Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 4 review: Horses in Heaven

Last week on Yellowstone season 5 episode 3, we finished with Beth’s big work celebration and Lloyd’s fun birthday evening gone a miss when the group gets into a bar fight in Bozeman. In this hour of television, Sheridan skips past any flashbacks and gets right to the point of where the characters left off.

In season 5 episode 4, Beth doesn’t spend too long in the big house, and as serious as Jamie is, you know he had to be enjoying her incarceration just a little. However, he did what he had to do for the family.

And as the Duttons’ do, they bail Beth out once again. Beth thinks it can be easily swept under the rug.

She has no remorse for her actions. Even if the girl may have had it coming, unlike John, she doesn’t always put the family first.

She is fueled off emotion and has no sense of rationality at times. Luckily for her, the woman from California that she beat into next week for flirting with her husband decides not to press charges.

Not that she doesn’t want to, but because Jamie is a damn good lawyer and didn’t leave her with many options but to go home. You can’t claim self-defense in a bar fight and Jamie knew his sister had a loophole, informing her she could be prosecuting herself.

She was the one who instigated it all but threatening to sleep with Beth’s husband and make her watch. A threatening offense by law when you make someone feel endangered.

The charges ended up getting downgraded to disorderly conduct for Beth, who is still not very grateful knowing she had to pick up trash for community service. Assuming she would get out of all this scot-free and fully unscathed.

Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 4 Recap: Back on Duty for Governor Dutton

John is finally off the ranch and back on duty. A policy meeting was held without his presence or input.

He’s not impressed with anybody in the room or why none of them have formally tried to meet him yet. Men like John Dutton believe in the character of a man not what they can do in a board room.

In John fashion, he decides to fire the entire room and advise himself on policy. Which is not only less of a headache for him as he’s saving taxpayers millions and handling a job that so many educated people were not fulfilling.

Just when he was on a high, in comes the Fish and Wildlife officials to put a damper on the day. They show him a map of where the wolves went, along with how they remained on his ranch for three days before their collars only traveled 30 miles down the Yellowstone River.

They believe his men killed the wolves. But they do not think it was on purpose.

One officer tells John that his men probably didn’t see the collars and once they did tried to cover their tracks. Even the officials understand.

The problem is the collars are monitored by an NGO company who will draw the same conclusion and will come after John and his ranch with everything. Environmental groups are never an easy hurdle.

Once Beth is released she needs a ride home of course. Jamie is reluctant to give her one and tries to give her an excuse.

We soon see why. He has a car seat in the back, a secret he did not want Beth knowing about.

After all he was the man responsible for the reason she can’t have children. Her finding out he had one, would be detrimental.

She immediately starts beating Jamie as he was driving. She’s still got more fight in her.

Back in season 2 Beth said to Jamie, “One day you will love someone and I can’t wait to take it away from you. Even if I have to kill it with my bare hands.” Jamie tries to plead with her, telling her that the drive to the clinic was the biggest regret of his life.

Now she tells him she’s going to take his son from him. She’s going to rob him of fatherhood, he deserves better.

There is a scene where Jamie shows his true colors. After the fight, he leaves Beth on the road to walk home.

Knowing he has to get to his son quickly he shows the audience that he is capable of running her over. I personally felt like he wanted to.

Due to Beth’s troubles John enquirers about how pardoning works as a governor. Lynelle informs him pardoning his daughter wouldn’t be a great look.

It’s better to see how that plays out in the long run. However, him pardoning Summer would go a long way in making this mess with the wolves go away.

When Lynelle tells John to hire himself an environmental advisor, you can already tell his first thoughts go to his old flame and environmental activist Summer Higgins.

Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 4 Recap: Saying goodbye is never easy

Kayce and Monica are on their way to the ranch to bury their son. Rip meets with Mo and offers to help dig with them.

They bury John’s horse beside where the baby will be. It is their Native American belief that to get to the other side a horse’s spirit needs to cross with him.

So, it comes full circle in that moment. As the ceremony for little John began you can see Monica’s people doesn’t like mixed company with the Dutton family, so they hang back.

John and Beth watch the ceremony from afar. Kayce never informed them of it, but they come upon it.

Beth believes it’s as far as they want them to be. I do have to say it’s refreshing to see Kayce understand and respect his wife’s culture.

He keeps that separate from his own family out of respect for each. One of the best moments in “Horses in Heaven”, was when John says even if they don’t want us, they need to know we care enough to stay.

We see the softer side of John and the importance of family when they are in pain. John and Monica share a nice moment about the loss of a son.

He knows how she feels after losing his own and what it’s like to blame himself, which he senses from her. He tells a story that he’s never told many people about having a brother his mother lost after birth.

A child named Peter that was born too early. John’s father said some beautiful words later to his mother.

Peter lived a perfect life. All he saw of this planet was you and all he knew you loved him.

John telling her that her child knew the same thing, that he too lived a perfect life. To us it was brief, but to your child it was perfect.

Monica and John have never been what you’d call close, but she was grateful for that moment and the peace that John gave her with that story.

It was never told to anyone on the ranch why a horse was buried next to little John. Rip figures so the boy can have something to ride in heaven.

The best line of the show was what John said next. “Horses in Heaven…wouldn’t that be something.”

Because to a man like John that would be paradise.

Yellowstone Season 5 Episode 4 Recap: A new lease at life

John offers Summer a job as her get out of jail free card, if you will. It is a supervised work program for 6 months.

It’s not entirely free she has to live at the ranch with Beth and the gang as part of the deal. John claims it will be strictly business but how long will that last?

Jamie and Sarah end up at the bar after a short-lived dinner and soon find themselves in the bathroom going at it. In comes Beth with the worlds perfect timing, spots them going in.

Soon she snaps a picture of Sarah’s information from her purse. The once hunted becomes the hunter.

Will Caroline Warner’s secret weapon soon become Beth’s next victim? We also learn that Sarah Atwood is not her real name.

What other secrets could she be hiding? Beth is sure to find out.

In another predictable turn of events, it looks as if John and Summer are already shacking up. Beth spots her running in the kitchen with no pants on getting a snack.

A snarky moment is shared between them but right now Beth has too many big pieces of meat on her plate. Summer is a problem for another day.

The MVP of this episode is Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly). She took being in jail with more poise than most women would.

The sheer emotion that exuded from Reilly when she found out her very undeserving brother had a baby was phenomenal. The very man who took away her rights to be a mother.

The Beth of the past would have easily focused on the revenge for her brother, stopping at no lengths. But we see her continue on in the episode to be there for her brother, even if it is from a distance.

She loves her family in more ways than she’s able to show. ”Horses in Heaven” is a very family-oriented episode that depicts the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Miles better than last weeks episode, “Tall Drink of Water.” I have faith Sheridan will continue this momentum to make every episode better than the last, as he always does throughout the season.

Don’t miss season 5 episode 5 of Yellowstone “Watch‘em Ride Away” when the series returns to Paramount Network on December 4.

What are your thoughts about Yellowstone season 5 episode 4? Share them in the comments below!