Who needs five seasons of Yellowstone when you can experience the smash-hit western in less than two minutes on TikTok?
The follies and foibles of television's First Family, the Duttons, makes for internet gold time and time again. But the latest Yellowstone content to go viral is an NSFW TikTok parody masterpiece in three parts, with one user commenting, "i love yellowstone but this is painfully accurate 😂." Let's break it down.
Created by Dave and Veep actress Taylor Owen, the triptych of TikTok videos stars Owen as a drunken, faux-fur-wearing Beth Dutton (played by Kelly Reilly in the show). Fellow actor James Neal (Stay With Me) plays a host of Yellowstone men, including John, Kayce, Jamie, and a wimpy Rip Wheeler. All of Neal's impressions are inspired, but his take on Kevin Costner's gravelly patriarch is especially convincing.
In the first video, captioned "Yellowstone in 30 seconds," Neal's John Dutton gives Owen's Beth a spot-on Season 1 pep talk, and it's set to the show's sweeping score by Brian Tyler. The land is all he cares about, plus "you [Beth], Kayce... f*** Jamie." Owen's flask-gripping Beth agrees, saying Jamie is "about as useless as ringworm on a horse's a**." Neal reappears as a sweet, spineless Rip Wheeler infatuated with Beth: "Gee, honey, you say the darndest things."
@taylorgraysen The horse was a paid extra #yellowstonetv #theduttons #television
Owen and Neal's followup video, which garnered nearly 9 million views, is a send-up of the show's inciting incident — a land dispute — and its tendency to devolve into drawn-out instrumental melodrama. Beth sucker-punches a land developer ("Why don't you f****** purchase this!") and Kayce delivers a fatal gunshot blow to the corporate interloper, sending him to the famed Train Station. Neal strums a guitar and sings "Now is the time for this show to turn into a five-minute music video" as Owen's scary-accurate Monica Dutton slides down a tree and cries.
@taylorgraysen Replying to @breealatorre3 We got cowboy hats for this one #yellowstonetv #theduttons #television
The third and final video in the series is pure Yellowstone chaos. Beth doesn't want Rip going to the grocery store because other women will be there, but Rip works alongside Teeter, a female ranch hand, every day. (Owen's Teeter wears exceedingly low-rise jeans and shouts nonsense as she attempts to climb a gravel hill.) John Dutton gives Rip some words of advice in the form of an incoherent farm-life analogy: "Love is like a horse's tuft that gets clogged and the horseshoe don't fit and it leads you down a road that never ends. That's just cowboy livin'." The video ends with a shot of Teeter urinating standing up and hocking a loogie at the same time.
@taylorgraysen Replying to @cadenmcdonald54 Beth and Rip fight #yellowstonetv #theduttons #television
Despite having a laugh at Yellowstone's expense, Owen said repeatedly in the comments that she made the videos "out of love" for the show.
But, really, can we get these TikToks on display at The Guggenheim, or what?
