So We Love Yellowstone, Does That Mean There's Something Wrong With Us?
Yellowstone is a guilty pleasure that sometimes comes across as a peculiar fetish you don't want to disclose to anyone.
Despite it, the neo-western has been an enormous success since it first premiered in 2018. Yellowstone has frequently silenced the haters and garners some of the best viewership numbers in the business.
Kevin Costner recently took home the Golden Globe for "Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series," which was long overdue as Yellowstone remains one of the most popular shows on television.
It's a fulfilling prophecy for a TV series that opened to negative reviews and skepticism that Taylor Sheridan could resurrect the western genre. In the end, we all may love Yellowstone whether we like to admit it or not.
But that doesn't mean there's something wrong with us. Seriously wrong.
Yellowstone has initiated a level of fandom that didn't exist in the past with cable TV. The scenery is spectacular, and the plot is never empty of drama.
The Yellowstone cast splits duty between being admired and despised by fans. Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) is one of the most notorious female characters on TV and has even inspired her own "Don't Make Me Go Beth Dutton On You" shirts.
For many, Sheridan is more than just a showrunner. He's a folk hero who single-handedly revived the genre and made westerns fashionably cool again. Yellowstone presents the same notorious ingredients that make westerns endearing such as the pursuit of liberty, freedom, family, and vengeance.
However, Sheridan takes it a step further by mixing in modern elements that make it appealing to the working class.
Yellowstone is clearly a blue-collar show that makes no apologies and thrives on being a radical alternative to shows like House of the Dragon and Succession.
It's little wonder, then, that Yellowstone has evolved into the top series on TV. The show doesn't make apologies, and it's evident by the rabid fanbase. People are hungry for westerns again and other stories that are not set in New York City or Los Angeles.
It's a show for middle America that delivers a rural vibe reminiscent of Longmire and Friday Night Lights. The strenuous way of life and property disputes may not be romantic, yet audiences continue to come in droves.
Democrat or Republican, red state or blue state, it turns out that America has a fascination with Yellowstone. It's been one of the most-watched shows in the country since the third season and will only disappear when Sheridan pulls the trigger.
Sure, it may be a "conservative fantasy" as one critic defined it, but Yellowstone continues to exist because it's for the people. The show, unlike most content in Hollywood, is geared toward a largely unrepresented segment of the population.