YELLOWSTONE (Seasons 4-5 especially) traffics in a 9 year old's understanding of masculinity

It's just ridiculous.

Every conversation about grief between the men is essentially "gotta force that sh\t down so it don't see the sun no more."*

I recognize that we're watching a lot of damaged people and examining the lonesomeness of the lifestyle, and I actually found that effective for a while, but absolutely zero of the characters are changing or evolving.

For a while the show actually explored the nuances of these characters (to some degree, at least) but now that TS is short on time we're getting the dumbest versions of them possible. Kayce holding a gun to that girl's head in a mission so stupid even we are unsure of its actual objective. Rip saying dumb shit about the temporal nature of the cowboy profession nonstop (which ironically borders on being maudlin).

I grew up in Texas and Colorado, rode horses, worked on a ranch in the summer, volunteered at the weekly rodeo during summer as well.

Very few ppl spoke like this and almost all of them possessed richer personalities and had better senses of humor.

Here, everyone's always walking around searching for the briefest, most stoic-seeming response to everything no matter how little sense it actually makes in the context of the scene.

This show has become so one-note it really does feel like a bunch of kids playing cowboy.