Yellowstone or How Kevin Costner Taught Me How to be a Man

Cameron Lee Cowan
12 min readJan 15, 2021

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N.B. There are spoilers ahead so if you want to watch the show without spoilers, bookmark this and come back to it once you’ve watched. If you don’t mind then read on.

Yellowstone is the kind of prestige television that sometimes doesn’t get the press that it deserves. During my travels last summer, I discovered this show quite by accident in a hotel room somewhere, and I was hooked. That’s not easy for me to do. I’m not too fond of most TV shows, and the story and characters have to be really compelling for me to stay and watch. Yellowstone had me from the first scene, which was actually the 3rd to the last episode of the 4th season that just ended.

Yellowstone is about the Dutton family and Yellowstone ranch, which is a large cattle ranch in Montana. The ranch’s brand’s swooping lines adorn the roofs and exterior walls of all the buildings. Think of it as Dynasty, meets Falconcrest with a little Dallas mixed in for spice. It’s land rather than oil or wine that is being fought over. There isn’t as much backbiting, and because it’s 2021, the women aren’t just pretty flowers complementing the men; they are modern women in positions of…

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Cameron Lee Cowan

Creative Director of The Cameron Journal. Culture, political commentary, and much more!