On Watching Yellowstone

I'm late to the game, of course, but when I subscribed to the streaming service to watch the Tour de France, I also gained access to Yellowstone streaming.  So I watched.

Most things have been said: it's a beautifully filmed show with good acting, good writing, and a very western soap opera take on the world.  It's also super violent.

I vaguely remember hearing at some point that there were more people "killed" in Hollywood westerns than lived in the "old west."  I don't know if that's right.  But a lot of characters were killed in Hollywood westerns, for sure.

Or, to make another comparison, I've read that, according to Wikipedia, " if Cabot Cove existed in real life, it would top the FBI's national crime statistics in numerous categories, with some analysis suggesting that the homicide rate in Cabot Cove exceeds even that of the real-life murder capital of the world.^{[13]"   (Source)}

^{According to Wikipedia's page on firearm deaths (source), in 2018, there were 209 firearm deaths in Montana, and 27 of those were murders.  The others?  either suicides, or deaths that weren't considered murders (police shootings, justified shootings?).}

^{According to the CDC, in 2018, there were 265 suicides in Montana.} 

^{I'm suggesting that Yellowstone probably makes some people believe there's a lot more gun violence and murders in Montana than there really is.}

^{The show really normalizes violence, with the bunkhouse men regularly killing other workers by taking them to the "train station," a remote gully off the side of some road, where they shoot the individual men and then push the bodies and gear into the ravine, with John Dutton's character explaining at one point that the area is basically extra-judicial because it's in a county with no human population and no one will ever find the bodies.}

^{Some important real estate mogul is killed, and the murder seems to go unnoticed by the world.}

^{That doesn't generally happen, of course.  Moguls who die get noticed.}

^{The show does make a quick nod toward the real violence towards Native American women (see Wikipedia page on the REDress Project), violence that gets a lot less attention than murdered real estate moguls.  But that nod passes pretty quickly, and we're back to white men (mostly) shooting each other up.}

^{It frustrates me when violence on TV is so normalized, and police are shown as always right, etc, but the violence of Yellowstone is even worse, somehow, because it makes it seem like of course, everyone who gets pissed off at someone just hauls off and punches them, or shoots them.}  

^{(Don't get me started on the laughable fisticuffs: I gather most real life fistfights end fast with broken hand bones or a broken jaw.)}  

^{Added later:  The most creative death is Rip's murder of a neighboring angler (who is trying to get hold of some of the Duttons' land, as is just about everyone in the show).  The angler is fly fishing, and Rip walks up to him holding a mid-sized cooler with a handle on top (a sort of extra big lunch box cooler), asking the angler if it's his, and when he gets close, Rip quickly opens it, and throws a rattlesnake at the guy's face.  It bites him, and the guy staggers out of the water, finally falling on his back.  Rip steps his boot on his chest, says something about dying soon, and the snake glides off.}

^{But even here:  humans don't tend to lead with our faces.  We're more likely to get snake bites on feet/lower leg or hands.  So any coroner worth their salt would be suspicious.  Plus, you can't step on someone's chest out in the country, having gotten your feet wet in a little river, without leaving a footprint of dirt/mud etc.  And pretty much anyone seeing a footprint on a dead person's chest would think that it's not there by accident.  (Maybe it's supposed to take a couple of days to find the body and rain would wash it off?)}