1923 Season 2, Episode 2 Recap
This is the most excited I’ve felt about a ‘Yellowstone’ series since season 5’s midseason premiere.
While covering American Primeval on Netflix last month, I joked that Utah circa 1857 was the worst time and place to live in American history. In season 2, episode 2 of 1923, TaylorSheridan argues that the winter of 1923 in Montana is solid competition. This week, not a single soul in the entire state has a good time (outside of a few Norwegian skiers). Plus, Cara Dutton (Helen Mirren) can only remark on how beautiful the mountains are in the spring to convince us that such a harsh winter is worth the struggle.
In episode 2, the Dutton family ranch reminds me of the arctic geese who lay their eggs on the edge of a cliff and then hope their babies learn to fly before they’re forced to fall to their deaths. Sometimes, there are just places you shouldn’t live!
Despite news of an approaching blizzard, Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) must head into Boseman to speak with the local judge. His main ranch foreman, Zane Davis (Brian Geraghty), was arrested last season for miscegenation. In case you were wondering: It’s a racist law that sought to stop people from marrying outside of their race. Jacob views the arrest as another attack from the villainous Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton). The wealthy business tycoon seeks to pick off Dutton’s supporters one by one.
So, Jacob and the local sheriff blackmail the judge into releasing Zane, his wife, and their children. The judge is not only married to a Native American woman himself, but he’s drinking liquor when they walk in during a time of Prohibition. The law is hypocrisy in Taylor Sheridan’s works, no matter what it stands for. Generally, people are going to figure out how to do whatever they want no matter what anyone tells them. That’s why those arctic geese would rather nest in peace and figure it out later—and why Cara needs to be a beast with a shotgun just to protect their home.
Welcome to America, Spencer
To bolster their defenses, Jacob and Cara wait as Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar) fights nature itself to make it to America in one piece. He finally docks in Galveston, Texas, where the Italians seem to have a lock on the bootlegging business. He saved a small Italian man named Luca (Andy Dispensa) from a rapist last week, and now that sea-sworn companion is looking to repay his debt.
Luca introduces Spencer to Signore Maceo, the head of the Galveston mafia syndicate. Surprisingly, Sheridan is writing revisionist history here. Salvatore Maceo and his brother, Rosario, were real bootleggers in the late 1920s. After their deaths, the Fertitta family took up the mantle and moved their operations to Las Vegas, Nevada. That’s where they helped establish the Tropicana, the Stardust, the Sahara, and Palace Station. This is a little too much Italian mafia history for one episode recap, but Frank Rosenthal takes over the operation next—which serves as the basis for Martin Scorsese’s Casino starring Robert De Niro.
Anyway! These guys are Italian, so Spencer tries pizza for the first time in his life. It’s damn good, of course. Maceo also sets Spencer up at a hotel where he can finally send a telegram back home for the first time since landing in America.
You’d think it’s off to Montana after this nice bit of hospitality for saving Luca, but Maceo won’t let Spencer leave town for some reason. He sends some muscle to threaten Spencer to stay for dinner. When Spencer knocks the guy old cold, Maceo orders even more enforcers to intercept the Dutton hero at the train station and beat him to a pulp. If only Galveston had Uber in 1923—Spencer would have made that train and gotten the hell out of Texas by now.
When Spencer wakes up back at Maceo’s, the mafia leader says that Spencer insulted him by not staying for dinner. “I never asked for it, and I don’t want it,” Spencer remarks while he’s tied up. “I am needed in Montana. My family is in danger. My wife is lost to me. I don’t have time for hospitality.”
So, Maceo offers to help Spencer return home by gifting him and Luca a truck. However, he’s only allowed to drive it back home if he helps Luca distribute their illegal booze on the way. Allowing Spencer to just board the train would have been the easiest and safest way to repay him for saving Luca, but sure! Let’s threaten the man we’re thanking and force him to do our dirty business. “Yeah, I’ve got time for that,” Spencer jokes.
Meanwhile, Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer) is on the sea voyage from hell. As she reads a love letter for Spencer and their future family via voiceover, people are flying off their bunks and sliding around the cabin like it’s a bounce house.
A Priest and a U.S. Marshall Walk into a Bar
Father Renaud’s search for Teonna leads him and Marshal Kent all the way from Montana to Anadarko, Oklahoma. Seems like an awful lot of trouble they’re involved in just to find one sixteen-year-old girl. You’d think some crimes just aren’t worth crossing state lines for when there’s only person per town who is in charge.
In Anadarko, the presence of a female Marshal makes Kent’s head spin around like hes a Looney Tunes character. She’s just as surprised that Teonna Rainwater is worth all this effort as I am, but she offers to put posters up around town and leaves Kent with a warning. “Comanche only respect that badge if it respects them back,” she tells him. “Many a marshal’s found their way into a pine box learning that lesson.”
Whitfield’s Villainy Knows No Bounds
Back in Montana, Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton) is slowly becoming the greatest ideological enemy to the Dutton way of life in Yellowstone history. Though many of the family’s foes have attempted to rip the rug out from the under them and turn their family’s ranch into luxury ski resorts or airports, Whitfield chips away at the Dutton philosophy with every new episode.
At John Dutton’s funeral in Yellowstone season 5, the priest’s eulogy focused on how America has turned its back on the ranchers and farmers that produce our food. In this week’s 1923 episode, Whitfield states, “Livestock isn’t a business, it’s the toil of peasants.”
Later, Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn) tells one of his buddies that Whitfield scares him. Everyone says that he’s a man with a vision—that he can look at a mountain and see the gold within it, or a bunch of skiers wasting the day away and think of the earning potential—but Banner understands Whitfield’s darker side. If he has any vision at all, it’s greed vision. “He sees through us,” Banner explains. “Sees the greed in our hearts.”
Cara, Get Your Gun
At the Dutton ranch, A rabid wolf attacks Elizabeth (Michelle Randolph). One of the Dutton ranch hands fires a pistol in the air to scare the animal off, but the wolf waits at the border while Randolph cleans the bites on her leg. Later, she’s hesitant to take a rabies shot from the doctor because of the giant needle involved. So, the nurses hold her down, kicking and screaming, while the doctor administers the vaccine. This scene was painful to watch. There’s a certain amount of duress I can take on TV, but so many shows nowadays seem hellbent on testting that threshold. “This is too much,” Elizabeth tells Cara as she sobs, curled up on her bed. “I love him, but this isn’t living. This is surviving.” She swears that this is her last night living on the ranch. It’s tough not to agree with her. Everyone must learn what they can handle sometime. Me? I can’t handle needles on TV.
That same night, Jacob, Jack, Zane, and the rancher’s family are all caught in the blizzard during their return trip home. It’s another night that wild animals are coming to attack Cara in her home, following last week’s duel with a mountain lion. The Dutton family matriarch is woken up by a crash. She finds that the wolf has broken into the house and killed Elizabeth’s nurse. Off-screen, Cara fires her shotgun and screams. Then… credits.
Sheridan is certainly setting the stage here. I feel like the former Bachelor host Chris Harrison when I say this might just be the most dramatic season yet, but it’s certainly the most excited I’ve felt for a Yellowstone series since season 5’s midseason premiere. So long as we don’t find anyone dead in their bathroom next week, we’re off to a fantastic start.
