Yellowstone Literally Doesn't Add Up in a Way That is Already Ridiculous
Who needs good storytelling... or math.
Yellowstone season 5 has not been enjoying a lot of fan love recently, with fans criticizing it for lack of character or story development. However, the main premise of the show also doesn't seem to work anymore.
Yet another plot hole was spotted by Redditor Xarkar, who pointed out that Yellowstone does not seem to make much sense even when it comes to simple arithmetic.
"I honestly do not understand how they can throw some of these numbers around and not do a little bit of basic math to make sure it actually makes sense. $1.2 million / month, to lease land for 5000 cows. Could be up to 1 year away from home. That's 14.4m in land lease. He said the cows were worth $1,500 each. So let see, sell them all today for 7.5m, or spend full year watching them and spend 14.4m in rent just for the land," the Redditor said.
It's not the only occasion when Yellowstone sacrificed basic math for the sake of simply keeping the show going.
"Yellowstone has a helicopter and a million bucks tied up in Ram Trucks and horse trailers but can't spring for a couple of $20k campers?" Redditor Slick_Fifty wondered.
Over five seasons, fans have already found themselves "generally completely lost on how the Yellowstone ranch is thousands and thousands of acres and these cows have nowhere to live and eat on it."
Some people offer the easiest solution to deal with the apparent mathematic plot hole: not caring.
"Just because it's on a TV show doesn't make it become real numbers. If things were required to make sense in tv they'd have to rewrite every show. They don't expect the average viewer to sit down with a calculator and crunch numbers," Redditor Tel864 said, adding that many people would "enjoy the show more" if they didn't try to over-analyze the script.
However, it's not like Yellowstone fans are ready to put up with lazy writing, especially when the numbers plot hole not being the show's only woe. So far, season 5 has been blasted as the series' most boring, with even the mid-season finale not bringing anything particularly world-changing for the characters or the story. Fans are already calling for showrunners to pull the plug on Yellowstone and make season 5 the final one.
Yellowstone is set to return with episode 8 on January 8. Season 5 is the show's longest so far, consisting of 14 episodes and divided into two parts.