified as being necessary to make competent ranchers. However, Jimmy only becomes a successful rancher after he leaves Yellowstone to work at a ranch in Texas, where they treat him much better. And while Rip's Training from Hell turned him into the badass he is today, it still left him emotionally crippled, and he has essentially turned himself into the Duttons' slave. Once again, this is never discussed, and the Duttons continue their way of doing things without any change.
• Bully Hunter: Lloyd and Rip are both seen standing up to bullies who are picking on other ranchers at Yellowstone. As top man, Rip's rule is, "There is no fighting in Yellowstone. If you want to fight someone, fight me!"
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After Kayce spares Walker's life and tells him to never show his face in Montana again, Rip and Lloyd spot him playing in a Montana bar and drag him back to the ranch. Turns out he's not legally allowed to leave Montana, so it was either live as a fugitive for the rest of his life or risk it.
  • Avery shows up in Season 4. She ended up going back to her family. Kasey meets up with her again when a group of horses were stolen and recovered.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Jamie. In spades.
  • Jimmy. He is ruthlessly bullied and called an idiot constantly for just not knowing ranch slang and being a mediocre horse rider, which is something you would expect from someone who’s never been on a ranch.
  • As it turns out, this is something of a tradition at the ranch. One person gets all the worst jobs, and is effectively treated as an outsider. It's later revealed that Rip had this role on the ranch as a teenager, to the point where even Beth treated him terribly. Still, he fully supports this tradition and takes part it in personally.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Jamie is usually too spineless to do this, though he makes a rather pathetic attempt at it in the third season, after he discovers that he was adopted.
• The Cameo: The show will occasionally feature rodeo stars or champion horseriders as themselves
• Cannot Spit It Out: Rip and Beth were teenage lovers, but since then, Rip has largely kept his distance from her even though he is completely smitten with her, due to her being the boss's daughter. Everyone Can See It.
• Cat Fight: When Mia realizes she's been replaced by Emily, she punches Jimmy in the face for his perceived unfaithfulness, prompting Emily to defend him. The boys seemed entertained, with Jake betting $20 on Emily since she's a Texan.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Jaime's dilemma in every season is whether he's going to act in his own interest or in the interest of the family. Given that his family looks down on him at best and openly despises him at worst, he's constantly flip-flopping between trying to earn their approval and turning his back on them.
• City Slicker:
  • Dan Jenkins is a rich businessman from California who goes to Montana for a business opportunity and finds himself both completely out of his element in the rough-and-tumble world of rural Montana and also completely outclassed in virtually every contest with the locals.
  • Just about every minor character from the coasts or a big city gets one-upped, humiliated or put in their place by a local Montanan. Californians are a favorite target.
• Cool Car:
  • Beth prefers black AMG Mercedes sedans and coupes.
  • The fleet of Dodge Ram Cummins heavy duty pickup trucks that the ranch uses.
  • Even the antagonists have various cool cars, trucks and vans from Beck's Bentley to the Militia's Ford Econoline 4wd conversion van.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Lloyd is an amiable ranch hand who is no less skilled or able than men decades younger them him. He's quick to take younger wranglers under his wing. When Jimmy arrives on the ranch, Lloyd volunteers to skip his turn at a hot shower to defuse a conflict between Jimmy and the others. He later serves as a kindly mentor to Jimmy. In a flashback, we see a much younger Lloyd stand up for teenage Rip when he was new, so Lloyd has apparently been doing this for quite some time.
  • Cowboy has been around the block more than a few times and has a fair amount of kindly wisdom to share the younger ranchers when they'll listen.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: At the beginning of season 4, we see that John has written a description of his assailant's vehicle and the direction they were heading in his own blood on the asphalt. When Rip finds John, he immediately relays this information to Kacey who broadcasts it to fellow law enforcement.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • Dan Jenkins is a billionaire land developer who knows that you have to play dirty to get anything done. Even still, he's unprepared for how rough Montana can be.
  • Chief Thomas Rainwater combines this with Corrupt Bureaucrat as both the manager of an Indian casino and the chief of the Broken Rock Reservation, which has its own government. He's ruthless in his quest to take his tribe's land back from the American government by any dirty trick at his disposal.
  • Roarke Morris of Market Equities is the firm's hatchetman.
  • The entire management and the support staff of Market Equities can be described as such. Their office culture (and the decor) can be best described as sexist, greedy and out-of-touch with the people they are dealing with.
• Creator Cameo: Co-creator and series writer Taylor Sheridan has a small role as a local horse trader known to John.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Played for Laughs when Jimmy's barrel-racing girlfriend insists on accompanying him and Rip on a road trip. After she has talked nonstop for an indeterminate (but long) period of time, Rip gives Jimmy a terrifying Death Glare and growls, "Jimmy, I am going to kill you! With my hands!"
• Daddy's Girl: Beth Dutton is a ruthless corporate raider who holds absolutely nothing in reverence except her father, the family patriarch. She says that she will do absolutely anything he asks. This is in sharp contrast to (and partially because of) her being The Unfavorite of her mother.
• Deadly Euphemism: In the Yellowstone ranch, whenever a ranch hand wants to quit but has seen too much, the management will "drive him to the train station," which involves driving him to the Wyoming state line and dumping him in a gorge. Just before executing one such man, Lloyd tells him he'll be "riding that long, black train."
• The Determinator:
  • Deconstructed when Jimmy attempts to show his mettle by constantly standing up to continue fighting a much larger bully, only to get beaten down again. The other cowboys beg him to give up, since he's accomplishing nothing but injuring himself further.
  • Rip insists on going back to work as soon as possible despite recovering from a bullet wound to the abdomen.
• Did Not Think This Through: In the Season 4 finale, Caroline Warner finally realizes that Beth has been playing them. When she confronts Beth about the leak to the Times and her contact with Higgins, she points out that all they need to do is subpoena the phone records to prove it. That's assuming that Beth didn't use a burner phone or spoof the caller ID. Beth does at least rightly point out that getting a subpoena for phone records related to journalism and a protest—both of which are activities protected by the First Amendment—is going to be an up-hill battle.
• Did Not See That Coming:
  • In the season 4 finale, Caroline Warner finally Lamp Shades why everyone else has failed to get the Dutton's land: they all expected to deal with people who are generic rednecks. They don't expect someone like Beth; a highly intelligent, ruthless and scheming person who is able to derail their plans.
  • Other enemies, such as the Beck Brothers, who use violence and murder, don't realize that the Duttons are just as capable of doing the same and almost always get caught flat-footed.
• Dirty Cop: Dutton's livestock agents and Rainwater's tribal police both serve as minions for their personal interests. The local sheriff's office is also corrupt and caught in between. The sheriff used to be in Dutton's pocket, but his loyalty wavers. However, they are all generally on the side of good.
• Dirty Coward: During the attempted robbery of a diner, one of the militiamen holds a waitress hostage despite his buddies are already dead and there's no chance of escape. John calls him as such before Rip takes him out.
• The Dog Bites Back: Not that anyone would consider Beth that, but she is given a name-your-price job offer from Market Equities to become their corporate raider. Her price? She gets Market Equities' controlling share of Schwartz & Meyer, her old employer. She plans to bankrupt then fire her old boss and mentor—in that order and make sure that "his grandchildren are on welfare"—for firing her despite her making a fortune for him and not supporting her during the crisis. She threatens to do the same to Warner if she goes back on her word. In the fifth episode, she takes the offer and proceeds to do exactly what she said she'd do.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Beth repeatedly assaults her brother Jaime, calling him a coward for not fighting back, but when he finally strikes her back, she mocks him for being such a wimp that he actually allowed himself to strike a woman. When John finds out, he threatens to kill Jaime should it ever happen again.
• Drives Like Crazy: Beth. Any time we see a coupe driving very fast along country roads, running over gardens, or coming to a screeching halt in front of somebody's house, we can be sure that Beth is about to step out of it. It's clearly meant to be a manifestation of her reckless and self-destructive attitude.
• Dumb Muscle:
  • The Beck brothers use the Montana Free Militia, a white supremacist group, to do their dirty work. While they are well armed and able to clean up after themselves, they don't stand any chance at all when the Duttons and Rainwater's people go after them. The dumb part comes into play when the two sent to attack Beth let their violence get in the way of finishing the job. They are also responsible for the attack on the Duttons at the end of Season 3 and the beginning of Season 4. Despite a well-coordinated attack, they're taken out again in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • Wade and Clint Morrow turn out to be working for Roarke and Market Equities, but they're not exactly criminal geniuses.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first episode, while still the Black Sheep of the family, Jamie appeared to take part in the ranching work, or at least joined in on rides, and he is treated much more pleasantly by others. Even Beth has an oddly nice moment with him, which may be the only time it ever genuinely happens. After this episode, Jamie's role is completely changed to the resident Butt-Monkey.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Jimmy's storyline in season 4. After screwing up one too many times, John sends Jimmy to Texas to apprentice at the 6666 ranch. There Jimmy finally finds the mentorship and peace of mind he has been seeking. He works really hard, learns how to be a proper cowboy and comes to terms with who he is and what he wants to do in his life. He meets a smart, tough woman who loves him for who he is and not for who he might become. When he returns to Yellowstone, his new confidence and competence quickly earn him the respect of the other ranch hands. He impresses John Dutton so much that John forgives any obligations that Jimmy still has toward the Duttons and tells him to go back to Texas where he can be happy in his new life.
• Emasculated Cuckold: Part of Beth's plan to destroy Dan Jenkins is getting his wife to sleep with another man.
• End of an Era: The Yellowstone Ranch has been in the Dutton family for generations but times are changing and the threats to its continuing existence are increasing. It is becoming apparent that the Duttons no longer have the money or political power to keep things as they are. John is determined to keep the ranch intact but he is running out of options. Yellowstone has to change drastically or the ranch might be gone by the time Tate is set to inherit it. In Season 4, the Duttons finally accept that and work toward making things more sustainable. One of the things Jamie does is lease the land for the airport to keep Market Equities at bay. John expands the ranch to include raising horses through a business associate. Beth accepts a job offer from Market Equities (albeit with ulterior motives) and starts hosting wedding parties at the ranch (the "ranch experience" costs extra). He goes even further in Season 5 with the plan of turning the ranch into a conservation easement, which makes it impossible for the land to be sold or developed.
• Enemy Mine:
  • When the Becks fail to enlist the partnership of the Duttons, the Broken Rock tribal authority or Dan Jenkins, they attack all of them, causing the three feuding factions to form a temporary truce and go against the Becks.
  • In season three, Chief Thomas Rainwater completely relinquishes his antagonist role to Market Equities and joins forces with the Duttons to preserve both of their properties.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • John is introduced ignoring his wounds from a car crash, pulling out a gun and giving a horse a Mercy Kill, then being discovered by law enforcement, who immediately recognize him as "the commissioner." All of this establishes John as a serious and tough man of authority who is not afraid to get his hands dirty for what he thinks is right.
  • Jamie is introduced successfully defending the ranch from a lawsuit, establishing him as a skilled lawyer who is more comfortable in a suit than cowboy duds.
  • Beth is introduced putting the screws to a business associate, gloating that she will destroy his entire life if he doesn't surrender his company to her. This establishes her as a skilled and utterly immoral businesswoman.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Jenkins and Rainwater are appalled at what the Becks did to Beth.
  • The abduction of Tate is so far over the line that Rainwater sends his own triggerman to help the Duttons get him back.
  • Rainwater and Mo are genuinely disturbed by what happened to the Duttons at the end of Season 3 and pursue a lead on the the person responsible for ordering the hit. Rainwater may want the Dutton's land, but he won't stoop to killing an entire family to get it.
  • When John finds out that Summer Higgins has gotten into serious legal trouble because Beth set up events as part of a long-term gambit to take down Market Equities, he is appalled. He promises to help get Summer out of trouble and chews out Beth. While he will engage in violence and kill his enemies, he makes it clear that he does not want innocent people caught up in it. He then makes his rules to Beth clear:
  John Dutton: No more collateral damage. We don't kill sheep, we kill wolves.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": A cowboy day worker simply goes by "Cowboy."
• Everyone Can See It: It's an open secret that Rip and Beth love each other, but Rip keeps his distance because she's John's daughter, and he has Undying Loyalty to him. By season three, John finally starts to cop to the fact that he's known about their romance for some time and is perfectly fine with it.
• Feuding Families: John Dutton and Wade Morrow despise each other. John considers Wade's past actions to be unforgivable even in the rough lifestyle they choose to live. Wade hates that John forced the Morrows to leave Montana. When Wade returns to Montana, he brings his son with him and makes it clear that his vendetta extends to all the Duttons and the people working for them. It later turns out that he was hired by Roarke to cause trouble.
• Fiction as Cover-Up: After Hendon's recklessness kills two thieves, Jamie has a scandal on his hands that could destroy the Duttons' hold on the Livestock Commissioner office. He manages to cover it up by having the two thieves tagged as John Does and made to look like they died in a drunk driving crash (both were from out of state with no current address). To ensure the silence of the victim, Jamie approaches her father and makes him think that the killing was intentional. The father is grateful for Jamie getting revenge on the criminals and destroys the remaining evidence, ensures his daughter's silence and even looks forward to doing Jamie a favor.
• Fox News Liberal: Summer Higgins is introduced as a militant environmentalist, providing a progressive viewpoint counter to the Duttons' traditional and conservative views. However, she's little more than a Straw Character who is set up to get easily knocked down in every conversation she has with someone who disagrees with her. Her whole character journey through season 5 is explicitly to learn to appreciate the Duttons' view of the world, which she does. At no point is anyone called upon to grow by learning from her perspective.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: The entire Dutton family is this.
  • Despite being brother and sister, Kayce and Beth have only interacted a handful of times, mostly in the first 3 seasons. In Seasons 4 and 5, they mentioned each other in passing a couple times and even appeared around each other (i.e. during family dinners), but didn’t exchange a word.
  • Jamie and Beth never interact with their nephew Tate (in fact John is the only one who spends time with him on a regular basis apart from Kayce and Monica). Tate had a brief one-on-one interaction with Beth in the season 1 episode "A Monster Is Among Us" and a moment with her in the season 5 premiere where she is seen consoling him in the hospital, but that was it. And Jamie and Tate go fishing in the first episode along with Lee and Kayce, but didn’t have any one-on-one interactions.
  • Beth and Monica didn’t share any scenes together until the end of season 2, most notably when Monica is being accused of shoplifting in a clothing store and Beth bails her out, but even then they rarely interact. It isn’t until late season 5 where they have another moment together.
  • Interestingly enough, Jamie has only interacted with Monica one time throughout the entire series, in which he introduces her to the president of Montana State in the season 1 episode "Coming Home". The two of them never interact with each other after that, to the point where they don’t even mention each other or acknowledge each other’s existence, which is surprising since they both have connections to Kayce.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: When Jimmy's grandfather dies from a beating he received from two drug dealers Jimmy owed money to, Rip and Lloyd sneak in at night to flood their trailer with propane.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: No one in the show really provides a moral compass. John Dutton himself is more closer to a Villain Protagonist than anything else.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: When Beth and Summer get into a fight, city girl Summer suddenly reveals that she's knows fancy jiu jitsu, but Beth counters that she learned to fight by being raised with three brothers. At some point, Beth simply declares, "Enough of that jiu jitsu shit," and Beth's slick grappling stops working.
• Granola Girl: Summer is a vegan, atheist, feminist, animal rights protestor who can't seem to help herself from trying to lecture everyone around her about her views with the flimsiest of arguments, turning her into something of a Straw Character.
• History Repeats: In 1923 Jacob Dutton was the most powerful rancher in Montana but came close to ruin due to outside interests moving into the state and a natural disaster(locusts) threatening his herd. In season 5 John Dutton has reached the peak of his power but his enemies are preparing to go after him politically and legally and the ranch is facing financial ruin due to an outbreak of a deadly cattle disease in the area.
• Hollywood Healing: When Jimmy is ordered to go to the 6666 ranch to learn how to cowboy, he's still so injured that it's difficult for him to stand up from sitting, and he's wearing a back brace. By the time he's in Texas, however, he leaps to his feet from a prone position without difficulty and has no trace of his former injuries.
• Honey Trap:
  • Monica dresses in a flattering outfit and pretends to be broken down by the side of the road in hopes that the man who killed a local native girl will try to do the same to her.
  • Sarah Atwell seduces Jamie to manipulate him.
• Hypocrite: Beth mocks Jamie for being desperate for John’s approval, when she is basically motivated by the same thing.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Played with. Jimmy discovers a real passion for rodeo riding and starts to think that he might take it up as a career. However, after he suffers a serious injury during a rodeo, John tells him that he needs to give it up. Jimmy mopes about this until Rip takes him to see how professional rodeo riders train. Jimmy realizes that he will never come close to riders who have trained since they were children.
• I Gave My Word: John makes promises and he keeps them.
  • The one that drives the series is his promise to his father on the day he died to not give up one inch of the ranch. This is revealed at the end of season 2.
  • Another one is providing medical attention to one of the Beck brothers if he gives up the location of Tate. Of course, as he knows he's dying, Beck says that he's not going to hold John to it.
  • When Summer Higgins gets into serious legal trouble because Beth basically led her into it, John promises to help her and makes it clear that his promise means something. After the judge sentences her to 15 years, John confronts the Judge and is able get her sentence knocked down to 1 year, with her out in 8 months.
• I Reject Your Reality: A key point of Season 5 is John refusing to accept that in 2022, his cowboy ways are outdated and antiqued. It's openly stated that he thinks cattaling is the way to go when the entire American cattle industry is on the way out and he continues to act the way his forebearers did when his own children point out he has to embrace progress or be left behind.
  John: The business model has worked for a hundred years.
  Beth: No, Dad, it hasn't worked! If it worked, this fucking valley wouldn't be filled with hobby farms and vacation houses, it'd be filled with ranches!
• Improbable Age: Several people remark that Monica looks too young to be a college professor, with some assuming that she's a student. The actress was 26 when filming (which is also confirmed to be Monica's age in-universe), which would be very young but not impossible for a professor with a master's degree. Her hire is heavily implied to be largely a political favor to her father.
• Informed Attribute: Summer Higgins is said to be an influential leader in environmental activism, but we never see her interact with any other environmentalist to show her leadership abilities. She also never displays a knowledge of the facts or the social skills that one would expect from such a leader.
• Intrepid Reporter: Sarah Nguyen, a reporter for a major news source who goes undercover in Jamie's campaign and catches a major scoop.
• Irony: Jimmy is too dumb to figure out many of the quaint cowboy colloquialisms shot at him. However, when he responds to one with a sarcastic "Hardy-har-har," all the cowboys are confused by what that expression means.
• It's Personal: When Caroline Warner finally realizes that Beth has been doing, she rips into her. She makes it very clear that on top of being fired, she's going to make sure that Beth goes to prison and that the ranch gets defiled in every way she can think of. She also doesn't care what it'll cost them to do it in terms of time and money.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Jamie went to Harvard, though he didn't even apply. John pulled some strings to get him in. However, everyone agrees that he's an excellent litigator.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • While Rip has a very rough demeanor and will murder people at John's direction, he has no tolerance for bullies at the ranch and proves to be a natural with children.
• Jurisdiction Friction:
  • Serious Business when all three of the law enforcement agencies in the area are just minions of local strong men. The livestock agents are loyal to the Duttons, the Broken Rock tribal police are loyal to Rainwater, and the local sheriff's office serves any interest the sheriff finds expedient. Asserting authority over an issue means that someone gets control over it. In the pilot episode, livestock agents and tribal police nearly get into a shootout other over a jurisdiction dispute.
  • Kayce earns serious respect from Rainwater when he does not hesitate to put livestock agents under the jurisdiction of the tribal police when a native woman goes missing and the search party needs more people. John would have helped but insisted that the agents stay under his authority. Kayce will not play politics when a woman's life is at stake.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Walker gets stabbed in the shoulder, an injury that the veterinarian takes very seriously and requires stitches. The very next day, he's forced to fistfight Lloyd for over an hour and seems to have full mobility in both arms. The only acknowledgment of his injury is the big blood stain in his shirt after the fight, showing that his stitches came undone.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Rainwater smiling at the television set after Lee Dutton is killed in a confrontation he helped provoke shows at the end of the day he's just a ruthless thug who's willing to kill to get what he wants.
  • During the Montana Free Militia's failed attack on John Dutton, the attacker shoots a fleeing woman in the back. Said woman and her son had a flat tire and John was just helping them out. Kayce's secretary and Beth's assistant are also killed and several other bystanders injured. Later still, a few of them try to rob a diner and its patrons for their money and valuables. It is later speculated by the media that they once they had what they wanted, they would've just killed everyone. During the shoutout, the Sheriff dies before he could get a chance to say goodbye to his daughter.
  • When Beth finds Jamie clearing teetering on the Despair Event Horizon, she at first acts like she sympathizes with him, while softly telling him he's evil. Then, she tells him that he should kill himself. Even worse, he actually almost goes through with it.
• The Kirk: Kayce Dutton fills this role in his family. He is tough as nails, yet compassionate, and he serves as the bridge between his siblings Jamie and Beth. He is so easy to get along with his other siblings don’t begrudge him being the favorite and heir apparent. In fact, the fact that they both love Kayce is pretty much THE ONLY THING Jamie and Beth can agree on.
• The Lad-ette:
  • Avery, a former stripper turned ranch hand who can wrangle as well as the men. She fearlessly volunteers to sleep in the same bunkhouse as the men.
  • Avery is replaced in season three with Teeter, an even more rip-roaring version.
• Lady Drunk:
  • Beth Dutton is a nihilistic and misanthropic corporate raider who drinks heavily to numb herself from her trauma and depression. Various characters criticize her for it, but she's an entirely functional drunk. Soon, however, her father tells her that he needs her clear-headed to survive the dangers the family faces. Thereafter, she frequently passes on opportunities to drink, though she still indulges on occasion.
  • Dan Jenkins' wife is bored and frequently drunk. She likes Beth instantly.
• Lady Macbeth: Christina quickly latches onto Jamie during his bid for attorney general of Montana. She presses him to focus on his own ambition at the expense of his family. When he finally decides to drop out and remain loyal to his family, she dumps him.
• Loop Hole Abuse: Kayce confronts a ranch owner from California named Ralph Petersen who raises Llaymas strictly for the agricultural exemption and tax break. To add insult to injury, he installs cattle guards on the easement (the road) through his property to prevent his neighbor from moving his cattle up and down from the summer pastures, forcing him to truck them around costing him a lot of money that he can't afford to spend.
• Love at First Sight: Jimmy is instantly smitten by a local rodeo girl, who is instantly smitten back.
  • The series very heavily implies that this is what happened with Kayce and Monica.
  Kayce: Trying to remember what I was wearing the first time I met you.
  Monica: All I remember is, you weren’t wearing it for long.
• Magical Native American: Mo, the triggerman Rainwater sends to help the Duttons rescue Kayce and Monica's son invokes this as they prepare to assault the white supremacist compound where he's being held. Since Rip has to ride across their killzone to draw fire and get them to expose themselves, Mo takes a moment to paint traditional markings on Rip's horse: a mark on his eye "so that he'll see danger," a mark on his foreleg "so he'll be sure-footed," a mark on his hindquarters "so he'll be swift in battle," and a final mark on his flank, "so that bullets will bounce off of him." At the last one, Rip half-jokingly asks if he can get some of that. Mo chuckles, "Sorry, only works on horses!"
• Mugging the Monster: A recurring element of the series. Various antagonists, big and small, target the Duttons not realizing just how ruthless the Duttons can be protecting their people and land.
• Naïve Newcomer: Summer Higgins, the leader of a environmental protest group, is introduced in season 4. After being arrested over protesting the Livestock Commissioners office and ranching, John bails her out, invites her to the ranch and shows her what ranching really is about. During another protest at a high-end clothing store (the same one from "Enemies By Monday"), Beth calls out Summer on her naivety and even takes advantage of it to weaken Market Equities.
• Native American Casino: The local Indian reservation has a casino, but the tribe still struggles with poverty. The casino is run by the tribe's savvy new chief, however, who quickly develops a scheme to use a variety of legal loopholes and shady business practices to open a second casino on the border of Yellowstone National Park. Several members of the tribe, including the chief, lament that they have to use something as distasteful as a casino to achieve any power.
• Neglected Rez: The Broken Rock Confederation of Tribes lives on a reservation that is plagued by poverty. Monica is reluctant to take a more lucrative teaching job at the local college because it would mean one less teacher at the reservation. Conflict between the reservation and Yellowstone Ranch drives the show's plot.
• Nepotism:
  • When the sheriff is asked whether the deputies protecting the Beck brothers can be trusted, he vouches for them since they are his cousins.
  • John Dutton has one son installed as Attorney General of Montana and the other as Livestock Commissioner without either of them having any prior experience in their respective departments.
• New Media Are Evil: Monica tears into her class for browsing social media on their phones instead of basking in the glorious beauty of a campus park.
• New Old West: The series is a western taking place on a modern cattle ranch. Rural living frequently intersects with modern culture and technology.
• No Communities Were Harmed: The local tribe is called the Broken Rock Confederated Tribes, a fictional entity. This is most likely to avoid insinuating that any real tribe has such a crooked chief.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: John is shot at the end of season 3 while helping a motorist and her young son change a flat tire. They also shoot the mother in the back presumably killing her.
• Noodle Incident:
  • When a relative asks about his Navy Cross, Kayce says, "You wouldn't believe what I had to do to earn that," but offers no more information. In Season Two, he finally reveals what he won it for: an insurgent killed his squad leader and his corpsman while using a child as a human shield. Kayce saved the rest of his squad... by killing them both.
  • The entirety of John's gubernatorial campaign for Governor takes place during a Time Skip between Seasons 4 and 5. Though several references are made to John having difficulty with some voters and establishing a friendly rivalry with John's opponent, Scott McMullin, the background to the campaign is functionally dropped after the first act of the episode and never mentioned again.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Montana Free Militia. They are depicted as a whole as dumb as a bag of rocks, but taken extremely seriously as a threat. Mainly because they are armed, dangerous, and have no scruples about injuring and killing men, women and children nor causing a lot of collateral damage.
• Oh, Crap!: In season three, the cowboys cajole Jaime into playing their drinking game, which involves getting lassoed. The lassoer accidentally yanks Jaime off his feet, causing him to slam hard into the ground. The whole room gasps in horror, thinking they might have seriously injured the boss's son.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Teeter, the pink-haired ranch hand, is only ever referred to as such.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Monica is the most moral adult in the series, and Kayce is careful to keep her free of the details of his brutal work for his family. But when their son Tate is kidnapped, she soberly makes Kayce promise to murder those responsible.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Rainwater makes it clear to John that they still have issues to settle, but he helps chase down a lead on the one responsible for the attack on his family knowing that whoever did it to get their land is coming after them next.
• Product Placement: The Duttons own a lot of Yeti coolers, Dodge Ram pickup trucks, Carhartt jackets, and Polaris ATVs. Similarly, the bunk house cowboys are frequently seen drinking Coors Original Banquet Beer.
• Psycho for Hire: The Montana Free Militia are a violent white supremacist group who hire themselves out as muscle to various shady businessmen like the Becks. Season four reveals that they took a contract to murder John and his entire family.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Dan Jenkins sends his family out of town early in the first season, so his wife is never seen again.
  • Melody Perkins (The Fixer for Jenkins) shows up in a splashy way, intending to use all the legal tricks at her disposal to bury the Duttons in affidavits and lawsuits so that they won't be able to stop Paradise Valley... only to disappear completely by the end of Season 1, and never get referenced again. It's assumed that any machinations she had stopped when Rip and the other wranglers nearly hanged Dan at the end of the season, but nothing is confirmed.
  • Willa Hayes, the CEO of Market Equities, immediately flees the scene in the third-season finale after it's revealed that Beth leveled a sexual harassment charge (via an anonymous employee) against her. Willa isn't seen again, with her role being filled by Caroline Warner, the new CEO of the corporation.
  • After getting more than a few scenes dedicated to her introduction and budding friendship with Jimmy, Avery leaves the ranch late in the second season for unspecified reasons. It's implied that she feels guilty for Jimmy's predicament. John even asks whatever happened to her in the third season. She returns for two episodes in Season 4 to help Kayce with a group of missing horses, explaining where she was in the interim.
• Rated M for Manly: Cowboys are portrayed as the epitome of men, everything a womanly woman could ever desire. They work hard, play hard, and fight hard. Some of them are dicks, but most of them are passionate, no-nonsense, salt-of-the-earth heroes of the American frontier.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Beth and Summer get into a vicious cat fight after the latter insults their choice of food during a family dinner. Rip intervenes and admonishes them for how ridiculous they are behaving. He calls out Beth on how her manners are a bad influence on their son and then he calls out Summer on her obnoxious veganism, telling her that she doesn't like the food, then don't eat it. He even points out she cannot convince others to think like her by insulting them in their own homes and that she should just shut up and be grateful that John was nice enough to keep her out of jail and to let her live in his home during her house arrest.
• The Reveal: Season three finally reveals why Beth seems to irrationally hate Jamie: He arranged an abortion for her when she was a teen but hid the fact that it involved a hysterectomy, making her barren.
• Roadside Surgery: When John's ulcer (which he had initially thought to be fatal colon cancer) bursts, he's miles away from any real hospital so the life-saving surgery has to be done, without anesthetic, in a veterinarian trailer with his fieldhands acting as nurses.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Lee Dutton, the eldest son of family patriarch John Dutton, dies in the pilot episode, which kicks off a major feud between the Duttons and various interests who are trying to steal their land. The show seems to completely forget he ever existed by the second season.
• Scars Are Forever: Beth is caught in an explosion at the end of season 3. She has a prominent facial scar and a large burn scar across her back throughout seasons 4 and 5.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: John repeatedly insists on keeping the ranch in the family rather than selling it and letting his family live comfortably on the proceeds because of the responsibility he feels to the family who passed the ranch down to him.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In spite of becoming a Branded Man, Walker quickly realizes that Yellowstone is far too shady for his tastes and tries to leave. He makes several attempts before he finally manages to escape the ranch alive with the blessing of Kayce. He reappears playing at a bar at the end of "I Killed a Man Today" and returns to the ranch at the beginning of "Meaner than Evil".
  • Cowboy states that the secret to living a long life is knowing when to quit an outfit. He departs the ranch shortly before the Duttons' feud with the Becks comes to a head.
  • After a fight breaks out in the bunkhouse that ends up with Lloyd stabbing Walker in the chest, Mia has had enough of the ranch and leaves.
• Shameful Strip: Done to Monica by the local cops to search her when a racist shop owner falsely accuses her of shoplifting. Beth shows up a few minutes later, sends the cops on their way, then forces the owner—whom she has known personally since grade school—to do the same. Beth explains to Monica that the owner’s real motivation was petty jealousy, as she is "a fake blonde with fake tits" and a substantial amount of cosmetic surgery (while Monica is young and naturally gorgeous), with the racism being more of a means to an end.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Kayce carries some deep psychological wounds from his service in Afghanistan.
• Sibling Rivalry: Jamie and Beth detest each other, dating back many years. While Jamie just looks down on Beth's self-destructive and misanthropic behavior, Beth hates Jamie, believing that his weakness and selfishness are a threat to the family, so she actively seeks his destruction.
• Start of Darkness:
  • We get a flashback in which we see John tell Jamie to leave the ranch and become a Harvard-educated lawyer to better serve the family. Through no fault of his own, this is what starts Jamie down the path of becoming alienated from his ranching family.
  • In a flashback, we see that Rip killed his father after the man murdered the rest of their family. This, and becoming quasi-adopted by the Duttons, has turned Rip into their loyal attack dog.
• Straw Character: Summer Higgins is an insufferable Granola Girl who has spent her whole life campaigning for animal rights and environmentalism and yet can't come up with even the most elementary defense of her views. Just about every conversation she has with the Duttons about their opposing views ends with her in stunned silence from their superior arguments. Even her basic manners need to be corrected by various Yellowstone residents. She's essentially a walking caricature of a "woke SJW."
• Suicide is Shameful: John references this when he finds Jamie contemplating suicide with a shotgun and talks him out of it. He tells him that it is "the most cowardly thing a man can do".
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • In "Keep The Wolves Close", Beth points out that with John as Governor he would have the power to effectively stop Market Equities in its tracks and run them out of the state by using the power of the Governor's office. The problem is that it would be a very clear, and easy to prove, whopping conflict of interest. Sure enough, soon after being elected governor, he calls a press conference and signs an executive order effectively stopping Market Equities' project in their tracks. Not even before the ink dries, Warner angrily orders her lawyers to file suit against the State of Montana for breach of contract, negotiating in bad faith and anything else that they can think of. John also has to give some favors out to two local politicians so they will block re-zoning the land.
  • "Tall Drink of Water" sees Beth start a bar brawl by bottling a woman hitting on Rip. So far, so Beth. Except the new sheriff isn't a devotee of John's like the old one, so instead of the Dutton name getting the cops to back off, she's charged with aggravated assault after her victim confirms she's not letting it go. Even if your father is the governor, assaulting someone unprovoked in a bar full of witnesses, punching her again after the cops have separated everyone and then showing no remorse for it is incredibly stupid, and you can see Rip's mounting disbelief when first his excuses about the bouncers having her in a headlock, then insinuations John will make the sheriff's life hard completely fail for once. Beth even has the nerve to claim it's a pussy move for the woman to respond this way while she's being taken to jail.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: Oh boy, this show loves this trope. Many, many of the horrible things that characters do are given sympathetic POV's as a trick designed to get the audience to root for them - until they do something else just as bad, and then the cycle repeats. Some characters are given extra screentime to garner sympathy points. John Dutton and Beth are given this treatment several times over.
• Take That!: City Slickers from the coasts are routinely characterized as physically, mentally, and morally inferior to the local, rural Midwesterners.
  • Dan Jenkins and his city cop bodyguard are chewed up and spat out by the locals.
  • Some bikers from California start a feud with the Duttons and leave humiliated.
  • When John stops to help a woman who is stranded by the side of the road, she warns him that she can't pay him for his help. John responds by asking where she's from, and when he confirms his suspicions that she's a city slicker by saying "Encino, California," he condescendingly tells her that in this neck of the woods, people do what's right for its own sake.
  • After a vacationing college professor offers to buy Beth a drink, she performs a Sherlock Scan on how pathetic his life is, which leaves him so rattled that he snaps, "Fuck you!" and storms away.
  • Though Summer Higgins has Granola Girl beliefs and claims to have lived all over the country, she brings her inferior city values with her wherever she goes. When she happens by Monica, who is busy peeling potatoes, and announces that she's going for a walk, Monica says that it's obvious that Summer isn't "from around here" because if she were, she'd have offered to help, which shames Summer into doing just that.
  • A tourist from California purposelessly taunts Beth at a bar, which results in her getting beaten up by Beth twice. She's then easily manipulated into "dropping the charges" by Jamie and ultimately returns home with her tail between her legs.
• Testosterone Poisoning: The culture of the Yellowstone ranch is overflowing with machismo. Rip is most macho of the bunch. When asked if his bullet wounds hurt, he stoically says, "Like hell. But I was built to go through hell." Beth can't help but chuckle indulgently at this remark.
• Those Two Guys: Ryan and Colby represent the rank and file ranch hands at Yellowstone. They're rarely seen apart. It's considered a dramatic turn when Ryan decides to become a Branded Man, leaving Colby behind to join the upper echelons of the ranch. That plotline, and this distinction, fades over subsequent seasons.
• Those Wacky Nazis: In season two, Tate is kidnapped and held by a group of neo-Nazis on the Beck Brothers' payroll.
• Time Skip:
  • After the opening act of Season 4, Episode 1, the episode jumps forward nearly two months in order for John and the rest of the injured family members (including Beth, who was badly burned on her back, and Kayce, who was shot in the side during the final engagement with the fleeing Montana Free Militia attackers) time to heal. The action picks back up on the day John is due to be released from the hospital.
  • Season 5 opens with a nine-month skip that completely bypasses the gubernatorial campaign between John and his opponent, with the story beginning as John learns on election night (while sitting in a dressing room) that he's won the governor's race.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • John Dutton finds a busload of Chinese tourists trespassing deep into his property to get a closer look at a very large grizzly bear. Utterly flabbergasted at the stupidity of the tourists and their guide to get so close to such a dangerous beast notorious for its Hair-Trigger Temper, John jumps out of his truck with a rifle and tries to herd them away from it. When the guide claims that the bear "seems friendly," John incredulously replies, "Yeah, well, it's not," then advises her that they are trespassing. One of the tourists then decides that it's a great idea to tell the armed owner of the land on which they are trespassing—and who is trying to keep them from getting killed—that he has no right to own so much land. Two warning shots later, all of the tourists are running back to the bus in near-panic.
  • A group of bikers in "Going Back To Cali" cut through a fence and trespass on a field. After a brief brawl and having half their bikes trashed, they are told to never come back or they'll get buried in the very field they trespassed on. That night, four of them show up to recover their trashed bikes. They cut through the same fence and carry in gasoline to burn the field, but John and his people are there waiting for them. After making them dig their own holes, and given a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, they are warned one last time that if they ever come back, the holes they dug will get filled. They don't come back.
  • The Beck brothers kept threatening and harassing people to the point where they end up having everyone turn against them. The final straw was when they have John Dutton's grandson Tate kidnapped and held by white supremacists.
  • In the third season, Wade Morrow and his son Clint get hired to antagonize the Duttons. After attacking and nearly killing Colby and Teeter, John gives Rip the go-ahead to kill them. Clint puts the final nail in their coffins by not listening to his father's suggestion that they wait for more help and walk straight into a trap.
  • Roarke, Willa Hayes, and by association the people they work for, don't realize just how dangerous the Dutton family is nor that if they're pushed too far that they aren't going to bother filing suit. By the time Willa tells Roarke to take the gloves off, it's too late for them. Rip ends up killing Roarke with a Rattlesnake bite at the end of the season 4 premiere. Willa Hayes is just Put on a Bus, but not before Beth screws up her career. After their intimidation tactics blow up in their faces, their successor, Caroline Warner, opts for a more pragmatic approach: feeding their greed. But she still underestimates the Duttons.
  • The Montana Free Militia, who keep losing people after locking horns with the Duttons more than once. After their ultimately failed attack at the end of Season 3 and the aftermath in Season 4, John and Kayce have had enough and decide to kill the remaining members; which they do at the beginning of "All I See Is You." Even then, there are still surviving members that try to rob a diner with the local Sheriff inside and get themselves killed.
  • Chester Spears, the alleged "party planner", whom Rainwater describes as a "Great White Hopeless" who brought the people responsible for the attack together that we see the aftermath of in Season 4 is a loud, boisterous Dirty Coward who should've gotten as far away from Montana as possible after the job went south instead of gambling and shooting his mouth off at the casino. After getting the information they needed from him, they hand him over to John, who drives him to "The Train Station" and forces him to engage in a shootout, killing him.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Lloyd becomes increasingly hostile to Walker after the latter hooks up with Laramie despite her being the one who initiated it. He becomes increasingly ostracized from the other ranchers and whiny and even starts a fight after Walker tries to give him a peace offering. His behavior gets so bad that it interferes with his work and Rip has to start assigning him menial tasks until he can get himself back together. Lloyd ends up stabbing Walker non-fatally, which prompts Mia to pack up and leave. John then declares that there will be no more women in the bunk house. Mia, Teeter (over Rip's objections, and John changes his mind after finding out she is branded) and Laramie are given severance and told to pack up and leave. The only thing that stops him from going "to the train station" is that he's a longtime and loyal employee to the ranch and father figure and mentor to Rip. To resolve things, they are forced to fight in the pen until only one is left standing and Lloyd is finished off by Rip.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After the whole fracas, Lloyd pawns off a one-of-a-kind belt buckle for a new guitar for Walker and the two finally reconcile.
• Undignified Death:
  • Teal Beck is shot multiple times by Kayce for his role in Tate's kidnapping while seated on a toilet. He even invokes this trope while begging for his life.
  • Wade Morrow is ambushed and ends up strung up on a tree and hung, but not before his brand is cut out of his chest by Walker.
• Undying Loyalty: "Branded men" are supposed to have undying loyalty to the Dutton ranch, having been picked up from ignominy when no one else would have them and given a home and occupation. Rip and Lloyd exemplify this position. When Walker gets branded, however, he doesn't show the same willingness to sublimate his own needs and morality for the Duttons, causing strife within the ranks.
• The Unfavorite:
  • None of the Duttons like Jamie. As a Harvard-educated lawyer, he doesn't fit in with the men, who are all ranchers and soldiers. It's Beth who openly despises him, the reason for which doesn't get revealed until season three.
  • The fact that Beth was her mother's least favorite child haunts her into the present day, not helped at all by the fact that she was inadvertently responsible for her mother's death, which her mother clearly blamed her for before dying.
• The Unintelligible: When Lloyd first hears Teeter say something, he asks what language she's speaking, but Rip quickly identifies that it's not gibberish, she's just Texan. The rest of the Montanan cowboys frequently say that they can't understand her through her thick Texas drawl.
• Villain Decay: Dan Jenkins is said to be a billionaire land developer who starts off the series as a genuine threat, using his resources and business acumen against the Duttons. After the first episode, however, he's a step behind everyone in the series and gets the worst of virtually every interaction with other characters. By the end of the second season, he's so pathetic that it makes you wonder how he ever amassed his fortune to begin with.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Several characters disappear without a trace, despite being set up to have a far more important role in the story:
  • In the pilot, a Senator from Montana (played by Jill Hennessy) is introduced as a possible liaison to the Broken Rock Tribe, with her witnessing the situation at the reservation firsthand and promising to convene a Senate hearing into the matter, in an attempt to raise more awareness and funding for their plight. The Senator disappears completely after this, with no word as to whether her efforts succeeded or not. As a nod to this, Season 5 has a plotline where Lynette Perry (who has succeeded the aforementioned as Montana's new Senator) allies with Rainwater to oppose a pair of pipelines the Ministry of the Interior (spearheaded by Angela via the Enemy Civil War) will build through the Broken Rock Reservation.
  • Victoria Jenkins (developer Dan Jenkins' wife) and Dan's daughter move back to Los Angeles late in the first season, after Dan warns them that the situation in Montana may be too dangerous for them. With Dan's death at the end of Season 2, neither have been heard from again.
  • Several other characters introduced in the pilot, including Trent Willet (an acquaintance of the Duttons), Ron Wright (the acquaintance/surveyor who helps Rip and Jimmy plant the dynamite) and Father Bob (a priest at a local church who only appears in the pilot and the episode after this) disappear from the show completely, with no reference given to why they don't show up again.
  • Willa Ford is forced to run from Montana with her tail between her legs after Beth instigates a trumped-up sexual harassment claim from a fellow Market Equities staffer in order to torpedo her reputation at the end of Season 3. Season 4 begins with Caroline taking up the reins as the new CEO of Market Equities, but beyond a mention of "her predecessor", Willa hasn't been seen again.
  • No mention is made of what happened to the mother from California with a flat tire who was shot in the back, nor her young son whom John was helping, at the end of Season 3, despite playing heavily into the nightmares John has for much of the season.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?:
  • Lampshaded and invoked by John. The public at large does not really care if a cattle ranch goes out of business. However, a ranch that breeds beautiful, prize-winning horses is seen as a treasured part of American culture and heritage. He therefore invests a lot of money into turning his ranch into a horse breeding ranch and partners with a famous rodeo rider to market Yellowstone as a serious new source for prize-winning horses.
  • John also invokes this to shut up Summer, who was haranguing him for the supposed mistreatment of cattle on his ranch. He points out that in order to grow whatever trendy grains she eats, every creature living on, in, and under that field had to be killed off first, including countless insects, snakes, frogs, ground squirrels and voles, capping it off with this Armor-Piercing Question: "How cute does an animal have to be before you care whether it dies to feed you?" In Fox News Liberal fashion, Summer is dumbfounded by the question.
• White Sheep: Lee Dutton is the only member of his immediate family who seems to be a mostly well-adjusted person liked by everybody at the ranch. He is killed in the first episode.
• The Worf Effect: Kayce's brother-in-law is a veteran who uses military precision to attack Lee during the raid on Native American land. Kayce confronts and kills him, establishing him as an elite warrior.
• Worthy Opponent: In Season 4, the Duttons finally get one in the form of Market Equities Caroline Warner, who takes a far more pragmatic approach. See An Offer You Can't Refuse. Somewhat downplayed as although appealing to their wallets is an improvement, she still doesn't understand the nature of the people she's up against. Then it turns out that she really did know what kind of person Beth is from the beginning (or so she claims) and gave her enough rope to hang herself with. Mind you, while she has enough cause to fire her, she doesn't have enough to go after her legally (yet).
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • When Beth starts smacking Jamie around, as usual, he finally breaks and slugs her. She cackles that a real man would have been strong enough to restrain himself, which is ironic, since Beth original mocked him for being too weak to fight back. Their father later tells Jamie that he'll kill him if he ever lays another finger on her.
  • The two men that the Beck brothers send after Beth to send a message have no scruples about hitting women either.
  • Two horse thieves that appear briefly in "Freight Trains and Monsters" beat and rob Barrel Racers.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: In the case of the Beck brothers sending two assailants after Beth to send a message to the Duttons. After beating up Beth and killing her assistant Jason in front of her, instead of finishing the job, he tries to get her to admit she's scared of him. Her standing up to him gives Rip enough time to show up and put a stop to it.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: There's a moment between Carter and Beth in Season 4 that's actually wholesome... But she quickly ruins it. When Beth walks by him working in the stalls, he greets her by saying: "Morning Momma", and she actually responds like a mother would by instinctively saying "morning, Baby." First she's happily surprised by the moment, but then, she breaks the kid's heart by telling him he can't call her that. When he asks why, pointing out that she's been acting like his mother, she coldy tells him that like her, Carter can only have one mom, and she's dead. The poor kid is in tears by the time Beth walks away.