Anyone watching after Hurricane Costner’s path of destruction?
The episodes they have released so far feel very disjointed.
2 Likes
It’s not as good without Costner, but I’ll still watch to see how the season ends.
1 Like
Without Costner, the show hasn’t convinced me to care. He was far too important to just remove and expect everyone to be okay with it. It’s similar to Vikings when Ragnar died—I just stopped watching. Same with The Witcher when they replaced Henry Cavill. Showrunners really shouldn’t expect they can replace iconic actors without facing immense backlash and losing interest. The “creative differences” that led to Costner’s departure are truly regrettable. I can’t imagine what could have been so important that they allowed him to leave, but RIP anyway. As far as I’m concerned, the show is basically over.
I have not watched this. I dunno if I should start, but maybe if nothing else catches my fancy.
Spoiler warning. You have been warned. Talking about spoilers in…
5
4
3
2
1
So I finally caught up to the latest episode and it’s unbelievable how bad it is. I legit have no clue how this past the sniff test with whatever “cowboys” they have consulting the show.
It has always bothered me how they have handled horses but I decided not to let it get to me too much because the story was (mostly) good. What I’m talking about is how they made horses really noisy. I’ve owned horses my whole life (45 now) and I, as the kids say, “cringed” every time they had a horse neigh or screech for no damn reason. Horses are generally very quiet animals. They don’t neigh because you turned them to the right, or made them run, or looked at them with a side eye. I’ve owned my current two horses for over 10 years now and I couldn’t tell you the last time I heard them neigh.
When does a horse neigh? They only do it to communicate with other horses. That’s it.
So what bothered me about the latest episode? The way Colby died was just all kinds of wrong and inaccurate.
I’ll start with my first issue: that horse being a stud. There is ZERO reasons to keep a horse a stud and only people that have no idea what they’re doing would let a male get to the age of 3 ungelded. There’s three reasons for that.
1.) Female horses are not spayed. It’s an expensive operation that vets won’t ever do unless there is a very extreme medical reason for it and only people with money could afford that operation. The way everyone controls their horse population is by gelding the males. The horse doesn’t even have to lay down to have this done.
2.) Studs are dangerous. They’re a danger to their owners and a danger to other horses. Once a male horse reaches breeding age, and he hasn’t been cut, there’s only one thing on his mind: covering mares. They will do anything, including going through you, to get to a mare in heat. I’ve seen a stud try to breed a mare with both riders on both horses. The person riding the mare could have been easily killed and the person riding the stud could have fallen off and been trampled.
3.) To keep blood lines undiluted. You don’t want some common stock horse with bad conformation and a boring ancestry covering your mares. A mare’s pregnancy last 11 months and that’s a lot of time and resources wasted plus it’s a strain on your mare to have a foal that’s going to be worth a fraction of what your prize show stud could have produced.
Now to put this all together: that old guy was trying to train this horse and said he couldn’t because he’s a “man killer” or some nonsense like that. Horses aren’t lions but whatevs. Anyways, his goal could have been achieved and really easy to do if they would have gelded this horse when it was young. Cutting off a male’s supply of testosterone at the year mark would have gentled him down tremendously. A cowboy would know this. A cowboy would have insisted on this for a common stock horse.
Then they put this “man killer” horse in a stall … why? There’s zero reason to keep a horse in a stall if you have millions of acres of land. Matter of fact, keeping a horse in a stall increases the amount of money you have to put into it. You have to buy hay and grain plus hire someone to feed them and clean their stall every day (unless you do it yourself.) A true horse and cattle ranch would have had dozens of pastures fenced off with loafing sheds in each one for their horses to cut down on the expense of feeding so many horses. I never feed my horses in the summer because they have 8 acres of cleared pasture. I only hay and grain them in the winter when all the plant life is dead. The only people that keep their horses in stalls are people with no land so they’re boarding, people with really, really expensive show horses that they want to keep a close eye on and/or it’s below 0 degrees outside.
Back to putting Man Killer in a stall. Then there was the water bucket situation which was again, so damn stupid. Nobody waters their horses this way. Ofc horses will kick their bucket over if you water them like this. You’re taking a 1000 to 1500lb animal that belongs outside inside a small room. They’re going to kick, pee and/or crap on it. Not on purpose… usually. They might kick it if they get really bored. Anyways, this is how everyone with a brain takes care of their horses in a stall:
Hay goes in the bars on the left, grain goes in the corner bucket under the bars and the water goes in he black and yellow buckets. This setup allows anyone to safely feed and water a horse without stepping foot into their stall. If you’re wondering how this stable gets the hay and grain in, if you look really closely at the window bars all the way to the left, you’ll see what I think it’s a latch. I’m sure that section of the bars swings open so you can slide the hay in from the top and dump the grain into that corner bucket.
So why am I going all horse nerd and flipping tables? The only way I can think to describe it is it would be like watching a show about the Civil War and all the soldiers were holding AK-47s. Would it matter if the story was good? It would matter to me and it would be really hard for me to get past that. I don’t know if I can finish this show. They bring in real cowboys from real ranches but apparently don’t listen to anything they say. It was like the Jimmy scene where the horse was trying to buck because of the type of bit in its mouth. That whole interaction made me roll my eyes so hard that I needed a young and old priest to fix it. That wouldn’t have made a horse start bucking its rider. A bad bit might have made the poor animal bleed from its mouth and/or resistant to being bridled.
I know I sound insane but I just wanted to vent about a show that’s supposed to have a heavy ranch theme fail so hard at the simplest details. They could have still killed Colby and not done such a bad job at it.
3 Likes
Good post. That’s very informative. I really didn’t like how that scene was done either.
1 Like
Our dog likes watching the horses and cows
There was a scene tho where a bear stood up on its two back feet and she BOLTED down the hallway to my room.
1 Like
Wellp, it’s all done. What did you guys think?
I thought the episode was fine, I guess, a solid 5/10 but it could have been better.
I knew since season 1 that the NAs were going to be the ones to save the Yellowstone. I didn’t know how exactly but I figured it was going to have something to do with their ancestors being buried there. I think they were going to go that route until Costner punked out and left them scrambling to cobble a script together. The Dutton children selling them the ranch for basically pennies was ok.
Killing Jaime was not what he deserved. Justice for him would have been seeing his political career go down the toilet and watching the NAs tear down the house and posting signs around Yellowstone that prohibit vehicles. Sarah should have been dropped off at the train station. That would have been fitting justice for that character.
I haven’t watched any of this series. I kinda wanna see it. But it’s just never been top of my list. I guess I will get to it eventually, but it’s just kinda… eh?
I think it’s worth watching now since it’s done.
It has it’s highs and lows, like any decent show.
3 Likes