I really enjoyed this episode. One of my concerns about this series when we heard about it was the description that it would be the Duttons' journey from Texas to Montana. I remarked that it sounded awfully bleak, like a Grapes of Wrath struggle. We didn't really see that struggle until this episode. Sure, there were hints of it here and there. Are the people really just eating hardtack crackers for weeks? Not knowing that they had to boil the water first. The woman dying because she was taking a pee and getting bit in the ass by a rattlesnake. But this episode really highlighted how tough things were.
We know the Duttons end up in Montana. But the whole time, the wagon train is talking about Oregon. I am curious as to how they eventually end up in Montana. I am wondering if they will reach Montana by the end of this season. Does anyone know how many episodes are in this season? Would next season then focus on life in Montana? I love seeing late 1800s western towns like in "Deadwood". I hope they get to Oregon/Montana by the end of the season, it would be really anticlimactic if they did not.
It was tough seeing the people dying in the water. There was a rope for them to hang on to, but I guess the current dislodged some of them. I'm wondering why they couldn't put a little bit more slack in the rope and teach the Germans how to wrap the rope around their wrist (like Short Round telling Willie Scott what to do on that rope bridge in the final Mola Ram confrontation) and then get themselves across that way.
On 1/9/2022 at 7:38 AM, NeenerNeener said:
OK, so we finally got episode 4. I haven't paid that much attention to the pioneers so I don't know which ones made it and which ones didn't. I now see the logic in my friend Robin selling all her furniture right before she moves, though. She must have been a pioneer who had to leave it all on the riverbank in a previous life.
So, did the daughter lose her V card to the cowboy when Mom and Dad were across the river? I wonder if that's what it was supposed to mean when they let her sleep late.
I too am having a hard time distinguishing the pioneers. I think the ones we have met with any kind of impressionable length are German leader, the Gypsy widow, Italian guy and his pantalone-making wife. What happened to the German guy that robbed the widow? Shea destroyed his wagon and said he would kill him if he didn't leave. But I think he didn't leave? The couple that was in their tent saying they would start making their family that night, was that German leader and his wife?
Someone in previous threads said the cowboy looks like Owen Wilson. I don't think he looks like Owen Wilson at all, apart from the straggly blond hair. Owen Wilson has pinched squinty eyes and a nose that looks like it was broken multiple times. This guy has big eyes. I'd say he looks more like a Poor Man's Matt Barr... particularly Matt Barr as Johnsie Hatfield in "Hatfields and McCoys".
I don't think Cowboy would have slept with Elsa... I think in these times, they both would have known that it wasn't something that would have been done, particularly after Dad warned him about it.
On 1/10/2022 at 11:58 AM, North of Eden said:
Sam Elliot continues to be the MVP. His character is absolutely riveting as in the scene where he orders the piano left behind.
On the other end of the spectrum my mind instantly begans to wander when the daufghter's "romance" is on the screen. Am just not feeling it. The pace is already slow enough but the romance brings everything to a stand still.
I don't know what the main character is like on YELLOW STONE but I'm starting to get the feeling the main one here really is something of a jerk.
He didn't even really try to stop his sister from killing herself and showed zero remorse over the loss of her and his neice. Then his own wife is clearly in emotional distress over not saving the drowning victem and he does nothing by way of comforting her. The daughter didn't either for that matter.
Not really understanding the tears when she was playing Moonlight Sonata.
It didn't seem like anyone needed to drown going over that river with a little more caution and vigalence.
On 1/10/2022 at 12:04 PM, Sunnykm said:
I felt like Elsa realized while playing Moonlight Sonata that it was probably the last time she would play a piano. Who knows if there would be one available in Montana? Also the realization that her life is profoundly changed with this move--she won't be a "lady" as she was raised and now a cowgirl/boy.
I think Dutton is a tough character but I don't think he's a jerk. I think, as he said, his #1 goal is to keep his family alive. He doesn't care much about anything else beyond that. I do feel like he could have cared more about his sister, but I think that was just how times were. In an era where many children didn't survive early childhood, people were callously killed in gunfights, disease claimed many... I think death was readily apparent part of life, and perhaps people just accepted it.
His sister had given up on life, especially after she got her only surviving child killed. She brought that death on upon herself. Which was particularly appalling after we learned that six other children of hers had died. Plus her husband. I would have thought she would have appreciated life and her only surviving child more. But she was as nasty as ever. After she picked a fight with that bandit and directly brought about the gunfight that killed her daughter, she was done. Maybe she came to the realisation that the death was her fault, maybe not. But she didn't want to live anymore. If she had made that determination, I am not sure what else James could have done. He thinks in terms of practicalities... and she was an extra mouth to feed while contributing nothing to his family or the legacy of his family.
I think Sam Elliott's Shea is the true hard-nosed jerk of this series. He too has had a tough lot in life, his entire family died of smallpox. He is clearly a tough man who wants things done his way. I understand why he didn't want the German thief who robbed the widow around with his crew, so he destroyed the wagon. But why was he so tough on the piano player? My interpretation was that he kicked the guy out of the group. He said that the guy had two choices: 1) go back to Fort Worth or 2) he would kill him on the spot. Why can't the guy continue with them without the piano? He clearly left the piano.
I agree that the pioneers had to get rid of all of that furniture and heavy objects in order to cross the river. But he didn't have to be such an ass about it. It's their life... if they wanted to risk their wagon in the river and lost everything in the river, let them. We saw a shot of at least one wagon stuck in the river and left there. It didn't seem to endanger any of the others.
I agree with the interpretation that Elsa was crying over her lost life in Tennessee. Everything had changed, as she keeps saying in her narrations. She left civilization behind for the unknown frontier. She put pants on. She has seen death.
I'm still wondering about that opening scene in the premiere. How does she survive? Who was the woman who was scalped? Does this scene actually even happen, or is it just a dream/metaphor? I am assuming she survives because the narration seems to be done after the fact, like she is an old woman narrating her life story and recounting the events of this journey to her grandchildren. Yet we don't see her in the scenes that were aired this season on "Yellowstone", where James is seen with John and a yet-to-be borne younger brother. Hopefully she survives and is an adult living on her own. I could easily see her marrying the Matt Barr cowboy (he kind of has a Kayce look with the straggly hair) and raising children of her own. Maybe Season 5 of Yellowstone proper can introduce Dutton cousins who are the descendants of Elsa. John is presumably the grandfather of Kevin Costner's John. So Elsa's grandchildren would be John's second cousins, and their children would be third cousins with John's children. I think.
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