Summary
Yellowstone’s mid-season finale sets up some big drama to follow, but we’ll have to wait until the summer to see it.
Well, folks, “A Knife and No Coin” is the last episode of Yellowstone until the summer – don’t worry, you’ve got 1923 to enjoy in the meantime – so it needed to be a good one. And it was! Tame, maybe, especially in comparison to earlier seasons, since Kayce hasn’t even killed anyone yet, but along with all the politicking we’re moving half of the cast to Texas and planning not one but two assassinations. So, you know, business as usual.
Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 8 Recap
These episodes continue to be framed by flashbacks to Young Rip (Kyle Red Silverstein) and Young John (Josh Lucas), which in my extensive TV-watching experience suggests that Not-Young Rip probably won’t survive the season. But this opener also provides some backstory on what will become a key plot element in the present-day storyline – the Duttons’ jurisdiction-free murder pit, codenamed “the train station”, where everyone who tries to steal the land or mildly annoys one of the cowboys ends up in one way or another. The cowboy Young Rip killed in Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 7 for badmouthing Beth is the first victim to end up resting there. As we’ve seen across multiple seasons, many more will join him.
One of those victims, you’ll recall, is Jamie’s father, and his disposal of the body was filmed by Beth to later be used as leverage. Jamie, it turns out, waited all this time to reveal that the trump card can’t be played. He chose the spot deliberately. If Beth outs him, she’ll also be digging up all the skeletons that her father has put there. It’s a nice way to tie the main narrative into the flashbacks, but it also asks us to accept that Beth somehow never knew that the ranchers were dropping bodies into that canyon, which given what we know about Beth is a little hard to believe.
But more on this a little later. In the meantime, Jimmy is back. He’s still working at the 6666 Ranch, living with Emily, and enjoying what seems to be a surprisingly healthy relationship by Yellowstone standards. One assumes that this is a way to rope the two of them back into the show since half the bunkhouse is heading to Texas anyway. I didn’t love this subplot the first time around so hopefully, we can find more value in Jimmy’s Real Ranchers of Texas love life on a second attempt.
John is forced to do some governing in “A Knife and No Coin”. He heads to the reservation to announce that he’ll be preventing the pipeline from being built under the drinking water reservoir in support of Rainwater, but at the same time, Jamie gives a speech to the legislative body pushing for John’s impeachment on the extremely shaky grounds of lost tourism revenue. The cross-cutting is great here, and very deliberate because John is – for once – unequivocally on the side of anti-capitalist good while Jamie just seems petty, self-serving, and vindictive. Yellowstone might have a muddy sense of morality, but it has never been subtle about who we’re supposed to be rooting for.
The ending
Beth finds out about the impeachment attempt through Summer, who she suddenly doesn’t seem to like anymore, and immediately goes to Jamie’s house to hit him over the head with a rock and force him into resigning. This is where he drops that bombshell about her kompromat being useless, and Beth doesn’t take that especially well either. After throwing a few barbs in Sarah’s direction, she immediately goes to see John and suggests, not particularly subtly, that if there’s a secret Dutton death pit, now is the time to put Jamie in it.
However, Jamie is thinking along similar lines. He knows what Beth’s next move will be. So, he asks Sarah, again not especially subtly, if she knows anyone who can help him be offensive, rather than defensive. So, both Dutton siblings are plotting to have each other killed. That should be fun!
