Dutton Ranch Season 1, Episode 5 Recap: Peace Will Have to Wait
6 min readSpoilers below.
If I wasn’t worried about Beth and Rip’s new life down in Texas before, I certainly am now. They thought they were starting fresh after the fire in Montana, but without a herd, their livelihood is now at risk. Like Rip says in this week’s opening scene, “it ain’t a ranch without a herd.” So, what now?
While they figure out what plan B looks like, Rip calls in a favor with Everett: He needs a job ASAP. Everett picks him up and takes him over to the 10-Petal Ranch, where Rip has a spontaneous (i.e. uninvited) meeting with Beulah. Good thing Everett’s there to keep things civil. Rip pitches himself to be the 10-Petal’s foreman, which is an interesting development given Beth’s reluctance to trust the Duttons. Beulah initially doubts his ability to foreman both ranches at once, but first, we know the Dutton Ranch has no cattle left, and second, Rip points out that the Yellowstone Ranch he oversaw in Montana was way, way bigger than both of their Texas ranches combined. Since Rob-Will is in rehab (for now), and Chet isn’t the most capable (we haven’t seen evidence of this but we’ll take their word for it), Rip agrees to take charge of the Jackson family’s 2,200 cows amidst the management kerfuffle. Little does Rip know there’s a murder cover-up in the works on this side of the fence!
His first predawn morning on the job, Beth tries to present him with a few alternate options: For instance, she could go back to work! But going back to the finance business would require her presence in Dallas or some other metropolitan area—definitely not Rio Paloma. (I kind of wanted a Beth spin-off to take place in a high-powered Industry–like setting, but I suppose that’s not exactly the Yellowstone vibe.) Rip wants her nearby, so off to the 10-Petal Ranch he goes.
Rip makes a strong first impression, walking into the 10-Petal bunkhouse to find the cowboys having breakfast and getting ready for the day. Chet, casually shirtless for no reason except to show off his tattoos, hasn’t yet been informed of his demotion, so he’s not thrilled. Rip whips these cowboys into shape—it’s nice to see him back in action shaking his head and bossing men around! It’s also not long before Chet and Austin start fighting about Wes again. They need to calm down, but it’s good for Rip to know there’s something going on beneath the surface here. He finally sits down with Austin and gets the full story about Wes’s disappearance; that’s definitely enough for Rip to start putting two and two together and realize he played a role in hiding Wes’s body, too.
Nursing his bruised face with a cold can of Coors, Chet is hanging out at the bunkhouse when Rip walks in and fires him. Chet walks out swearing at everyone and telling Rip that the Jacksons will chew him up. (As if!) Chet later takes his complaints over to Joaquin and not-so-gently reminds the Jackson scion that he wields some powerful information about Wes. (He also says something about not forgetting “y’all’s cattle,” which serves as further fodder for my case that the Jacksons intentionally sickened the Dutton Ranch’s herd.) Joaquin gives him a fistful of cash and threatens him right back: Basically, leave, or you’ll be the next dead body. Later in the episode, snorting coke with a woman in a motel room, Rob-Will shows up. I guess he didn’t last very long in rehab.
As night falls, Beulah invites Rip over for brisket and wine. Rip defends firing Chet, and he tells her about first falling for Beth at 15 years old when he was still shoveling shit back in Montana. When asked to describe Beth, he says “beautiful, intelligent, fierce, tender, raw.” All true. Beulah offers him a salary of $9,000 per month and Rip gets it up to $11,000—so roughly $132,000 per year, which honestly seems low for the hours he’s pulling!
Back at the ranch, Beth is doing some extensive googling and reading articles on the patio, concocting some kind of plan to get the Dutton Ranch out of the red. She shares a little moment with Zachariah, who she says her dad would’ve liked. She takes a reading break when Everett stops by the ranch to drop off the mare they saved together at the start of the season. They take her for a walk and discuss Rip’s new job; Everett calls him a “lucky” man, but unbeknownst to him, Rip’s actually had the bad luck after all the sacrifices (and murder) he did for John Dutton. Texas was supposed to be a semi-retirement plan! Beth also makes it clear she does not trust Beulah—and neither do I! Just like that, they let the healed mare out onto the ranch’s fields to roam free.
In the evening back at home, Beth leaves Carter a note saying there’s dinner on the stove, but little does she know he has not been going to school. (Mother and son are still not on speaking terms.) Earlier that day, he was actually back at Dwight’s, feeding Xena the leopard with Oreana. Oreana’s bodyguard, who Dwight simply calls “biggun,” is there, too. Over beers after Oreana is ordered back home, Carter tells Dwight about the sick herd and how he wishes he could return to Montana. Dwight reminds him of how young he is; he has his whole life ahead of him! But Carter is pretty set on finding his independence right here and right now, which is just about right for a 19-year-old.
Later, Carter is replacing a light bulb for Dwight when the cops show up. Dwight makes a run for it, but the police end up cornering him. Carter makes the dumb move to run after his new friend, and he soon discovers Dwight shot by Sheriff Wade and bleeding to death by Xena’s cage. (Dwight had a knife on him, but it was sheathed on his belt.) While Texas generally has relaxed laws when it comes to exotic pets, it’s strictly prohibited to keep leopards after the passing of the federal Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2022. Still, killing Dwight for it seems extreme. At the sheriff’s station, Wade calls Dwight “cow shit,” claiming the latter stole from the elderly and committed insurance fraud. Whether or not that’s true, Carter had started to consider him a friend. This is already Carter’s second time arrested, and we’re not even halfway through the season! He is not on the straight and narrow. The sheriff agrees not to tell his folks about the arrest, for some reason, and he gets off once again scot-free.
Carter is walking back to his truck when Oreana (and “biggun”) pick him up on the road. Carter breaks down; it’s been a long day. Back at the sheriff’s office, Wade already has his hands full, but Joaquin—back on Wes cleanup duty—stops by for a visit. Wade hasn’t heard from Whitney, and she’s been covering her tracks: Wade hasn’t even been able to track down any bank activity from the runaway, which is a worrisome sign for Joaquin.
That same night, Beth decides to pay Beulah a visit right after Rip leaves, bringing her some fancy scotch on Everett’s recommendation. Pleasantries out of the way, Beth comes out with it: She tells Beulah about the culling of their herd. As it turns out, what Beth had been researching all day was specific to the 10-Petal Ranch and its history of surviving various crises over the years. Beth has determined the 10-Petal Ranch isn’t on great financial footing after 190 years—it’s one crisis away from losing it all.
Beth pitches herself as Beulah’s ultimate solution: She would recession-proof the ranch, and do a better job of it than Joaquin. We know Beulah has been overwhelmed and exhausted by leading the ranch, so though she puts on a brave face for Beth, this has to be a tempting offer to her. It’s an easy way out! The problem here is that Beth isn’t yet aware of the skeletons in Beulah’s closet. The stipulations: a five-year contract, Beth gets 20 percent of the profits, and the Dutton name stays out of it. Beulah is sold, later calling her a “cockroach after an atomic bomb” when she tells Joaquin about it. Beth is hired! With these two sides of the story intertwined, things are about to get very juicy on Dutton Ranch. Especially when, as the episode comes to a close, Rip finally tells Beth—who is surprisingly understanding—about disposing of Wes’s body. There’s no going back now.