<em>Dutton Ranch</em> Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Texas Massacre

Spoilers below.

We’re not off to the smoothest start for Beth and Rip down in Texas. Bless them—they just wanted a fresh start after everything they’d endured back in Montana during Yellowstone! Still, I can’t say I’m complaining about the ensuing drama. It seems we’re all having fun watching along: Dutton Ranch is officially the biggest original series launch in Paramount+ history, beating out all of Taylor Sheridan’s other shows.

The fourth episode opens with the Dutton Ranch crew looking out over a group of sick-looking cows. Unfortunately, the foot-and-mouth-diseased cow Beth and Rip secured at the auction has indeed infected the rest of the herd. How the hell are they going to tackle this? Over at the house, Carter and Oreana are enjoying some morning-after cuddles when Beth walks in on them. (Awkward!) Beth, to my surprise, doesn’t yank Oreana out of Carter’s bed, but she does make it clear that Carter needs to be at school. (I actually gasped when Oreana backtalked to the Beth Dutton, saying Carter is old enough to decide his schedule for himself. Oh boy, Oreana has no idea who she’s dealing with here. But perhaps Beth can respect a backtalker.)

Beth drives Oreana home to the 10-Petal Ranch while giving her some words of warning: Fuck with Carter, and you’re fucking with Beth. (Ugh, she’s so mother.) Beth drops Oreana off at home and exchanges a few quick words with Beulah, who invites her in for reconciliation drinks. Beth declines, which is probably for the best because I still suspect Beulah—or at least someone in her family!—might be behind the foot-and-mouth situation! It would seem this rivalry between them won’t be coming to an end any time soon.

Once home, Oreana is struggling to roll a joint—Beulah, of course, helps her roll it effortlessly—and she gets a stern talking-to for traipsing around town and sleeping over at boys’ houses. As a consequence, Oreana will have a 10-Petal bodyguard following her around from now on, essentially stripping her of privacy and what little freedom she had left.

On Carter’s end of things, rather than go to school, he stops by a tool shop looking for a job. There, a cowboy named Dwight (Ray McKinnon) ends up hiring him to do some manual labor at his farm, although he can only offer “grub” as payment. Carter would rather be doing manual labor than reading Animal Farm, so he ends up getting kind of beer-drunk with Dwight as night falls, and after hauling bags around all day he gets to meet Dwight’s treasured pet: Xena the African leopard. Okay, Tiger King! (Xena does not belong in Texas, but I like her name.) After all that, Carter ends up getting a cash payment for his day’s work after all, and he leaves Dwight’s to meet up with Oreana for a date night that Beth herself suggested. Sadly, Oreana’s attempt to sneak off to meet Carter fails when her new bodyguard intercepts her driving off the ranch.

Over at Everett’s, he’s tending to a horse and minding his own business when he’s asked to swoop in for an emergency at the 10-Petal Ranch. Apparently, a horse is going into labor and Beulah’s regular vet is out of town. He reluctantly agrees to this drop-in appointment as a one-time courtesy, only to arrive at 10-Petal to find Beulah sipping a drink…with no horse emergency in sight. Turns out, the pregnant mare was just a ruse to get Everett to stop by for a whiskey and, maybe, a booty call.

Beulah tells Everett about Rob-Will being back in rehab (third time’s the charm, she hopes), and Everett gets strangely concerned that Chet won’t be able to handle being the foreman of such a large ranch. Everett’s interest and concern do suggest that he and Beulah had more than just a casual fling back in the day, but things seem to have fallen apart after Everett lost his son Levi. He shares a touching story about being unable to cut down the tire swing in his yard because it’s a visual reminder of Levi, who used to play on it. “We got too many demons to be good for each other,” he tells Beulah, just as things start to get a bit heated between them.

Before anything gets spicy, Everett leaves the ranch, and Beulah begins to cry. Maybe it’s just Harris and Bening’s amazing on-screen chemistry talking, but I think these two should get back together; I’m rooting for them!

Later that night, a drunk Beulah spends some time with Joaquin. “I’m so fucking tired,” she says, clearly overwhelmed with the weight of leading the ranch on her own. It’s lonely at the top! Joaquin offers to take over the ranch on her behalf, but she can’t bring herself to give up control. Besides, she seems more interested in leaving the ranch to Oreana, for reasons that are yet to be explained.

Anyway, if you’re sensitive to animal violence on-screen, I would probably skip this next bit. Back at the Dutton Ranch, Rip, Zachariah, and Azul load up their guns while Beth pours them drinks: It’s time to shoot down the infected herd. It’s a horrible reality of ranching life, but there’s no cure for foot-and-mouth. The only option is to cull. The shooting begins, and while the camera remains tight on Rip’s face as he aims and fires at each individual cow, the violence is still disturbing. Rip, Beth, and the rest of the team look absolutely defeated by the end of the massacre. So, what now? Maybe some revenge?

Earlier, Beth had tracked down how she and Rip ended up letting Patient Zero into the herd. As it turns out, the infected bull’s medical records were forged, so it’s time for the Duttons to pay a little visit to the broker who ripped them off. Rip ends up tossing this man around his trailer while Beth smokes a cigarette and keeps watch outside. Rip warns him never to come back into town as he lights his trailer on fire; it explodes as the couple walk away. I love these baddies. This town better wake up and realize they can’t mess with this couple without consequences—but is the broker really the end of the road here? As I’ve said, I think there could be a deeper conspiracy going on…

By the end of the episode, Carter realizes Beth wanted him out for a date night so that he wouldn’t have to see them killing off the herd. In her mind, it was a motherly instinct to protect him against that trauma, but in his eyes, he feels infantilized, manipulated, and left out. Beth seems to realize she was wrong to lie to him, despite her good intentions—we have to remember her mother died when she was young and she no longer has a father, so she’s really doing the best she can to raise and care for Carter.

The episode concludes with Rip making a call to Everett to confirm they’ve killed off the herd and Beth pouring herself (yet another) drink. Where do we go from here? Considering the herd was their main source of income, it feels like the ranch will need a real Hail Mary to survive whatever’s next.