Spoilers below.
Well, it’s official: Dutton Ranch is a hit. With an 85-percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and some positive feedback from fans following the premiere, the Beth and Rip story is already succeeding where Marshals struggled in a post-Yellowstone world. It’s only the beginning, though—we have so much more to learn about what life will be like down in Rio Paloma, Texas.
We open the third episode of the season on the Dutton Ranch the morning after Rip secretly disposed of Wes’s body. Beth finds Rip making coffee in the kitchen, and she notes that he was missing in the middle of the night, but he decides not to disclose what really went down. Last week we saw just how badly Beth wants to live a new life of peace, and the last thing Rip wants to do is burst her bubble for something he doesn’t know is actually a problem yet. That said, keeping Beth out of the loop is not a good idea. This new Beth seems a lot more zen than previous iterations of her character, but dishonesty from her husband and confidante could quickly change that.
We get some fun shots of Beth on cowgirl duty—the Dutton Ranch is a bit more short-staffed than the Yellowstone Ranch used to be, so she has to put in the hours. She swaps her riding gear for Louboutins before heading out to drive to Dallas, and tells Carter to change his shirt on her way out of the house. At Claudio’s butcher shop, she picks up her fresh cuts of meat and borrows one of his coolers branded with a “don’t be a shitass” sticker. He tells her the industry is struggling—Big Beef is snatching up ranches and some are giving up. Hopefully this isn’t foreshadowing for the fate of the Dutton Ranch itself.
In Dallas, Beth arrives at a swanky hotel restaurant for her mystery meeting and interrupts an all-hands huddle with the catering and kitchen staff. A man named Giles Moore (Sebastian Arcelus) is speaking, and when Chef Paula (Makayla Did) brings up an issue with inadequate tip-outs, he brushes off her concerns. (Beth watches this interaction and mutters “prick” under her breath.) Beth seizes the opportunity, though: Walking into the kitchen with her cooler, she offers Paula $1,500, double the tip-out shortfall, if the chef adds one of her steaks to the family meal—medium rare. It’s a deal!
And this is how she ambushes Giles, with a plate of fresh steak as an introduction. Beth wants to add her beef to his restaurants, and he warms up to her when he finds out she now owns the former Edwards Ranch, which had a decent reputation in town. The real issue is less about Giles being a prick than it is about the Frontier Hospitality Group, which supplies most high-end hotels and restaurants in Texas and stands in the way of Beth’s ranch-to-table efforts. This might be a dead end for Beth, considering she doesn’t have the resources to compete with that (yet!).
After their meeting, Beth is trying to enjoy her on-the-house dinner at the restaurant when Joaquin shows up. Is he following her…? He’s at the very least keeping tabs on her. We also find out he has three phones “for business.” That’s…suspicious? Maybe? We get to know him a bit, though—he was adopted into the Jackson family, and Beth tells him he reminds her of her father’s attorney…as in, Jamie, the adopted brother she stabbed to death.
Meanwhile, Beulah delivers a eulogy for a deceased sheriff in town, calling him an “incorruptible force for good.” Everett is in attendance, too, and he and Beulah catch up after the burial—they definitely have history, and with some sparks flying between them, it feels like there is (or was) even a romantic connection. Last week, I suspected the Jacksons might have the local police force in their pocket, but that might not be the case if Sheriff Wade is poking around asking Beulah questions about Wes and his wife. It does seem he’s giving her a lot of leeway, though. (For instance, we haven’t seen him bring her—or anyone else from the ranch—in for questioning.) We’ll have to see just how much power she has over him.
On the YA side of the story, Carter decides to ditch school to hang out with Oreana, who’s sipping a milkshake on a darling lakeside restaurant patio. She’s having issues with “fucking Hoyt,” the boyfriend she was arguing with in the parking lot on that fateful rodeo evening. They got in another fight after she found out he’s been cheating (she’s been tracking him with an AirTag). She plays damsel in distress a bit and asks Carter to save her, and though it seems she was half-joking, they nevertheless drive over to his location (a house where Hoyt is currently sleeping with a woman who’s very much not Oreana) and Carter pisses all over his pickup truck’s bumper stickers. Oreana takes it one step further and starts smashing the truck’s windows with a flashlight when Hoyt finally notices and runs out in his underwear, waving a gun over his head. He starts furiously shouting at the vandals, but I mean…he’s the one having the affair! Carter and Oreana hightail their way out of there.
Unfortunately, Carter quickly gets pulled over by Sheriff Wade, who’s already sick of the Jackson family’s BS. Carter gets off with a warning, somehow. After all that foreplay, the lovebirds finally hook up back at the Dutton Ranch.
Work on the farm continues with Rip, Zachariah, and Azul, who discover a cow that seems to be pretty sick. Everett stops by to check the animal and points out that anti-vaxxers run rampant in these parts, meaning it’s not impossible that the cow has foot-and-mouth disease. (Is this the first time a Sheridan show is taking a pro-vaccination stance? It may be specific to animals, but I’ll take it!) The culprit might be the new bull Beth and Rip won in the auction last week, and it’s not looking good since foot-and-mouth is a highly contagious viral disease that could easily spread among the herd.
The episode takes yet another turn when a woman named Anna Dupree (Dale Dickey) speeds onto the ranch with a gun and threatens to shoot Zachariah. Rip talks her down, but we find out that Zachariah went to prison for killing Anna’s child, his ex-wife Terry Jane. He tragically hit her with his car while drunk one evening. Heartbreaking! I always felt Yellowstone didn’t invest enough in its cowboy characters, so it’s rewarding to see the small but mighty Dutton Ranch crew already becoming more fleshed out.
Beulah shows up at the hospital to pay a visit to Austin (Sterlin English), the poor cowboy whom Chet beat to a pulp last week after he wouldn’t let go of the Wes issue. She’s mediating the conflict, of course, but also working her own angle to deal with any loose threads from the murder cover-up. While riding home, she gets a call from someone named Mariano, whom she doesn’t seem thrilled to speak to. He offers some vaguely threatening words about making sure there are “no surprises” ahead of some cattle coming in. Perhaps her biggest client? Or the person who really calls the shots around here? Beulah decides it’s time to deal with Whitney (Wes’s wife) herself and makes a detour to the woman’s home, only to find that the widow has skipped town, which we already knew from seeing her pack up last week.
In the last few minutes of the episode, Beth is on her way back home from Dallas when she stops to find Rip in a field. He brings her up to speed on what will surely be a huge issue for the Dutton Ranch: The diseased cow has indeed spread its disease among the herd, destroying what is essentially their only livelihood. How will Beth and Rip make it out of this one?
