The Dutton family on Paramount’s “Yellowstone” are missing a lot — warmth, empathy, and understanding to name a few. It is also easy to see that the Dutton ranch is missing a woman’s touch. Though Beth (Kelly Reilly) officially moves back to the homestead during the series premiere, the series isn’t exactly swimming in female representation. This discrepancy is partly because John’s (Kevin Costner) wife died some years prior.
Explored in Season 1, Episode 3, Gretchen Mol plays Evelyn, the matriarch of the Dutton family, who dies in an accident both brutal and tragic. While on a horseback ride with her young children at the time, Beth (Kylie Rogers) and Kayce (Rhys Alterman), Evelyn chides her daughter for spooking the horses. They can sense her timidness, and she needs a firmer hand to control them. In what is almost an act of fate, that day Evelyn falls from her horse. Even crueler, the horse falls on top of her and crushes her to death. In her final moments, she — in no uncertain terms — proves that Kayce is her favorite child. She blames Beth for the circumstances and orders her and her alone to find help. Barely a teenager at the time, Beth tries her best to get help, but her mother dies regardless.
Beth never recovers from the personal tragedy
Gretchen Mol only appears in one other episode as Evelyn, where she offers more maternal comfort to Beth. But it is hard to forget that she traumatized her daughter with no thought of how it would affect her in the future. Evelyn places undue responsibility on a child afraid of horses and Beth never gets over it. Well into her adulthood, the daughter of a cattle ranching empire still can’t be near them. And one can argue that Evelyn’s brusque and unempathetic relationship with her daughter turns Beth into the monster she is today.
Without a doubt, Beth has done some of the worst things on “Yellowstone.” She says what she thinks without fearing the consequences. She smokes, drinks, and blackmails to her heart’s content. And if her hard-living lifestyle doesn’t appear to be a mirror of how Evelyn treated her, viewers can’t deny that Beth’s guilt is crippling. On the anniversary of her mother’s death, Beth is flabbergasted when John brings home a lady companion. Beth accuses her father of being disrespectful, but he makes the decent point that he doesn’t want to wallow in grief on the saddest day of his life. A good two decades after the event, and Beth still doesn’t allow herself any peace. She can be one of the more brutal characters, but it certainly started from somewhere.
