Summary
“Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops” doesn’t go out all guns blazing, but it does make significant developments in most of the ongoing major subplots.
This recap of Yellowstone season 4, episode 10, “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops”, contains spoilers, including a discussion of the Yellowstone Season 4 ending.
This is a long episode, and a lot happens in it. Some of it even feels like it reaches a resolution, but Yellowstone, like the Montana wilderness, is unending, and you can’t guarantee you’ve seen the last of anything or anyone. Well, except Garrett Randall. We’ve definitely seen the last of him.
But what of it? What will amount from his season spent mostly sitting by a stream on Jamie’s expansive property and staring pensively into the middle distance? “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops” isn’t your usual all-action Yellowstone finale, so it’s difficult to tell. Kayce, usually a good source of indiscriminate shootings, spends the entire episode on his vision quest, talking to his dreams. The whole thing feels contemplative, searching, like it’s waiting for an end that it can’t quite reach; that, given the show’s viewing figures, it might never reach. So, it’s a weird hour-and-a-bit of television, and it’s difficult to know what to make of it.
Nevertheless, here’s what went down.
Yellowstone season 4, episode 10 recap
We open with Beth, who gets a lot of focus here, preparing to dramatically leave the house after John said she disappointed him and should look at finding somewhere else to live. It’s symptomatic of a spoiled woman who is used to getting what she wants finally being told no, but it’s a good opportunity for Rip to be the voice of reason and remind her of the promise she made to him. If she leaves him there, maybe he won’t still be there when she gets back. So, Beth goes to John and does something she rarely ever does — she apologizes, and asks, all childlike, for his permission to stay. He grants it, obviously. He tells her he loves her. Thinking about it, she could have probably stood to hear that more throughout her life.
After that moment of vulnerability, Beth then reduces Carter to tears for calling her “Momma”. Remember when he had to earn her forgiveness? If only he could be consistently level-headed like she is. Anyway, she then goes to Walker — in full view of all the cowboys, including Rip — and asks him about prison conjugal visits and how one might go about sneaking in a weapon that doesn’t look like a weapon. He advises a hairpin. Rip immediately asks him what the conversation was about, and Walker spills that he thinks she’s intending to kill someone. Rip tries to talk her out of it, but she’s not having that. This is going to be her last act before a newer, kinder version of herself emerges, and she needs to do it alone.
The episode leaves Beth for a while, and so will we. There are other things happening anyway, some of them worthy of more than a single paragraph. Not Kayce, though. His wolf-oriented vision quest persists as he has various dreams and flashbacks to his time in the military. Eventually, he has to choose between two different paths, though we don’t get to see what is down either one. When he wakes up, Mo is there, and when he returns home, Monica asks him what he saw. “I saw the end of us,” he says, looking haunted. On a scale of one to ten, how seriously are we supposed to be taking this?
And Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy. I’ve complained all season about the pointlessness of his Texan sexual escapades, but I must concede that it finally made a nice sendoff for the character. He returns to the bunkhouse like a conquering king with Emily in tow, and introduces her as his fiance right in front of Mia! Mia socks Jimmy, then Emily socks Mia, and away we go until Jimmy carries Mia kicking and screaming outside to explain to her that he took her word at face value and moved on. But none of this is the good payoff. That starts when Jimmy takes John to see the horse he has brought with him and lays out his plan to stay and work off his debt while Emily waits for him in Texas. John, the old softy, writes off his debt, meaning Jimmy can leave the Yellowstone. And, after spending a day impressing the others with his roping and having fun in the bunkhouse, he does. Everyone comes out to say goodbye to him. His farewell to Lloyd almost put a lump in my throat, even. “I’m not much of a fighter,” says Jimmy, by way of explanation as to why he won’t be staying at the Yellowstone. “But I might make a cowboy yet.” Lloyd, with tears in his eyes, tells him, “Hell, Jimmy, you’re a cowboy already.”
It’s a nice moment.
But back to Beth. She’s in very hot water with Market Equities, and Caroline promises to, and I quote, “rape the ranch to death,” and there’s a good chance that Beth might even be looking at a prison sentence for corporate espionage. But she doesn’t let that trouble her too much. Instead, she gets all dressed up for a conjugal visit with Riggins, whom she absolutely brutalizes verbally as he lets slip about having already met with Jamie. Feeling inspired by what she has learned, Beth kidnaps a priest she sees outside his church, drives him to the Yellowstone at gunpoint, and then forces him to marry her and Rip right there in the yard. It’s hilarious and quietly touching, especially how Rip runs to the bunkhouse to retrieve Lloyd to be his best man, and how he presents his mother’s ring to her. If you squinted a little, Yellowstone could almost pass as a sitcom or at least a romcom in these moments. Alas, though, the happiness has to come to an end sooner rather than later.
You’ll recall, for instance, that Summer is facing a hefty prison sentence because of Beth. And despite John’s efforts to sway the judge, he throws the book at her, giving her the maximum possible sentence for every charge and cheerily informing her that, with good behavior, she might be eligible for parole in 14 years. John is naturally furious. He confronts Mitch, the judge, in his chambers after the verdict, and over whiskey, they discuss the state of the world, and what it might look like in 100 years. That’s where the title comes from: “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops”. In other words, we’ll be gone, and due a do-over. Still, John gets Mitch to reduce Summer’s sentence, his point having been proved.
When Beth goes to see Jamie, she pulls a gun on him and explains that she has now done everything she needed to before she dies. She’s prepared to kill him right there in his office and face the consequences, if necessary. Pulling up Riggins’ file on his computer, she pushes him to admit it was Garrett who hired him to hire the militia to kill the Duttons. Then she gives him three options. The first is that she tells John, John tells the police, Garrett gets arrested, and he inevitably says it was Jamie’s idea. The second is that she tells Rip, and Rip kills Garrett, then she tells Rip about Jamie forcing her to abort his child and be sterilized, and Rip kills Jamie with his bare hands. Predictably, Jamie begs to hear the third option.
The third option is for Jamie to kill Garrett himself. Which, after a speech in which his father warns him about the Duttons and tells him he loves him, he does. But it’s only at the last minute that this reveals itself to be perhaps the worst of all three options. When Jamie heads out in the dead of night to dispose of Garrett’s body, Beth takes a photo of him. She has him dead to rights. When she finally returns to John, he’s teary-eyed, believing her to have killed Jamie, who he confesses he loves despite having tried not to. “Do I still have him?” he asks Beth. “Yes. But now you own him, daddy.”
You can stream Yellowstone season 4, episode 10, “Grass on the Streets and Weeds on the Rooftops” exclusively on Paramount. If you have any thoughts on the Yellowstone Season 4 ending, let us know in the comments.
