This Is a Cry for Help
In the 12th episode of Yellowstone season five, Taylor Sheridan’s horse trainer character, Travis Wheatley, gravely declares that John Dutton is dead. This elaborate metafictional dunking on Yellowstone’s ex-protagonist and Sheridan’s ex-lead actor Kevin Costner follows the breakdown of their professional relationship over whose head can pull off a bigger cowboy hat. (It was about money and schedules.) Reasonable people could assume that after that display of personal animus, Sheridan would be done writing self-insert victory laps into his flagship TV series.
Reasonable people would be wrong. Episode 13 represents an almost unimaginable feat of self-mythologizing, a fictionalized act of fantasy world-building that borders on masturbatory, operating on a level that so far exceeds expectations that you have to ask yourself, Is Taylor Sheridan okay? Or is this a cry for help, an expression of Sheridan’s repressed feelings of frustration and lack of self-worth and unresolved longing for revenge, translated into barely fictionalized form?
The only way to judge is by examining the evidence. Here, in roughly chronological order, are all the things that happen to Taylor Sheridan’s character Travis in “Give the World Away.”
Bella Hadid is his girlfriend.
She might be a character or she might be actual Bella Hadid — it’s tough to say because she is not named and has no characteristics except “being hot” and “describing her attraction to Taylor Sheridan.” Either way, she has been cast in the role of Travis’s girlfriend, and her primary job is to explain to Beth Dutton why anyone would ever want to date him. “He is probably the most arrogant man that I have ever met in my entire life. Condescending. Misogynistic. At least 25 years older than you. Can you please explain the appeal?” Beth asks her. Hadid, in response, cocks her head thoughtfully, stares at Travis, and gives a little smirk. “You ever seen him ride before?” she says. Sadly, no one then looks directly into the camera and winks like Lucille Bluth.
He plays strip poker with his friends.
First, he plays strip poker when he should be showing an expensive horse to Brazilian buyers, because he’s a bad boy who bends the rules. Bare-chested, smoking a cigar, surrounded by men looking on in awe and hot women in various states of undress, he leans against a poker table and chuckles about exactly how many aces are on the table while Hadid drapes herself over him in fond embrace. “What do I have?” asks a woman covering her bare breasts with a cowboy hat. “Well, Mackenzie,” Travis says, “there’s a reason that you’re naked, and it’s hands like that.” Everyone laughs appreciatively.
He rides a horse.
He rides it a lot. And, just in case anyone doubted whether Hadid knew what she was talking about, he is a very impressive, very skilled horse rider! Travis is showing off a Yellowstone horse to potential buyers at his own ranch, and his horsemanship is so impressive that everyone whoops and nods and cheers for him. Lest there be any doubt, the camera goes in for several close-ups of the careful footwork but then pulls out into a wide shot so that everyone can see for certain that it’s really Sheridan on that horse. No stunt guys. No fancy cuts. He’s. A. Cowboy.
Far be it from me to denigrate Sheridan’s ability to ride a horse. From what I understand, controlling a horse like that requires countless hours of dedication and patience and effort, and it has obviously resulted in a legitimately exciting display of skill and talent. I assume the time and effort it takes to achieve that mastery must be significant, unlike, say, the time it takes to write and produce dozens of episodes of television across multiple TV series.
He’s a fantastic salesman with a few tricks up his sleeve.
His remarkable horsemanship obviously gets the Brazilian buyers interested in this horse, but Travis is so smart and cheeky that he gets the maintenance crew to act like another party of interested buyers, which convinces the Brazilians to cough up an extra million dollars. He’s so charismatic and effective and good at his job! Of course Bella Hadid is his girlfriend.
But he’s honest.
Do not fret about Travis being on the wrong side of justice, because a cowboy at Travis’s pool party takes a few minutes to explain to Beth Dutton that all horse pricing is based on luck. Maybe the Brazilians overpaid, but that’s not Travis’s fault. He just did the best he could, which, for the record, was really really good.
He has a pool party.
It also has lots of hot women, and it also features Travis, shirtless, leaning suggestively along the side of the pool so you can see all of his arm muscles.
He plays strip poker with his work associates.
Not content with just one strip-poker scene, Travis challenges Beth Dutton to a game shortly after she tells him that he is “such an asshole that it’s almost attractive.” The issue is that Beth wants — nay, needs — Travis to come back to Yellowstone so he can work his salesmanship wizardry on a full auction, but she doesn’t want to pay him for it. Travis tells her they can play for it; for some reason Beth agrees to this. Because she needs him! “I don’t have anyone who can do that,” she says. “I don’t know anyone who can do that.”
Because he is also a very good poker player, Travis wins, and Beth sighs in disgust. Just as she starts taking off her bra, Travis tells her he was just kidding and she doesn’t need to strip. He’s a bastard … but you gotta love him!!
He makes corn dogs and has a stripper pole in his garage.
We know this because he offers to make Beth corn dogs and then adds, “There’s a stripper pole in the garage.”
He was really cool to Rip one time.
This is the penultimate episode of the season. The Yellowstone ranch, the single most important thing in the world of this show, has never been in a more precarious position. John Dutton, if you have not heard, is dead. Everything is at risk! But after the two strip-poker scenes, and the pool party, and the long sequence of Sheridan’s horsemanship skills, and Hadid, the highest priority for Yellowstone is to have Rip tell Beth the long story of how he and Travis became friends. Wouldn’t you know it? It’s because Travis was a very cool guy who stood up for Rip in a drunken bar fight, made some fun wisecracks in the middle of getting the shit kicked out of him, and then went back into the bar to get their hats! What a guy! What an absolutely fantastic guy that everyone would always want to spend time with and be impressed by, even if they were previously into some other guy who was also on this show but is now dead.
He rides a horse again. Presumably this is helpful for the Duttons, but we don’t see how.
Although Sheridan declined to write himself any more dialogue to show off how vitally important Travis is at the auction, he does make sure Travis rides around at the auction itself, once again doing extremely challenging maneuvers like spinning the horse in endless circles.
In total, roughly a third of this episode is about Travis Wheatley. What are we to make of it all? If it were just the horse scenes, which Yellowstone has featured before, it would simply be Sheridan doing some justifiable bragging about how much work he’s put into riding. If it were just the “Travis helps rescue the Yellowstone ranch” plotline, Sheridan’s role in the endgame would look much more egregious but could also be read as mostly some sweaty, self-aggrandizing efforts to right the ship before sailing it into harbor after the Costner debacle. Taken altogether, though — the horses, the story line, the strip poker … Bella Hadid is his girlfriend?! — this is not just a fun little side plot. This is something more serious. Sheridan is trapped in a prison of his own making, and the only way to escape is for everyone to finally tell him he’s an awesome guy who’s every bit as good as Kevin Costner.