Are you guys hearing that snapping noise?

Check it out, here we go.

What we're gonna do here,

we're gonna talk about season one of Yellowstone.

We're gonna do a deep dive.

We're gonna chop 'em up.

We're gonna pull 'em apart.

It's like your middle school anatomy class.

You're Timon, I'm Pumbaa.

(beatboxes)

Oh yeah.

Whoo!

If you're watching this,

this must surely be the director's cut,

because there's no way this makes it

to the commercial release.

(upbeat music)

Hey what's up, my name's Jefferson White.

I play Jimmy on Paramount Network's hit show, Yellowstone,

and this is "Welcome to the Yellowstone".

So what we're gonna do here,

we're gonna take a deeper look

at each of the episodes of Yellowstone's first season,

we're gonna sorta pry 'em open, one by one.

We're gonna take a look at

some of the making of the episodes,

we're gonna talk about the episodes themselves,

we're gonna dive in and chop 'em up together,

and learn some stuff together.

We're gonna have a great time.

Now, Yellowstone is an immensely popular show.

Hopefully most of your friends have seen it.

But if you happen to have any friends that haven't,

we're gonna start out by doing a five minute,

and five minutes only,

recap of each episode.

So, Yellowstone episode 101, "Daybreak",

in five minutes or less, begin.

I'm so confident that I'm just wasting

these precious seconds to show you the timer.

I don't need 'em.

10 extra seconds to describe

a 90-minute episode of television?

Who needs it?

This is a major tortoise and the hare situation,

I'm getting cocky.

Okay, check it out.

Episode 101, "Daybreak".

So, the first character we meet in episode 101,

you know it, I know it, we love him,

John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner.

The very first thing that happens in the show

is John Dutton, hauling a horse trailer,

is struck on the highway,

by a massive piece of construction equipment.

So, when we start the show,

already, John Dutton,

the livestock commissioner of Montana,

and the owner of the largest private cattle ranch in Montana

is under attack.

He's been in a car accident,

and already, we have a beautiful visual metaphor

for progress and the old way of doing things colliding.

Boom.

Okay, next scene, that's quick.

Okay, already I'm panicking about the time.

I should not have wasted those initial 10 seconds.

I am now, that was the hare taking a nap

in the tortoise and the hare analogy,

and now I'm sprinting to try to catch up with the tortoise.

Check it out.

John Dutton has four kids, alright?

The next one we meet, that's Jamie Dutton.

Lawyer Dutton.

He's a brilliant mind, he's a brilliant legal mind,

and he protects the Yellowstone from legal threats, right?

Then you've got Beth Dutton.

She's sort of like a financial assassin Dutton.

She works in merges and acquisitions

at a firm called Schwartz and Meyer.

And we learn very quickly about her

that she does not give a fuck,

and she's really good at what she does,

and she's ruthless and frightening.

She's ruthless and frightening.

Then we meet cowboy Dutton.

That's Kayce Dutton.

Now right now, Kayce is estranged from his family,

more on that later,

and he lives on the Broken Rock Indian Reservation

with his wife Monica, and their son, Tate.

So, Kayce is an ex Navy Seal,

he's a cowboy, he's a badass,

and he lives off the ranch.

He lives on the Indian Reservation right now.

And then we've got the fourth Dutton child,

that's Lee Dutton,

who is the sort of natural heir to the throne,

he works on the Yellowstone with his dad,

he's a livestock officer,

a livestock law enforcement officer as well,

Lee Dutton, is the fourth Dutton, okay.

This is, it's a parade of characters in this first episode,

who will become very important over the course

of the next 10 to 15 seasons.

So it's important that we check in on all of them

right at the beginning here.

And so then we travel to the Broken Rock Indian Reservation,

where we've got the new chief, Thomas Rainwater.

So Thomas Rainwater is the new chief

of the Broken Rock Indian Reservation,

and he sort of has a progressive mindset

in terms of how he wants to expand

the territory of the Broken Rock Indian Reservation,

and how he wants to sort of aggressively approach

advocating for his tribe.

And so he's a slightly controversial figure,

he's a slightly unorthodox figure,

and he's one of the three sort of major patriarchs

that we'll be following in season one of Yellowstone.

So, so far we've met John Dutton,

now we've met Thomas Rainwater,

and then the third sort of big,

heavy hitting patriarch in season one of Yellowstone,

that's Dan Jenkins.

So Dan Jenkins is a land developer.

He's a brilliant, aggressive legal mind,

and sort of financial mind,

and his plan is to build a massive new land development

abutting the Yellowstone ranch.

So things aren't gonna go great

between him and Kevin Costner,

spoiler alert.

So that's our three, sort of big, powerful, central

power players that we're introduced to

in Yellowstone episode 101.

How we doing?

Oh God, there's 54 seconds left.

We haven't even begun to talk about the conflict yet,

necessarily.

I'm gonna give myself a bonus five minutes on this one,

because this episode is 90 minutes long,

and it's utterly psychotic to imagine

that you could summarize it in five minutes.

Who would even set out to do that?

An egomaniac, surely.

So tell you what,

I'm gonna give myself another five minutes,

here we go.

Episode 101.

So basically the primary conflict of episode 101

that will come to sort of

spill throughout the rest of the season,

is these cows have wandered off of the Yellowstone ranch,

and on to the Broken Rock Indian Reservation.

And Thomas Rainwater, the sort of non-traditional,

unconventional, aggressive chief that I mentioned before,

he's decided to hold those cows

on his side of that land, right?

So, immediately, from the very beginning,

John Dutton and Thomas Rainwater in conflict.

John Dutton needs to get those cows back,

he's the livestock commissioner of Montana,

they're very important to his constituency,

and also his friends, and also himself.

This cattle represents a ton of money,

it's a ton of resources,

and so for the

Indian Reservation to be sort of holding them,

is almost an act of theft,

that's how John Dutton would see it,

obviously Rainwater doesn't see it the same way.

And there's also a little bit

of a Romeo and Juliet situation going on,

because Dutton's youngest son Kayce,

is married to Monica,

who lives on the Indian Reservation.

They both do, right?

So, Kayce and Monica are a little bit of a Romeo and Juliet,

who are a relationship that's sort of

trying to stay together,

despite being pulled apart by the larger forces at play.

Okay, we're still in 101.

Stick with me here.

Okay, check it out.

John Dutton's trying to figure out

how he's gonna get these cows back,

and he's sort of going through

all these different maneuverings.

He's going through these political maneuverings,

he's also sort of sending his son, Lee,

the livestock officer,

to have a sort of more legal conversation

with tribal police on the other side of the boundary line.

There's a sort of conflict that's brewing

about these cows over the course of the episode,

also, at the same time,

you've got a very important element at play here.

John Dutton is approached by Dirk Hurdstrom,

a friend of his from the past,

who wants to call in a favor.

And he says to John Dutton,

"Hey buddy, do me a favor.

"You've gotta take my grandson and straighten him out."

John Dutton says, "I'm not gonna fucking do it buddy."

Dirk Hurdstrom says, "Come on, please."

And John Dutton goes, "Okay, I'm gonna do it.

"But I'm gonna do it my way."

And Dirk Hurdstrom's like, "Hell yeah, do it."

So John Dutton sends his biggest, toughest, meanest cowboy,

Rip Wheeler, remember that name,

that's gonna be relevant for 15 seasons,

Rip Wheeler, to grab Jimmy Hurdstrom,

Dirk Hurdstrom's grandson, Jimmy Hurdstrom.

Remember that name, that's gonna be relevant for

hopefully a while.

We can only hope.

Six seasons, seven seasons?

Cross your fingers, folks.

To bring him onto the ranch and sort of straighten him out.

So this kid's a fuck up, he's an idiot, he's an asshole.

He had the arrogance to try and summarize

a 90 minute episode of television in five minutes,

who does that?

He grabs him, brings him onto the ranch,

he's gonna straighten him out, fix him up.

Okay, so throughout this episode,

this conflict has been brewing.

There's these cows, are they gonna get 'em back?

How are they gonna get 'em back?

What's going on?

And then,

at about the 60 minute mark,

that conflict erupts into violence.

So John Dutton sends his son Lee,

and livestock officers to go and bring these cows back

from the reservation.

Tribal police are there, and violence erupts.

And, as part of this violence erupting,

Lee Dutton, John's oldest son,

the natural heir to the throne,

is shot and killed by Robert Long,

Monica's brother, and thus Kayce's brother in law.

Right?

So, all of a sudden,

Kayce, his brother is killed by his brother in law,

he's there, and in an act of revenge,

kills his own brother in law,

his wife's brother.

So violence erupts and strikes both sides,

and tragedy strikes both sides of this conflict.

And we'll be dealing with that tragedy, that trauma,

for most of season one.

John Dutton is bereaved.

He's aggrieved.

He's upset.

His oldest son has been killed.

It was a conflict about cows,

it was about money,

and then his oldest son is killed,

and it's about so much more than that.