Summary
“I Want to Be Him” might be the most on-brand episode of Yellowstone ever put to film, and it’s a macho good time for as long as it lasts.
This recap of Yellowstone season 4, episode 6, “I Want to Be Him”, contains spoilers.
There have been good and bad episodes of Yellowstone, but “I Want to Be Him” might be the most Yellowstone episode of Yellowstone ever. It has all the hallmarks. Bunkhouse drama! Livestock issues! Familial dysfunction! Pensive looks into the distance! It might not do a lot for the overarching plot, and some scenes are certainly saggy, but the core of this week’s installment is just so on-brand that long-time fans will scarcely mind. By the time the credits rolled, I was almost ready to saddle up a horse myself.
Yellowstone season 4, episode 6 recap
Things do open with Jimmy, admittedly, which continues to feel like a waste of time, but at least “I Want to Be Him” manages to juxtapose his struggles learning to rope after a long day of riding with Lloyd teaching young Carter to do the same. Carter has fallen into an interesting observer role since falling foul of Beth and moving into the barn, and he’s learning harsh lessons first-hand. It’s actually one of his lines that the episode takes its title from, but we’ll get to that momentarily. First, though, the roping.
The roping isn’t important, but Lloyd trying to offer Carter advice on how to not be an outcast — he should find another way to apologize to Beth — causes the conversation to turn to Walker. Lloyd never apologized, of course. But don’t think for a moment that his conversation with Carter inspires him to. Instead, he goes to the bunkhouse, smashes his guitar against a wall, and throws a knife into his chest. Mia decides that now is as good a time to leave as any, and you can’t blame her, really.
Laramie and, tragically, Teeter, aren’t far behind. When Lloyd is taken to Rip and John, the latter declares there will be no more women in the bunkhouse, and Lloyd and Walker will be locked in the round pen and made to fight until all the fight is out of them. At that point, Rip is to “make an example” out of the last man standing. It’s a brutal, brute-force solution, but the alternative is taking Lloyd out to the middle of nowhere and executing him, which is the usual punishment for Yellowstone dissenters. So, after booting the girls out, Rip takes the men outside and they fight. It’s surprisingly even considering Walker has one arm and Lloyd is 200 years old. They fight for what seems like forever while everyone, including Carter, watches on. Nobody seems to be enjoying themselves, except perhaps Lloyd, who eventually gets the better of Walker. John takes off his jacket and puts on his gloves, ready to spare Rip the pain of hurting his friend, but Rip knows that the men would hate John for it, so does the deed himself. He gives Lloyd a few more smacks and breaks one of his hands, “for his protection”.
After the fight, Lloyd and Walker leave the pen together, not exactly friends but certainly with no fight left. “Do we understand each other?” John asks, and both answer in the affirmative. As John walks off into the horizon and Rip berates himself privately, Carter says aloud that he has decided what he wants to be when he grows up. “Him,” he says, pointing at John on the hillside, “I want to be him.”
Elsewhere, Beth is in fine form. She starts her day by holding Summer Higgins at knifepoint (Summer criticizes Beth’s boob job, and Beth snaps back that God gave her those, and seemingly Summer’s as well, in an all-time zinger). She then ruins her breakfast, tells Rip to decide on a place to marry her, and goes to meet with Jamie in her official capacity as a Market Equities employee. Jamie knows exactly what’s coming. “You know the saying about wherever something good is trying to happen, something bad is trying to stop it?” she asks him. “I’m something bad.” Indeed she is.
And Jamie was already having a bad episode. After plucking up the courage to confront Garrett at gunpoint about hiring Riggins to kill the Duttons, he’s all-too-easily seduced by his father’s claims of being his “real family”, that he gave him the strength to step out of the shadows, that John used Jamie — and all his children — to scare and shame people into not taking back what he stole. Garrett, who is quick to hold Jamie’s own son over his head, confesses to hiring Riggins. He tried to kill the Duttons, and he’ll keep trying until he gets it right because that’s just how much he loves Jamie. I guess Jamie has been waiting his whole life to be told that by somebody since he immediately breaks down in Garrett’s arms. Has he chosen his side?
Monica and Tate even get a bit to do in “I Want to Be Him”. Their house hunting goes so well that they buy a property with a local stray dog basically on the spot, which might well be how housing works in Montana, and then Kayce is called away by Rainwater to investigate the disappearance of several horses stolen from one of the reservation’s racing families. A member of that family is one of the Yellowstone’s former wranglers who Kayce knows, and who looks exactly like Monica, which doesn’t go unremarked upon by Monica herself. What this has to do with anything is anyone’s guess, but it’s cool to see Tate up and about. Kayce and Monica think they’ve found home. Let’s hope nobody threatens it before the season is out.
You can catch Yellowstone season 4, episode 6, “I Want to Be Him”, exclusively on Paramount.
