Summary
The winter continues to be miserable for everyone in 1923 Season 2, but Episode 4 at least promises an explosive back half.
It probably says a lot about how harsh the Montana winter of 1923 is that a man having his skull drilled into constitutes a real bright spot. But here we are. Episode 4, “Journey the Rivers of Iron”, skips across all the ongoing subplots with a real sense of confidence, setting up the narrative dominoes to be knocked down later in the show’s presumably explosive back half. I highly doubt Spencer is going to make it home in time to get involved in Whitfield’s plans to turn the Yellowstone into a ski resort, which we know thanks to Yellowstone he isn’t successful in doing, but sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination.
And the journey is proving a long, fraught one for everyone, with some particularly bleak developments in multiple areas. In an interesting counterpoint to 1883, which I think we can all probably agree was the better show, 1923 is clearly designed to be a long-haul story, told gradually across multiple seasons. But all roads are converging, and you can see that here in Episode 4 more than you have been able to until now.
Zane’s Surgery
A standout moment of “Journey the Rivers of Iron” is Zane’s brain surgery. In case you need a refresher after the previous episode, he has a subdural hematoma and the built-up pressure is going to kill him unless the blood can be drained from his skull. The doctor has the right equipment, more or less, but no anesthetic, which means with the aid of a neck brace fashioned by Jacob and Jack and some distressingly convincing prosthetics, Zane has to have his skull manually drilled into while he’s conscious.
A bit of chloroform doesn’t really do the trick. As soon as the skull is opened up Zane wakes up in a screaming fit, and Jacob and Jack – who can barely keep hold of his stomach’s contents – have to hold him down. Elizabeth can hear the screaming and starts crying in her room, determined to make even this development entirely about her.
But the surgery is a success. Zane’s in pain, but he can walk again. And the first thing on his mind is whether they’re going to go out and get their revenge, which Jacob assures him they are.
Whitfield’s Evil Ski Resort
As if we didn’t have enough of a reason to hate Donald Whitfield already, 1923 Season 2, Episode 4 offers us a few more. For one thing, he plans to build a ski resort on Dutton land and needs Banner to kill the entire family so that can happen, which is pretty traditionally villainous behavior on its own. But his sadism is also running away with him, and his right-hand woman is potentially a murderous nutcase too, or at least that’s the implication when one of their unwilling sex slaves ends up strangled to death.
Within this, Banner is still grappling with the moral implications of doing Whitfield’s bidding. His wife is so sick of making dinner that she’s happy for him to personally murder whoever he needs to in order to better their circumstances, but being casually instructed to dump the naked dead body of a young woman is bound to challenge his convictions. I still strongly believe that Banner will end up on the right side of all this eventually. Hopefully, it’ll be sooner rather than later.
Interestingly, Whitfield instructs Banner to dump the girl – and, it’s implied, the entire Dutton clan – in an isolated county on the Montana/Wyoming border with no population or local sheriff. Yellowstone fans will immediately recognize this area as the train station, where the next generation of Duttons dump their murdered enemies, never to be seen again. Nice bit of continuity.
Aminah Nieves in 1923 Season 2 | Image via Paramount+
Some Brief Asides…
“Journey the Rivers of Iron” doesn’t devote too much time to Alexandra and Teonna, but we do check in with both, so allow me to just make a note of where they’re currently at.
After being followed into a bathroom at Grand Central Station, Alex is viciously beaten and robbed but still manages to make her train after a determined sprint that demolishes both of her shoes. She’s sharing a cabin with a lower-class family who thought they had the place to themselves, but to be fair they seem okay compared to some of the people that Alex has met thus far. She’s determined to get where she’s going either way, but hopefully, she has endured enough indignities for now.
For Teonna, things are probably going to get worse. She has had a fairly relaxed couple of episodes chilling out with Runs His Horse and Pete Plenty Clouds in Texas, especially now they have been welcomed into the gang by C. Thomas Howell’s rancher, Anders. However, the “Wanted” posters depicting a recognizable likeness of her are starting to spread everywhere, including the rodeo where she ends up, which means that Father Renaud and Marshal Kent can’t be far behind. Her only hope might be the sympathies of Marshal Mamie Fossett, but that’s assuming she can find her first.
Oh, and Elizabeth is pregnant again, which explains why she was experiencing so much pain from the rabies shots. But I’m so unbelievably sick of Elizabeth at this point that it’s difficult to care. Still, given she and Alex are both pregnant and there don’t seem to be enough Dutton relatives to go around, part of me thinks that one of them might be due a tragedy in the near future, which is worthy of some thought.
Spencer Can’t Catch A Break
I didn’t mention Spencer in my recap of the previous episode as he only showed up briefly in a scene where he abandoned his bootlegging mission and left Luca to get shot to death by the cops. But things go from bad to worse for him in 1923 Season 2, Episode 4, so it’s worth mentioning.
First, he’s picked up by the cops and blackmailed into driving the booze to Fort Worth, which the cops are using as an excuse to raid the drop-off point. It’s clear that Spencer getting caught in the crossfire would probably be desirable, so he legs it, managing to escape onto a passing train.
But it’s very much an out-of-the-frying pan and into-the-fire scenario. When he clambers into the train carriage, he discovers he’s sharing it with three dodgy-looking goons who demand a tax for his passage (one of them literally calls himself “The Tax Collector”). Since Spencer can’t pay it, he instead sits with his shotgun on his lap and tries not to fall asleep.
It’s such a good, tense idea that part of me wishes this all went on longer, but it doesn’t. Spencer eventually succumbs to the lull of the train and the Tax Collector makes his move, but Spencer is able to kill his three attackers. Since he can’t exactly be sat there when the train pulls into the station with three corpses inside, he jumps off, now stranded once again, Montana seeming impossibly far away.
