The World of Taylor Sheridan

"I am the opposite of progress," says the hero.

He’s the biggest cultural figure you’ve never heard of. More specifically, he is the brain behind a medley of successful TV shows, starting with Yellowstone and its spin-offs 1883 and 1923. I’ve written about them before, a couple of times.

But this guy just keeps coming. He’s done The Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Special Ops: Lioness, Lawman: Bass Reeves, and Landman. They’re all on the Paramount Plus cable channel. He’s a script-writing machine. Maybe he keeps a stable of minions, but the quality of the writing and story-telling is consistently good. And the politics are consistently abysmal.

All of these vehicles boast well-known stars, as did the Yellowstone spin-offs. 1923 has Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. The Mayor stars Jeremy Renner. Tulsa King has Sylvester Stallone, doing his most cliched Sylvester Stallone. Lioness has Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldana. And Landman has Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hamm, and Demi Moore.

My guess is that Yellowstone took off thanks to the name-recognition of its lead, Kevin Costner, but eventually a power struggle between Costner and Sheridan ended up with Costner leaving the enterprise and crashing on the lead-balloon of his new Horizon movie. Horizon aims to be part 1 of 4, but by the looks of its dismal reception, the sequels are unlikely. We can infer that the source of Yellowstone’s success was Sheridan, not Costner.

As I said, the story-telling is good, not unlike extended social train-wrecks, not least for their perverse depictions of the U.S. In summary, it’s a Hobbesian universe, and that’s fine and good. The Costner character ascends to the governorship of Montana, standing athwart history to yell “Stop!” What bugs me the most is the embedded propaganda. Still, it’s interesting propaganda, suggestive of a certain populist sensibility.

Kingstown is a bleak factory town in upstate New York where the sun never shines, from which the factories have departed. The only industries are illegal drugs and a state prison. Renner is an ex-con and somehow makes a living as a fixer for folks with law-enforcement issues. He has thoroughly infiltrated the prison staff, inmate population, local prosecutors, and police force. The police are totally lawless, basically a well-equipped street gang alongside the plagues of Russian mobsters, neo-Nazis, and black gang-bangers. Nobody is safe from anyone, anywhere. It’s like a reverse Richard Scarry canvas. Lovely place!

In Tulsa King, Sly Stallone is a Mafioso from New York who, upon release from an extended prison sentence, is betrayed by the family he protected with his silence and exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The magic here is that starting with nothing, in a town bereft of competing gangsters, Sly quickly dominates as a hugely wealthy racketeer. He’s also a man of honor. Major crimes are as easy to do as falling off a log. It’s the land of opportunity.

In Lioness, a secret special ops unit has carte blanche to do anything it likes to anyone, anywhere. It’s all legal under extraordinary U.S. national security measures made necessary because the world is so dangerous. Their principal local adversary is a Mexican drug cartel that, we are told, has incontestable presences in every city and in every local and Federal law enforcement body. They are bringing in foreign criminals and constitute a secret army whose power rivals that of the U.S. government. Even worse, they are manipulated by the Peoples Republic of China.

Sound familiar? In Virginia, we have a two-time loser in state electoral politics named Hung Cao, of a Vietnamese immigrant family. He is a former Navy special ops guy who was being promoted as a defense intellectual. He would keep going on about “military-age Chinese males” being infiltrated into the country. Among other bon mots, he distinguished himself for warning of the threat of witchcraft. Clearly he is destined for a plum job in the coming Administration.

In Landman, we are fed an unapologetic defense of the fossil fuel industry. Oil and gas energy, if you didn’t know, is actually cleaner and cheaper than solar or wind. Moreover, petroleum is part of every other product you could think of. Without oil, the economy that makes modern life possible would be impossible. The oil company depicted is entirely oblivious to health and safety regulations, a neglect that is totally necessary for it to function and as above, for the U.S. to function. Accordingly, it neglects the safety of its workers, but when they are killed or injured, miraculously, it comes to the generous financial rescue of the afflicted families. Corporations are tough, but they are the foundation of the economy and come through for you in the end. We couldn’t be without them.

Racism, both personal and institutional, is on ample display throughout these shows, but the protagonists are never racist. It’s almost defensive, the way Sheridan insulates himself from any aroma of racial bigotry. All of the POC are invariably upstanding and righteous. They are dealt with respectfully by the white protagonists. The bad apples are duly contrasted, offset, by the more numerous good ones. Even the black gang-leader in Kingstown is shown in a thinly sympathetic light. Thinking about this, I realized that in none of these shows can be found a positive portrayal, or any portrayal, of a gay man. There are lesbians who engage in hot girl-on-girl action, but sexual titillation is to be expected these days in any drama series. Still, everyone keeps a tight asshole.

What does pop up in every show is a spiel on the moral corruption of society. In Yellowstone, the emphasis is on the ingratitude of the meat-eating public afforded our beleaguered ranchers, the poor moguls sitting on thousands of acres of land and living like feudal lords. Relatedly, the soundtracks of Yellowstone and Landman are packed with weepy, whiny cowboy songs. Who knew that cowboys were such a bunch of pussies.

In other shows, we get commentaries lamenting the advance of LGBTQI+ tolerance. In Tulsa, it’s monologues from Sly, shocked by the unfamiliar world he has rejoined after a lengthy bid in prison. In Lioness, it comes from a Mexican drug kingpin.

In all of these shows, the country is seriously screwed, but it’s inescapable. Anyone in any sort of dissenting position is lampooned as a clown. In Yellowstone, the young environmental activist ends up sleeping with the aged Costner. As rotten as everything is, nobody is going to change anything.

The upshot is that Taylor Sheridan hates America.