Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) is certainly the most feisty and ruthless offspring of John Dutton (Kevin Costner) in the popular Paramount television show “Yellowstone.” Among the Dutton children, Beth is probably the biggest wildcard among Jamie (Wes Bentley), Kayce (Luke Grimes), and Lee (Dave Annable). As there the sons of John tend to stay on his good side, Beth has no qualms about being exceptionally direct and brash towards their father. This tends to grant her a fair amount of fans and haters, depending on how one views the character.
Even Reilly is sometimes amazed at how the character interacts with her family and surroundings, and she has recently told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s hard to explain Beth or sum her up. I could talk about her for hours. She’s probably the most fascinating character I’ve ever played. In my brain, she certainly takes up a lot of space.” Reilly later added, “It took me a long time to access her and fully understand her. Many hours back in Season 1 before we started filming, I would just be on the phone with [creator Taylor Sheridan] listening to him. I have probably three notebooks full of notes about his vision of her and her history.” Now in Season 5, John Dutton has been elected Governor of Montana and installed Beth as Chief of Staff, though that hasn’t stopped Beth from doing what she does best — and that is starting violent fights. The latest brawl has caused quite the debate among “Yellowstone” fans.
Some Yellowstone fans were confused as to the nature of the bar fight scene
In Episode 3 of Season 5, titled “Tall Drink of Water,” one of the subplots involves Beth and Rip (Cole Hauser) headed out to a bar to celebrate a birthday. Unfortunately, one of the women at the bar decides to hit on Rip, which causes Beth to react with an explosive burst of anger, which is fairly typical for the character. Discussing this particular episode over on Reddit, one Reddit user asked how Beth could go from delivering political words to an outright drunken assault in less than five minutes, which caused u/Leather-Muffin-2601 to reply and say that Beth was running high on adrenaline from the previous conflict and dolling out a verbal beating, and that she was going to get in a fight regardless of where she was.
u/Corvus_Manufaktura also had some thoughts on this moment, and said, “To be fair, I kinda don’t know what Rip was thinking. Beth is the love of his life, and he just sets the other woman on her to see what happens? He’s known her all his life, he knew s*** was about to go down, maybe not so much as it did, but from how ‘all common sense and no nonsense’ he is, it was still pretty f****** stupid.” They continued, “The only way I can see it happening is as a moment of weakness/pride for him. He’s so happy to be able to show someone that ‘that’s my wife over there, she’s mine and I am her[s]’ that he forgets his common sense.” This highlights the divide in the opinion of “Yellowstone” fans, and these weren’t the only ones who had some very specific feelings about this particular “Yellowstone” moment.
Fans are divided on Beth’s behavior
Continuing the fan discussion on Reddit, u/mceggspert believed that the entire bar scene is low-hanging fruit for Beth, considering that they believe the character to be exceptionally predictable at this point in “Yellowstone.” This thought caused u/Beginning_Dog_6293 to respond and say that they think that this is actually an angle that Beth is playing, and they believe that this entire moment was actually part of Beth’s plan, although they aren’t entirely sure what for.
Others also agreed with this thought, with u/7ruby18 saying, “Since Rip KNEW it was a bad idea to go to the bar, and knowing how Beth is, he should have tried harder to keep that gal away from Beth. But no, he let her walk right into it. That’s two episodes in a row that Rip has made the wrong decision and they both could bite him in the a** in the future.” This statement caused u/ColdMoon89 to also speculate that this entire bar fight was more than just a simple jealous altercation and that it will have future ramifications.
u/beornn1 took this scene between Rip and Beth in a completely different direction and said that since Beth saw the other woman approach Rip and flirt, and had the roles been reversed, asked if people thought Rip would have behaved differently. They added, “No, Rip fed her to Beth because there was a price to be paid and he knew she’d demand it. It was that simple. Common sense or weakness or pride had nothing to do with it.” It does seem as if “Yellowstone” fans are divided on the nature of this bar fight in Season 5, with some thinking it fits the characters, others thinking it may be building towards something, and others believing that it was totally unnecessary.
