The Madison Season 1 Premiere Recap: A River Runs Through It

Spoilers below.

Taylor Sheridan now has nearly a dozen shows under his belt. With each additionalhit, he has proven his ability to attract not only big-name stars to his productions but also passionate viewers. The Madison for Paramount+ is his latest drama, a foray into grief and self-discovery primarily grounded through female characters. Although the show bears some markers of a Yellowstone-adjacent series, it’s something of a departure from what we’ve come to expect from the contemporary Western television powerhouse. With the first three episodes all released at once, we have plenty to unpack.

The series premiere begins with an immediate contrast between the concrete jungle of New York City and the soothing natural world of Montana, one of Sheridan’s favorite shooting locations. In New York, we find Paige McIntosh (Elle Chapman) strutting along a busy Fifth Avenue sidewalk mid-work day, when she is suddenly violently attacked: In an apparently random mugging, a man punches Paige in the face and steals her designer shopping bags. The onlookers don’t do much except film her and walk by, which doesn’t feel at all realistic to my experience of New York. (There’s a real community mindset over there!) But Sheridan clearly feels otherwise. Paige offers a pair of police officers her attacker’s description but can’t quite recall the man’s race, as she worries it could be problematic for potential perpetrators if she identifies the wrong person.

Meanwhile, a very glamorous and sophisticated Stacy Clyburn (the Michelle Pfeiffer) is at lunch when she hears about her daughter’s attack, and she meets up with Paige at the hospital for the latter’s six cheek stitches. Paige gets lambasted for, apparently, bringing this misery upon herself by not using the family’s car as transportation. (Never mind that this is New York we’re talking about—driving is not exactly a quick and easy way to get around!—but I digress.) Over a fancy dinner later that evening, we meet the rest of the family. Paige is married to Russell McIntosh (Patrick J. Adams), an investment banker who’s keen to discuss cargo shipping—which is very boring to Stacy, who interrupts his workday monologue to order a gin martini. Her eldest daughter is Abigail “Abby” Reese (Beau Garrett), the divorced mother of Stacy’s granddaughters, Bridgette (Amiah Miller) and Alaina (Alaina Pollack). Absent is the patriarch, Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell). So what is he up to?

He’s off enjoying the wilderness, of course. This is a Sheridan production, after all! Preston is in Montana, where he’s fly-fishing with his brother, Paul (Matthew Fox). It’s Preston’s 64th birthday, and he and his brother—who never married or had kids—are reflecting on their age. Preston notes he only has a handful of years before he’ll lose the mobility that currently lets him enjoy life to the fullest. Preston was planning to head back to New York the next day, but Paul has a birthday surprise: a plan to fly them into an exclusive body of water for some special fishing.

Kurt Russell as Preston Clyburn and Matthew Fox as Paul Clyburn in The Madison.

We get a second fly-fishing montage (and some truly beautiful landscapes), but an unexpected storm threatens their reverie as it starts to roll over the valley. Preston and Paul eventually decide to make a run for it; Paul struggles to get the plane off the ground. They do their best to fly through the storm, but it’s a bumpy ride, and they start to lose GPS tracking. Conditions grow worse by the second, and they steer their way through an opaque cloud before they’re confronted face-to-face with a mountain and…the scene cuts away. I knew this show was about grief, given the various scenes of Pfeiffer crying in the trailer, but this feels so sudden and dark?!

Over breakfast with her bestie Liliana (Rebecca Spence), Stacy gets the dreaded phone call: The Department of Forestry is on the line, and they deliver the awful news that Paul’s plane crashed in the Madison River valley. The department believes neither Preston nor Paul survived the accident, but they need a family member to come identify their bodies. Screaming in grief and shock, Stacy shoves everything off the breakfast table in front of her, their plates clattering to the restaurant’s floor and startling the patrons around them. It’s a hard scene to watch, but boy does Pfeiffer nail it.

Together as a family, the remaining Clyburns fly out to identify Preston and Paul’s bodies. Stacy, understandably, doesn’t want to see her husband’s corpse; the last image she has of him was his smile and their shared kiss. But she refuses to let Abby do the horrible task in her stead. Mercifully, we don’t have to see the corpses as Stacy gazes upon them, but Pfeiffer’s face makes it clear what we’re meant to imagine: how mangled her husband and brother-in-law must be after such a crash. After they’re both identified, Abby also insists on seeing the bodies, perhaps wanting to carry the burden alongside her mother.

At their overnight hotel, Stacy’s sobs send her daughters over to her room for a slumber party. They settle in to watch A River Runs Through It (1992), Preston’s favorite film (a tearjerker about fishing, naturally). “We both knew how precious and rare what we had was,” Stacy says of her 40-year relationship with her husband. Preston died doing exactly what he loved doing—a small comfort amidst this unbearable ordeal. If The Madison is just about a family coming together through this grief, I am so locked in.

The next day, the Clyburns take a drive up to Paul’s ranch in Montana. I suddenly remembered, upon seeing that eerily familiar wooden entrance arch, that The Madison was originally billed as a Yellowstone spin-off, but Paramount+ has since confirmed that the new series is unrelated to the Dutton family saga. The cabins on Paul’s property are indeed a little more…shabby chic than what Yellowstone had to offer. That said, it’s just as soothing of a landscape. Pfeiffer probably won’t be wrangling cows on this land any time soon. Hopefully she gets a horse, though!

Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn in The Madison.

In the last few minutes of the pilot, we get plenty of shots of Stacy mourning her husband, taking in his scent and shrieking in grief. There are also flashback shots of their apartment in New York, too: crisp and white, outfitted with orchids and a gorgeous tub, much more ostentatious than anything at the ranch. The Clyburns are, apparently, wealthy wealthy. This previous life of theirs is a far cry from boiling coffee over a wood-burning fireplace. On the same porch where Preston and Paul talked about aging only a few nights ago, Stacy expresses some regrets about not bringing the family to the cabin sooner. This place was Preston’s escape, after all: his home away from home.

Despite the fact that the family has to share a single outhouse, they have only elk to eat for dinner, and no one knows how to start a fire properly, Stacy makes the decision to stay on Paul’s ranch. Her motivation is two-fold: She wants to find the specific place Preston had marked on a map as his preferred burial site, but she also wants to rediscover her husband through the lens of his journal and his life in Montana. As she admits to Abby while they sit on the porch together, Stacy is not getting any younger. She has, in her estimation, a small window in which to make decisions that feed her soul. The first episode concludes with this little family heading off to find their late patriarch’s favorite spot—with an episode dedication to A River Runs Through It director Robert Redford, who passed away last year.

The second episode opens with a flashback of Preston in Montana, from which he’s FaceTiming with Stacy in New York. “I’m a beach girl,” she says when he shares a photo of his favorite valley vista. The image, however picturesque, doesn’t exactly resonate with her. This scene gives us an idea of how Russell (the actor, not the character) is considered a cast regular in The Madison, despite his character dying in the premiere: We’ll likely keep piecing together Stacy and Preston’s life together through flashbacks like this one. The next shot is of Stacy, standing at the very spot where her late husband had called her from, discovered through the original photo he sent her. She is discovering his secret world for herself, one location at a time.

We get a few more “city folk in the country” shenanigans this episode: A hornet’s nest wreaks havoc when Paige tries to use the outhouse. This poor girl is really going through it on this show. Watching Russell (the character, not the actor!) scream his way through spraying down the wasps got me to giggle, I’ll admit it. This is much sillier than the usual Sheridan show. Leave it up to Stacy to handle the insects, though.

Things get a bit more interesting when a handsome neighbor shows up: Cade Harris (Kevin Zegers), who works for a ranch nearby. He knew Paul and Preston, and he offers up some lasagna and casserole for the grieving Clyburns. Their exchange gets a little awkward when the granddaughters call out Cade’s use of “Indian tacos” as racist. (Ok, I like these girls!) Stacy calls them “spoiled little bitches” after they insult the food, and outside, her anger and pain boil over. But I’m not sure Stacy is letting everyone else mourn in the way they know how. Grief looks different for everyone, after all.

Beau Garrett as Abigail Reese and Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn in The Madison.

Stacy drives into town and visits the local funeral home to find out the steps for burying her husband on Paul’s property. On her way back to the cabins, she stops to look at some horses grazing near the road. As she approaches them, she climbs through the fence and into the field, where she considers, out loud, if she’s strong enough to handle the weight of her grief. A horse strides up to her as if to deliver a message, and she leans against its neck as the sun sets. This scene is beautifully directed by Christina Alexandra Voros.

Before bed, Stacy continues reading Preston’s journals, which include sketches of the improvements he planned to make to the property. Abby comes knocking at her mother’s door with alcohol in tow, and she mentions that her daughters made “the cowboy” a thank-you card. (Here, we get an utterly unnecessary joke about pronouns that Sheridan can’t seem to resist.). Abby says Paul’s cabin is “weird,” given that it features games and toys, which makes Stacy storm over to check it out. She finds a desk of old board games and stuffed animals, which makes her realize the plans in Preston’s journals were for his wife and kids, to convince them to come experience his life in Montana. But they arrived too late; they missed out on the opportunity to share this place with Preston himself. This realization is pivotal to Stacy’s declaration at the end of the episode: She will sell the Manhattan townhouse and move to Montana to protect the land…and her husband’s grave.

Finally, the third episode opens with yet another flashback, a phone conversation between Stacy and Preston, during which they unpack Abby’s separation from her husband, Dallas, and consider how involved they should be in the mess. How much responsibility should they take on their adult child’s behalf? They reminisce on the “good old days” of living off Cup Noodles, pointing to their self-made wealth.

Back in the present timeline, over an “elk, sausage, or pancake” breakfast, we watch a morning tiff between Paige and Abby escalate into a startlingly physical all-out fight. They punch and wrestle, glassware shattering around them. For a moment I wondered if they were actually going to kill each other? Thankfully, Stacy steps in with a pitcher of water to splash some sense into her daughters. She rants about respect and makes them clean up their mess. She asks to see “half this amount of emotion” about losing their father, but, frankly, I think their fight is their grief manifesting itself. Why is that so hard for Stacy to understand?

Cade offers Stacy and Abby a ride to pick up Preston’s pickup truck at the sheriff’s office. On the way, they drop by to meet the lasagna-maker—Cade’s wife, Kestrel (Danielle Vasinova)—at Cade’s ranch, where the Clyburns thank her personally for the care package. They exchange pleasantries and arrange a possible playdate between their kids. We also meet Van (Ben Schnetzer) at the sheriff’s office, an officer who seems quite close with Cade. Stacy gets possession of the pickup and faces a new wave of grief as she sits in one of the last spaces Preston occupied (old coffee cups and all), where she also finds his handgun in the middle compartment. Don’t let the daughters see that!

On the drive back, Stacy tries to convince Abby to stay in Montana with her—despite the fact that they have no sewage (or friends). What starts as a plea sounds more and more like a threat when Stacy indicates she’ll cut Abby off financially unless she moves. Harsh! Abby exits the vehicle mid-argument, and Stacy drives away without a second thought.

Kevin Zegers as Cade Harris in The Madison.

Luckily, Cade is driving alongside, and he calls his buddy Van to pick Abby up. Later, Stacy stops at the side of the road to take a moment and investigate the gun—and she starts getting emotional about it right when Cade jump-scares her through her window. He shares that his father died by suicide, as did his uncle and brother. Stacy tries to reassure him that suicide is not on her mind, but she agrees to let him hold on to the gun for the time being. Stacy also takes a moment to call her best friend, Liliana, from New York—the one she was having brunch with when she got the phone call. “Get on a plane,” Stacy tells her. “I need you.” Bestie to the rescue!

Speaking of rescue…hot sheriff Van shows up to pick Abby up from the side of the road, and, of course, they have instant chemistry. Abby has a laugh-cry in the passenger seat and asks for some music to make her feel better, to which Van offers police car sirens and speeding through traffic. Well, whatever works!

Over at Cade’s ranch, Abby, Van, and Kestrel crack open a cold one while watching a horse gallop around with Cade and Kestrel’s daughter Kayla riding it. (Cade and Kestrel’s other child is named Spade and is apparently a young Rob Rausch who loves picking up snakes). We find out Van himself also has two kids, but he’s a widower: His wife died a few years ago after a freak ATV accident. Abby, on the other hand, says she wishes her ex was dead, which feels insensitive as hell to say to a grieving spouse. Their chemistry is nevertheless off the charts. Van drops her off at the Clyburn ranch, and Abby gives him her number—and she leans in for a kiss (which her daughters observe). Quite the first date! Is this officially the new Beth and Rip?

In the last scene of the episode—after we learn Paige’s hornet-bitten “kitty” is healing, thank goodness—we’re back to a flashback in Stacy’s stunning Manhattan bathtub. There, Preston gives Stacy a foot massage, unpacking whether or not they should cut Abby off. Preston can’t make himself do it. Picking his daughter up when she falls is his job! This exchange is sweet, yes, but it also challenges what Abby herself thought of her relationship with her father.

Not every Sheridan show is created equal. I’ve ranked them before and have watched with interest—sometimes out of morbid curiosity, and at other times in genuine awe. (I still think about 1883, my personal favorite of the bunch.) Thankfully, The Madison is on the positive end of the Sheridan spectrum. There is something gentle and thoughtful being explored here about grief, with a terrific performance by Pfeiffer and the supporting cast. Some Sheridan shows end up beating you over the head with either his politics or his convoluted plots, but The Madison is surprisingly stripped-back and yet expansive, just like Montana’s sprawling landscapes. A six-episode season is perfect for this kind of story. We’ll check back in with the Clyburns when the final batch of episodes drop next Saturday.