Nailed it. The conveniently located towns, parks and ranches bothered me as well - this also happened with the show Longmire! I also wonder how many long-time family ranches in Montana have helicopters.
For all the commentary, and even actual data, on the damagre done by the Internet and social media, I have a hard time not thinking that television was the turning point.
Fun read! I also thought the characters' frequent trips to "town" were extremely unrealistic. I live in Moran WY; long drives are the norm here too. I found it difficult to
" like" any of the characters... no moral compass!
I've never watched, other than a few scenes on YouTube. It's always struck me as The Godfather with cowboy hats, though lacking Coppola's attention to realism and authenticity.
Btw, Montana geographic scale has been on my mind too. In my column this week I briefly described the first time I drove from Hamilton to Red Lodge, noted wearily the distance, then realized I was only halfway to the Dakotas.
Well said. I was surprising to learn from Sam Western (a subscriber here), in his book The Spirit of 1889, that Powell made a speech to the North Dakota constitutional convention.
As a Montanan by marriage and a lucky multi-visitor to the Great Falls-Neihart metro area, my wife and I lasted about 20 minutes into the debut episode in 2018. The characters were straight out of Hollywood's huge warehouse of awful, contrived and unlikely humans that, as John said, we have been watching for 100 years. The few glimpses of Montana were not enough to keep us watching. I'm sure 'Yellowstone's' depiction of Montana, however compacted, was better than the Montana that starred in 2021's terribly over-rated POS, 'The power of the dog.' It not only wasted $40 million and the talents of a bunch of excellent actors, it was entirely filmed in New Zealand.
Thanks for your superb commentary on the shrinkage of Montana. In my quarter-century in Montana, I headed three nonprofits serving the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as chairman or equivalent. Each required much auto travel over, through, along, and around the Ecosystem's 22 million acres. Thus did I gain an appreciation for the area's vastness and diversity--and nothing being close to anything else. One year I was stopped or diverted by seven winter events (snow, blizzard, ice), one wildfire, one flood, and one mudslide. At the time I was furious. In retrospect, it was an experience perhaps unique in all the world.
Nicely wriitten article. Only took part of a couple episodes for me to see the program was just another soap opera with pretty disgusting badass characters not representative of Montana.
The quickness of the trip to and from Pryor and the Pryor range is another example of that lack of scale. At least it is a Crow area--and in fact the closest part of their present-day lands to Yellowstone NP and to Bozeman, as you well know. And what, 4-5 hours one-way from "the Ranch" to Pryor?
Yellowstone violates reality in many ways, much to the detriment of Montana.
Nailed it. The conveniently located towns, parks and ranches bothered me as well - this also happened with the show Longmire! I also wonder how many long-time family ranches in Montana have helicopters.
For all the commentary, and even actual data, on the damagre done by the Internet and social media, I have a hard time not thinking that television was the turning point.
Fun read! I also thought the characters' frequent trips to "town" were extremely unrealistic. I live in Moran WY; long drives are the norm here too. I found it difficult to
" like" any of the characters... no moral compass!
I've never watched, other than a few scenes on YouTube. It's always struck me as The Godfather with cowboy hats, though lacking Coppola's attention to realism and authenticity.
Btw, Montana geographic scale has been on my mind too. In my column this week I briefly described the first time I drove from Hamilton to Red Lodge, noted wearily the distance, then realized I was only halfway to the Dakotas.
Don't just tease us! Do you have a link?
https://flatheadbeacon.com/2025/04/23/states-that-make-no-sense/
Well said. I was surprising to learn from Sam Western (a subscriber here), in his book The Spirit of 1889, that Powell made a speech to the North Dakota constitutional convention.
As a Montanan by marriage and a lucky multi-visitor to the Great Falls-Neihart metro area, my wife and I lasted about 20 minutes into the debut episode in 2018. The characters were straight out of Hollywood's huge warehouse of awful, contrived and unlikely humans that, as John said, we have been watching for 100 years. The few glimpses of Montana were not enough to keep us watching. I'm sure 'Yellowstone's' depiction of Montana, however compacted, was better than the Montana that starred in 2021's terribly over-rated POS, 'The power of the dog.' It not only wasted $40 million and the talents of a bunch of excellent actors, it was entirely filmed in New Zealand.
Thanks for your superb commentary on the shrinkage of Montana. In my quarter-century in Montana, I headed three nonprofits serving the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as chairman or equivalent. Each required much auto travel over, through, along, and around the Ecosystem's 22 million acres. Thus did I gain an appreciation for the area's vastness and diversity--and nothing being close to anything else. One year I was stopped or diverted by seven winter events (snow, blizzard, ice), one wildfire, one flood, and one mudslide. At the time I was furious. In retrospect, it was an experience perhaps unique in all the world.
Nicely wriitten article. Only took part of a couple episodes for me to see the program was just another soap opera with pretty disgusting badass characters not representative of Montana.
The quickness of the trip to and from Pryor and the Pryor range is another example of that lack of scale. At least it is a Crow area--and in fact the closest part of their present-day lands to Yellowstone NP and to Bozeman, as you well know. And what, 4-5 hours one-way from "the Ranch" to Pryor?