Overview
Follow the violent world of the Dutton family, who controls the largest contiguous ranch in the United States. Led by their patriarch John Dutton, the family defends their property against constant attack by land developers, an Indian reservation, and America’s first National Park.
Reviews
Legitimately bad writing. All the scenes seem to needlessly end in escalation, hostility or outright violence to the point it's exhausting. There are shows about gangs, drug dealers and hit men with fewer murders per season.
This ranch has an implausibly high body count, dozens if not hundreds of people have been murdered here and there's not been anyone looking into it? None of the lazily disposed of bodies get investigated? This one farmer is powerful enough to keep away state and federal police for decades?
For whatever reason everyone is perpetually wanting to fight. They'll just escalate the most trivial interactions into a fight. Guy asks you for money? Bash his face in. Someone wants to quit their job? Kill them. Even the most aggro person wouldn't escalate to fighting as often as these people do just out of laziness/exhaustion.
***
**Spoiler for S01E01:**
The characters are extremely shallow, always trotting out the same spiels and back story. They will all talk endlessly about how traumatised they are about the death of their mother decades earlier without a single mention of their other dead family member who died on the show and is seemingly never mentioned again.
***
Ultimately the whole show feels like a badly written soap opera, obscenely implausible scenarios occuring on a ranch with a body count in the hundreds. The characters become caricatures of themselves, dialogue and character development is shallow with the plot falling apart with even the slightest thought.
**Cheesy and bad writing**
“**Spoilers may be inside**”
The first episode starts with a socking scene, followed by good acting and beautiful views of Montana. Soon many characters are introduced and their complex dynamics start to shape in. So far so good.
By the episode 5-6 onwards the show starts to lose its grip. No consistency in behavior, illogical violence, unnecessary screaming/cursing, followed by some lazy cowboy scene, and this becomes monotonous. The writing is so poor, e.g. someone kills somebody, and the next morning he is enjoying some cowboy moments, as if nothing happened. No fear, no remorse, nothing.
The whole show becomes pretty repetitive and cheesy. I am surprised it got 8+.