Summary
The winter’s cruelties quickly become overwhelming in 1923 Season 2, Episode 2, with weather and wolves threatening the Duttons at every turn.
I know it say it all the time, but Taylor Sheridan’s fascination with animal-based peril is getting hilarious. Not that there’s a great deal of humour to be found in an episode titled “The Rapist is Winter”, to be fair. But that’s neither here nor there. In Season 2, 1923 has morphed into a kind of ominous survivalist drama where Helen Mirren stalks the wintry landscape with a double-barrelled shotgun and extinguishes four-legged life while her husband freezes to death.
Things aren’t going well for the Duttons in Episode 2, then, though to be fair things aren’t going especially well for anyone. The Montana winter is famously brutal, and Elsa’s narration bookends the episode to remind us of that. Spencer seemed a long way away already, but the land war seems to be the least pressing problem for the Duttons right now.
The Terror of Donald Whitfield
Whitfield has nothing much to do with the Duttons in 1923 Episode 2, and he seems on the cusp of losing his most useful ally, but he’s worth bringing up anyway because he’s a deeply sinister villain who represents a thought process that will poison Montana’s valleys all the way up until Yellowstone.
While he’s riding along with Banner, subtly emasculating him about having lost a fortune having to put down most of his flock, Whitfield spots some Norwegian men skiing down a nearby mountainside. He’s curiously fascinated by the pastime, which Banner considers too frivolous to even be acknowledged. Whitfield sees dollar signs in the eyes of those who want to chase the “euphoria of peril”; he can sell the experience for a fortune.
This, more than the obvious sadism he has seen him display, is what really puts Banner off Whitfield. When he later meets Clyde at a speakeasy, he mentions that Whitfield is the only man he has ever met who sincerely terrifies him. It’s the difference – the fact he sees what men of Banner’s ilk would never notice and can highlight the greed at its core. He’s like a mirror of human nature’s deepest, most base urges.
Caught in a Storm
It never occurred to me until this episode that 1923 is set during Prohibition. This comes up a couple of times on opposite sides of the country, but we first hear it mentioned in Bozeman, where Jacob and Sheriff McDowell use Judge Roy Garrett’s liquor contact to strongarm him into releasing Zane and his family to Jacob’s care – without having to rat out the priest who married him and his wife in the first place, which is what the judge originally asked for.
This is good news, but it’s tempered by bad news on all fronts. Zane can’t stand for more than a few seconds without vomiting his lungs up and hasn’t been seen by a doctor, let alone diagnosed with anything, so transporting him would be an issue at the best of times. However, there’s a brutal storm coming in, and Jacob doesn’t want to stay in Bozeman any longer than he needs to.
The decision to proceed back to the ranch backfires considerably and everyone gets caught in the storm. With no other options, they set the horses loose in the hope they find their way home before they freeze to death and then upend the wagon so they can all huddle inside it. It’s a miserable predicament and that’s where we leave them, with Cara left to defend the ranch against its latest intruders.
Season of the Wolf
The latest intruder is a particularly angry wolf. It’s Elizabeth who discovers it first; she goes to collect eggs from the coop and discovers it has eaten all the chickens, and then it takes a chunk out of her when she tries to flee. Given its uncharacteristic brazenness, Cara worries it might have been rabid, so summons the doctor to address Elizabeth’s wound.
The doctor arrives and errs on the side of caution, which involves sticking a vaccine needle into Elizabeth’s stomach, which she’s disinclined to do given the lingering trauma of her Season 1 miscarriage. Nevertheless, she’s held down and given the vaccine by force, after which she retreats into her room and sobs at the cruelty of the winter, which she thinks they’re bitterly surviving as opposed to living through. And she isn’t willing to stick around until the spring for things to get better.
That night, Cara is awoken by the sounds of a disturbance, and she heads downstairs to find the living room blanketed by snow. The door is open, and the wolf from earlier has snuck into the house and eaten the nurse who had accompanied the doctor to the ranch and was staying the night on the couch on account of the storm. At the end of 1923 Episode 2, it lunges at Cara, and she pulls the trigger of her shotgun yet again.
Helen Mirren in 1923 Season 2 | Image via Paramount+
La Cosa Nostra
Elsewhere, Spencer arrives in Galveston to an incredibly warm welcome from Luca’s uncle, Sal, who is grateful for what he did for Luca and wants to give him the luxury tour of Italian delicacies, including pizza and pasta. Spencer’s a fan of the cuisine but doesn’t have time to hang around, which he communicates pretty poorly by smacking Sal’s right-hand man around the face when he doesn’t let him leave.
Since the Sicilian mafia aren’t exactly keen on disrespect, this lands Spencer in hot water with Sal. After Spencer finally explains his urgency to get back to Montana – which he should have just done in the first place – Sal is sympathetic but senses an opportunity to get some use out of Spencer. So, he sends Spencer and Luca to transport some whiskey, which I’m sure will go totally smoothly with no hiccups whatsoever.
It wouldn’t make Spencer feel any better to know this, but it doesn’t seem like Alex is going to beat him to Montana. We only see her briefly in 1923 Episode 2, but she’s being tossed around in a horrendous storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a rougher passage than she’s used to, that’s for sure.
Marshal Kent Continues to be the Worst
Marshal Kent, Thomas, and Father Renaud remain on the hunt for Teonna through Oklahoma, stopping off in the local Marshal’s office – run by Jennifer Carpenter as the no-nonsense local law(wo)man who reminds the white guys they’re treading on thin ice with the Natives – to get some wanted posters drawn up. They have no idea that Teonna, Pete, and Runs His Horse are comfortably chilling on a Texas ranch, so they’re carrying out their search the hard way.
The hard way for these guys mostly involves sitting around having racist conversations, even if Renaud is a bit more open-minded than the other two. But their bigotry is interrupted by the whistling of arrows, one of which pins Thomas to the floor. Suddenly the Natives are upon them, but Kent and Renaud are able to wait in ambush and shoot their attackers as they charge.
Renaud is slightly dismayed to discover that they’ve just killed several children, but Kent couldn’t care less, coldly executing a survivor. Hopefully, these two stay as far away from Teonna as possible.
