Critic’s Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
3.5
The Yellowstone Ranch is gone, the cowboys are scattered everywhere, and Beth and Jamie fought to the death.
There were some strong moments on Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14, almost as if the ghosts of how brilliant this series used to be were rising up to remind us of what we lost a while ago.
Everything wrapped up as well as could be expected, yet “Life Is A Promise” couldn’t outrun the mistakes of the past five episodes for long enough to be as powerful as it should have been.
The Yellowstone’s Fate Ended A Series-Long Conflict, But The Cowboys Deserved More Respect In The Wrap-Up
I had predicted that Kayce would sell the ranch to the Indigenous people, although I had envisioned something more along the lines of Kayce giving it to them for free and then buying partial ownership back cheaply.
He said that giving the ranch away was the only way to save it, but there was no giving away here.
The deal he made with Rainwater made more sense. Rainwater would never give that land back once he bought it.
He’s wanted to reclaim that land since Yellowstone Season 1, and now he got it.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I have always loved the storylines involving Indigenous people on Yellowstone, and the neo-Western does the best job I’ve ever seen of portraying issues like poverty on the reservation, prejudice against Native Americans, and the violence some white people continue to do to tribe members to this day.
Still, Kayce didn’t exactly save the ranch on Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14.
He saved it from developers that would turn it into condos and businesses, but the new owners quickly tore down every existing structure, and some tribal members would have desecrated all of the Duttons’ graves if Mo hadn’t stopped them.
Rainwater promised to protect John and his legacy, but it seemed that he got what he wanted while the ranch ceased to exist. How did that benefit anyone but Rainwater? (And I suppose Kayce, since he wanted to be free of the burden of John’s expectations.)
Additionally, the cowboys who had been branded, who had been loyal, and who had spent most of their lives on the ranch were quickly rushed into the next chapter of their lives.
Obviously, the cowboys would have to leave since there was no longer a ranch for them to work on, but it could have been done more respectfully.
Other than Lloyd saying he’d rather quit being a cowboy than cease working for the Yellowstone Ranch, we received virtually no emotion.
Everyone got severance pay from Rip, who asked them to help with John’s funeral before they took off. Then, they went off to their new jobs.
It seemed too cut and dry, as if it were focused only on the practicalities of what would happen and not on how it would affect the cowboys.
I know that stoicism is part of cowboy culture, but there should have been more to it than what we got — and less of Travis.
Yellowstone Again Wasted Time With Self-Indulgent Nonsense Before Getting To The Good Stuff
It’s become par for the course that Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 wastes about 20 minutes before getting to anything worthwhile, and unfortunately, Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14 was no exception.
“Life Is A Promise” began with a strong opening scene, which is more than can be said for most of the season. However, it followed that up with a long story Travis was telling that had all the cowboys in hysterics.
I have no idea what that story was or why it was so funny because my brain got stuck in an endless loop of annoyance that we were again wasting time with unnecessary Travis scenes when there was more important stuff to get to.
I’m also not sure why we needed Travis’ obnoxious behavior when Teeter reported for her first day of work.
Maybe I’m just so burnt out on Travis that I can’t stand the sight of him, but knowing that Teeter had decided to work for him was a sufficient wrap-up for her — we didn’t need to follow her to work just so that Travis could get a few more lines in.
Seriously, is it just me, or could the longer-than-usual finale have been cut down to size by eliminating most of Travis’ nonsense?
We Finally Got The Vengeful Beth We’ve Been Waiting For All Season
The Beth who swore she’d avenge John’s death is the one I’ve been waiting for since John’s murder.
Where has she been all season?
We should have had scene after scene of Beth going after Jamie and Rip trying to rein her in, not one scene after the funeral, one fight, and Jamie dying after almost killing Beth in the only episode where they shared scenes.
We were promised a war and we didn’t get one, and I will be forever bitter about that.
Beth and Jamie’s fight was epic. They said and did everything they needed to, and the makeup department worked overtime to make their injuries so realistic I couldn’t bear to look.
I especially loved Jamie’s expression of shock and frustration when Beth told him she and Kayce had already sold the ranch.
It was like he saw his victory slipping out from under him, and he couldn’t believe he’d been outsmarted.
Jamie deserved every bit of the final beatdown he got from Beth.
He used to be a far more interesting and complex character, but this season, he has been nothing but an idiot who did not earn the smirk he kept wearing.
Still, it would have been far more satisfying if Beth and Jamie had had an actual war rather than exchanging threats on the phone for a few minutes per episode.
It was obvious that there was only one way this could end.
Rip and Beth will have a Yellowstone spinoff, so Beth couldn’t possibly die at Jamie’s hands (and that would have sucked, anyway).
Jamie needed to be put in his place, period. He had gotten too stupid to live — did he really think he’d get away with claiming to investigate John’s murder and denying his affair with Sarah?
The cops were already onto him, so if Beth hadn’t killed him, he would have been arrested, despite his smirk and his phony claims that he was protecting the people of Montana by searching for John’s killer.
Still, did Beth’s secret die with Jamie on Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14?
Rip still doesn’t know that Beth aborted their baby when they were teenagers and the reason she can’t have kids.
If we had had a real war between Jamie and Beth, that was something that Jamie could have made sure Rip knew to try to cause trouble between them.
Instead, he made the same non-specific threat over and over. He and Beth were far from equally matched, which made this story fall flat, in addition to its lack of enough screen time.
Now, it seems like it will never come out, and that’s a shame.
With Rip and Beth beginning their happy-ever-after at the end of Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14, I’m left wondering what the point of having that secret between them is if nothing will ever come of it and whether somehow it’ll come out later anyway.
Random Thoughts About Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14
- That priest had no idea what he was getting into with Beth and Rip, especially Beth. The looks on his face and his attempts to interact with them were hilarious.
- There were several times that I thought the episode was over before it was. The scene where Rip and Lloyd drove away after disposing of Jamie’s body and the car and the scene where Kayce and Beth closed up the ranch for the last time would both have been suitable ending scenes.
- I feel like we might have had a different, stronger show if John’s funeral had been featured on Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 9, and Beth spent the rest of the season seeking vengeance instead of all the flashbacks and other filler we got.
- Elsa’s voiceover was a nice touch at the end, but I couldn’t help thinking that if Kevin Costner hadn’t left the series, John might have done that voiceover.
Over to you, Yellowstone fanatics.
What did you think of Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14?
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While Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 14 is the final episode of the season, a new spinoff with Beth and Rip will be coming soon.
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