Summary
Dutton Ranch is content to take its time and build suspense in “A Cowboy Saint”, but there’s definitely danger on the horizon for Rip and Beth, who are now firmly in bed with the enemy.
I’ve got to be honest, there isn’t a great deal going on in Episode 6 of Dutton Ranch. With the Season 1 status quo having been significantly shaken up by Rip and Beth going to work for Beulah at the 10 Petal ranch, it’s up to “A Cowboy Saint” to let that new dynamic percolate, which in truth doesn’t amount to very much. Undeniably, there’s danger on the near horizon thanks to the return of Rob-Will, and the feeling that Beth and Rip have climbed into bed with an enemy is unmistakable, but the show’s clearly not in a rush to get anywhere, perhaps because these Taylor Sheridan projects tend to take a pretty long-term view on the stories they’re telling.
That doesn’t do much for us in the meantime, though. When we finally got a glimpse of Azul’s home life at the top of the hour, meeting his pregnant wife, I did immediately worry for his safety, but that will, I assume, be a problem for later. With Rip taking Azul and Zack to work the 10 Petal, helping to brand their new herd of Angus cattle, all of the Dutton ranchers are in the firing line, but nothing comes of it just yet. Instead, Rip and his crew get into a petty roping competition with the 10 Petal ranchers, which naturally they win. A sizeable chunk of this episode consists of bunkhouse banter about who’s sister slept with who, so it’s relatively low stakes.
Things do take a turn, though. This is courtesy of Rob-Will, in a roundabout way, who is still lounging around with Chet and purchasing enough weaponry to take on a small army. But I think Rob-Will comes across as a more effectively calculating villain here. Sure, he seems like he’s liable to do something nuts at any moment, such as when he holds his weapons dealer at gunpoint for no reason at all, but he’s also clearly manipulating Chet, filling his head full of rhetoric and playing on his need for belonging in order to essentially arm and radicalise him. That’s a slightly more thoughtful strain of villainy, if you ask me. And it’s Chet, not Rob-Will, who pays the price for it.
In the most dramatic scene of Dutton Ranch Episode 6, Chet confronts Joaquin with a gun, clearly still upset about having been let go, and even shoots him in the hand. He’s quickly and messily put down by Miguel, and then Rip, whom Joaquin had invited up to the house for a drink, arrives to spirit Joaquin away to get his wound seen to. I didn’t expect Chet to shoot Joaquin, and I didn’t expect Chet to end up dead so soon, so the show must be doing something right.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Rip stops the car in the middle of nowhere and waves his hand close enough to his own gun to loosen Joaquin’s lips about why a dead body was dumped on his property. As it turns out, Wes was Chet and Rob-Will’s dealer, and he was killed on account of that whole situation getting out of hand. Everything we’ve seen thus far seems to support this explanation, casting the Jacksons — or at least Beulah and Joaquin — in a less hostile light, but I still think there’s something we’re missing. Either way, Rip buys it for now and takes Joaquin to Everett, who barely bats an eye at Joaquin having been shot, though it must be said that the fact he has spent the last few nights with Beulah doesn’t do much for his impartiality.
Speaking of Beulah, she and Beth spend the entire episode doing a deal with a restaurateur named Zane Nash and being all friendly with and admiring of one another, which doesn’t suit either of them, but as much as they may have in common, there’s definitely an air of ulterior motive underpinning their interactions, especially since Beulah later brings up Jamie and implies she might have some theories about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his disappearance. Again, there’s much more of a lurking threat here than we’re being allowed to see currently, and I’m interested to find out what shape it might take.
I’d be tempted to say the same about Oreana, too. She continues to hang around with Carter, and he continues to be deeply annoying, never going to school, constantly lying to Beth and Rip, and just generally being ungrateful about all the things they’ve done for him given the circumstances in which they met him. I really do believe that Carter has become rather unfortunate baggage for Rip and Beth, who’re the characters that people are really interested in. He reminds me of Tate in Marshals, who was often kept off-screen for several episodes at a time since that was easier than writing him into a plot. The fact that Oreana visibly bristles when Carter — rather pathetically, it has to be said — tells her he loves her suggests she doesn’t exactly have his best intentions at heart. If there’s going to be a price to be paid for the Duttons’ new relationship with the Jacksons, which I’m sure there is, then I’m fairly certain that Carter is going to be saddled with a hefty chunk of the bill. At least it’ll give him something to do.
