Why Taylor Sheridan’s supersized ambition is a healthy reason for the derailment of ‘Yellowstone’

Kevin Costner didn’t help, but it’s not all his fault why this delay has carried on.

If I were the producers behind Yellowstone, the most popular show on television even without being on the air in over a year, there would be a moment of rumination before getting too mad about the delay in shooting the back half of Season 5.

On one hand, the show hasn’t seen actors on a set in quite a long time and gathers more bad press by the week, but the show is playing out its entire 4.5 season existence right now on CBS. The Paramount brass has strengthened its grasp on the attention span of home entertainment seekers. Millions of ordinary TV package consumers are finally getting to see what all the hoopla is about.

It’s the same as Netflix giving life to Suits, a USA network show that had been off the air for years. Then again, it would be impressive if the just announced Suits spinoff saw a set before the final episodes of Yellowstone even start to film. That’s how bad it’s getting.

It started with the tension that developed between Kevin Costner, the star of the show, and Taylor Sheridan, the creator and showrunner of the series. Costner, sensing the repetitive nature of the Season 5 scripts, wanted to focus on shooting his epic two-part western for Amazon called Horizon. However, he still had a commitment to the show for at least Season 5.

The pandemic, and writers/actors strike, didn’t help matters. Without those things barricading function for huge stretches of time, the Costner-Sheridan impasse could have been worked out and lifted. Possibly. They’re both carrying big personalities, and breaking into new ground in the past decade.

Yellowstone did big things for each of them. It expanded the writer’s repertoire from script hitmaker and occasional director to the master needle mover behind a show that cast a broad scope over a seemingly worn out genre with the Wild West cowboy aesthetic. It gave him keys to the Paramount Plus castle. The only drama came mostly from the free spirits in the cast that pulled all the best parts of a western and made a riveting show out of them. They were all Sheridan-drawn toys, under his control.

Costner saw a career revival thanks to the show. A new small screen stomping ground and legion of couch potato fans. He was around and putting in good work, but Horizon doesn’t happen without what he created in John Dutton. His work reconnected him with a lot of his older fans, and intrigued him to a few new generations. Yellowstone is a show that teenagers will sit down and watch with their families. Costner helped light that fuse.

Maybe he wanted out and didn’t set a proper timeline for it. But Sheridan deserves blame here too. A good amount.

He has way too much on his plate right now, the ambitious edge of his blunt personality carrying eyes too big for his creative stomach. It’s not a helpful factor for a control freak (grown from experience dealing with picky studios) to have a big plate or extra long to-do list. He fired showrunner Terence Winter after the first season of the Sylvester Stallone-led Tulsa King ended erratically without the best reviews as a parachute. That’s one example of Sheridan having to move away from his main plate, and fix a problem.

It’s night and day from when he first caught attention spans with three big dents: the scripts for Sicario and Hell or High Water, and his written/directed effort and most wholesome effort yet, Wind River.

But the schedule has been packed, with shows like Special Ops: Lioness coming and going without much fanfare or acknowledgment. 1883 and 1923 had their big moments and were solid enough overall, but Sheridan rode off on those horses instead of staying and preserving his original thoroughbred. The focus has been lost, something that hasn’t been this apparent since his launch.

There’s also another show with Matthew McConaughey rumored to star (he hasn’t signed anything yet and won’t until there’s a script according to Puck) that picks up the pieces of Yellowstone and moves on. Without a script other cast members are already demanding big raises or they’ll walk: Cole Hauser, Kelly Reilly and Luke Grimes. It’s weird to expand a world that has gathered so much turbulence and existed lately as a symbol of crisis. All of this is making the Season 5 finish seem destined for a Game of Thrones type finish, where Beth Dutton just opens her mouth and burns the entire ranch to the ground.

It’d be better to cut and start anew, like his most recent successes. Sheridan’s eyes became too much big for time and logic’s stomach, complicated by the Costner holdout. If you ask me, especially with the writing of his character as a boring governor, Costner checked out a long time ago. The fact that he wants back in only means his big movie double feature needs a good omen or stable publicity.

The entire show turned down a dull road with the last batch of episodes. Characters repeating mistakes and running into the same problems. You can only NOT kill the Dutton patriarch so many times; Sheridan never liked killing anybody off on the show. Less chances taken overall, which doesn’t bode well for a show still gasping for air.

A reasonable plan for everybody involved is to write an ending to his OG show that sets a good course for future work. Get Costner back in because if you kill the main character off camera, you’re jumping a fast and furious car over seventeen sharks. It’s lame and stupid. Don’t do that, Taylor. Bring your ego back to the yard. You think you’re hot shit when all you did was create Spahn Ranch 2.0.

He’s stretched too thin, and that requires a step back. The show is playing well on CBS and only in its fourth season, so use it. While the target date is November for episodes, the target goal for the series should be to land the plane correctly. If Costner’s film is done and a little ways off from marketing-which will consume him as both creator and star-there’s still time to get his stuff filmed. A shocking death like a certain family patriarch in the final season of Succession would be fitting, and transfer power.

Deciding to act like children and have that lead to a bad ending may cause the suits behind the operation to intervene or scrap the entire thing together. One man can change things though. We should all know who that is.

Taylor. Sheridan. Or in his own world, the cowboy god. He built it on his own, which leads to a certain attachment. But it’s time to make it all make sense, or else all people will remember is the nasty finish.

No matter how the dust settles, it’s a less than savory footnote on the Sheridan express.