Summary
Carter continues to overshadow Dutton Ranch to a detrimental degree, with the main plot shunted into the margins of his tedious coming-of-age story.
I get that it’s a little too easy to complain about Carter every week, but I just can’t help it. Dutton Ranch continues to orbit inexplicably around the black hole gravity of his sheer idiocy, and even here in Episode 8, which I finally thought might provide some genuine comeuppance after his nonsense almost killed Beulah through stress, but I get the distinct impression we’re supposed to feel sorry for him. And, frankly, I’m not having it. Fans have been complaining about him throughout Season 1, and I’ve actively petitioned for killing him off. He’s really beginning to dominate a story in which he should only be playing a peripheral role.
Beulah is quickly revealed to be fine here, or at least alive, so Carter’s potential punishment becomes less pressing. As Beth and Oreanna watch her being lifted away in an air ambulance, Rip leads Carter home on horseback and sternly tells him to get back in the saddle when he falls off, and again when he throws up everywhere (including on the horse itself!). The next morning, Beth gives him some ibuprofen and a sensitive chat on the porch, during which he finally admits that he hasn’t been going to school and confesses that his dream is to cowboy like Rip. And just like that, he has a job.
Consequently, a distressingly large chunk of “Whiskey Limits” — so-called because Carter has apparently found his — involves Carter continually making a fool of himself and sulking about it. He’s relentlessly made fun of for his hangover. He forgets to lock a gate. When a cow escapes as a result of that, he falls off his horse while trying to rope it and storms off in a huff. When he gets home he’s really aggressive and petulant to Rip, who I’ve seen kill people for less, and then Beth still sucks up to him. He eventually declares that he needs some space, and goes to drown his sorrows at Dwight’s place.
Oddly, Sheriff Wade arrives there, and it’s unclear whether Carter summoned him or he just happened to be there (given we saw Wade in a completely different location only a few scenes prior, I expect the former). For some reason, Carter asks him for a job, which comes so completely out of left field that I didn’t quite know what to make of it when it happened. The kid’s useless! And Wade quite obviously hates him! Nothing about this makes any sense at all to me. I still insist that it’d be way easier to kill him off entirely.
Speaking of which, Dutton Ranch Episode 8 also backs out of killing Beulah, though I think that’s more defensible. She did have a heart attack, to be fair, which is pretty serious, but after surgery she’s immediately well enough to host a string of visitors with seemingly no ill effects at all. Rob-Will and Joaquin are there, and are the first people she wants to talk to, since she’s trying to justify the decision to install Rob-Will as heir by essentially claiming that it’ll be Beth and Rip running the place anyway. Next up is Beth herself, who arrives with some flowers and some justifiable reservations about working with Rob-Will, and then Everett, who decides that now is the best time to tell Beulah that he has decided to take his “final ride” with her, having been given a realisation by her near-death experience that he’s too old to let love pass him by.
It’s cute that Beulah is visibly excited by this, and funny that she uses it as an excuse to force Everett into helping her discharge herself and leave the hospital, but it isn’t exactly high stakes. The previous episode really felt like it had stepped the drama up a notch, but the only meaningful plot progression comes in a small handful of scenes wedged between all the melodrama and romantic comedy.
For what it’s worth, the big development comes via Austin, who is still so disillusioned by the 10-Petal that he almost shoots Miguel during the working day. He eventually approaches Zach at a bar and asks whether he can trust him and Rip — “With your life,” replies Zach, to whom Rip is virtually a stranger — and then decides to spill all the beans. Apparently, the 10-Petal has an illegal operation in Mexico for stealing and smuggling cattle, which is how they have managed to remain afloat despite the place being so badly run. Wes got too close to the truth, and that’s apparently why he was killed. The pieces certainly fit.
Joaquin, having been pushed aside in favour of Rob-Will, also tries to bring Wes’s murder back to the forefront by giving Sheriff Wade the murder weapon. Without a body, though, it isn’t much good, and to be fair, Wade doesn’t seem to be especially interested anyway. At a loss, a stressed-out Joaquin screams into the night and places a call to his father, asking for some help. But what kind of help might he provide?
