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The Yellowstone Series Finale Is Here — What if its Key Failures Are its Biggest Selling Points?
It took almost thirty years to answer Paula Cole’s 1996 question but it seems all the cowboys went to CBS. The khaki-est of middle America TV networks rebroadcast all five seasons of Yellowstone — “a desperate and threatened appeal to American identity and white masculinity.”¹
Now, back on its original network, season 5 has narrowed the scope of fighting for the family legacy (read: control and dominance) to in-fighting. The finale will undoubtedly ensure that no matter who “wins” the victor will still be white, wealthy, and “traditionally” masculine.
As much as Yellowstone’s plot and characters are manufactured to harken to a bygone era as though it were the viewers’ own memories, this re-airing has one singular objective: make more money.
If the show’s creation and original airing catered to soothing the mass panic of the “endangered white male” in a world being usurped by “soy boys” and snowflakes obsessed with political correctness, its re-airing is unabashedly monetizing those modern fears and the desire to recreate a fairytale frontier past.
Numerous spoilers ahead, cowboy.
Real men lasso cattle thieves and grizzly bears from horseback. Real men read the Bible by firelight…