1923
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The rapist is snow and worms.
The rapist is progress and private equity.
The rapist is mining.
The rapist is skiing.
The rapist is the telephone and the icebox and the motor car.
The rapist is Donald Whitfield, an actual rapist.
Is the rapist ranching?
I dont think so, but you could make a case.
The Duttons are forever victims of a changing world and its relentless seasons.
Thats exactly how they like it.
The notion that the Duttons are survivors is critical to the family mythology.
They are targets of perpetual attack.
They alone can be trusted.
The enemy isnt at the gates any longer.
The enemy is blowing down the windows and making itself at home.
I was reminded of that great Isaiah Berlin line: Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.
In1923, wolves and lambs can be tough to distinguish.
Ask the Crow, who used to hold the Duttons land as their own, who the rapists are.
At the start of the episode, though, the Duttons, for once, seem in the ascendancy.
He would rather take on Mother Nature than face Donald Whitfield in Bozeman.
But in1923, no trip into town can go punished.
Dutton men who sully themselves by leaving Paradise Valley do so at their peril.
This will be no ordinary storm.
(No ordinary storm is more or less the plot of every1923episode, though usually its less literal.)
Snow falls in sheets rather than flakes, and the Dutton party quickly loses the trail home.
Jacob calls to nephew Jack.
Asses to the wind!
Do I know what that means?
They abandon their journey and flip the wagon over.
Do I understand why?
The episode leaves burly men and small, scared children huddled together in the cavity of an upturned wagon.
By this time next year, if Whitfield has his way, this trek will be much easier.
The road from Bozeman to the valley might be a paved highway dotted with inns and restaurants.
Thats gold for a ski resort.
Because Donald Whitfield has seen the future, and the future isBig Sky.
Banner tells Whitfield that hes lost his sheep herd to parasites, and Whitfield has the nerve to laugh.
It may, one day, run out, but thats okay, too.
Whitfield has just come up with a new and inexhaustible way to rape this land.
The miners from Norway have brought to Montana a national pastime: downhill skiing.
(I Googled out of curiosity, and this seems to be broadly historically accurate.)
Its a good idea, but Banners awe strains plausibility.
He sees the greed in our hearts, Banner later says.
Or does he just see Banners?
I like this plot.
Its new terrain on a show that keeps handing us iterations of the same fight.
In Teonnas theater, too, theres the sense of a story not just progressing but evolving.
Why trade life on their own reservation under the white mans thumb for another?
Teonnas father doesnt immediately agree, but at least hes considering it.
He doesnt insist on accidentally delivering his daughter into Father Renauds wicked clutches for the umpteenth time.
but Fossett also issues a warning to the newcomers.
The Comanche and the Okies share a mutual respect.
Even Renaud fires on them.
(The rapist is religion.
The rapist is the gun.)
(Did AI raised onGoodfellaswrite this?)
Anyway, alls well that ends well.
And he got to try pizza for the first time, so thats delicious for him.
Alexandra, in her own by-the-numbers story line, is still at deadly sea.
Her tumultuous third-class voyage to America the choppy seas!
But she doesnt really have a choice in the matter.
The doctor and the nurse hold her down to administer the shot.
Lizzies been driven mad by rabies or maybe just the blizzard.
Or maybe just the cold, hard loneliness of life on this ranch.
The next time Lizzie miscarries, if it happens, Im sure shell think of this moment.
Anti-vaxxers arent born; theyre inoculated against their wills.
(The rapist is Western medicine.)
People shouldnt be here in the winter, Lizzie says early in the episode.
Shes right, of course, but the cattle herd cant feed itself.
The land cant defend itself.
These men cant go anywhere else.
They wouldnt be themselves if they ever got there.
