Too Much Taylor, Too Many Horses?

The penultimate episode of Yellowstone’s fifth and final season included a few choice scenes with one of the show’s minor recurring characters – reining pro Travis Wheatley’s (played with aplomb by show creator Taylor Sheridan). The scenes plays out at Bosque Ranch (also the name of Sheridan’s personal spread and production company). But for some fans it was too much Taylor for their liking, and too much “horse show”.

One person posted on X, “15 mins of story and scenes wasted with watching Taylor Sheridan showboat on his own show, partying and just doing his thing.”

“I definitely do NOT watch #Yellowstone for Taylor Sheridan. The penultimate episode did not do its thing,” wrote another disgruntled fan.

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Yet another tossed in their two cents, “Weird flex that Taylor Sheridan took 2 years to write these final episodes THAT CENTERS ON HIM! We don’t care about Travis. Hopefully he put his ego aside for the very last episode… so the viewers can actually see the Dutton family and not all this horse show.”

As a lifelong horsewoman and a massive Yellowstone fan, I laughed at the fan outrage. It seems to me that the viewers who are complaining are not horse owners and couldn’t see that Sheridan was giving them an inside scoop of how the horse biz functions in all its dysfunction.

If you haven’t seen the episode yet, here’s what happened. Beth Dutton (Kelly O’Reilly) needs money to save the ranch and wants Travis to sell the ranch’s top cutting horse stallion. Beth’s husband Rip sets us up by warning her in a teasing manner that Travis is likely to hit on her, despite her being married. “Honey, he’s a horse trainer, he’d try to (use your imagination here) in front of me if he could. Horse trainers are like Corriente bulls.”

Warned, Beth walks in on a strip poker game hosted by Wheatley and engages in brief girl-talk with his girlfriend Sadie played by supermodel and equestrian Bella Hadid. Hadid recently took part in a charity cutting horse competition in Texas hosted by Sheridan, and she appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene during an auction sequence on the episode.

Following the lurid poker scene, Beth and Sadie watch Travis put the cutting horse stud through his paces in front of cheesy South American prospective buyers (one is even wearing a Gucci track suit). The feisty Beth pushes Sadie on her choice of beau, saying, “I have to ask because I’m (insert expletive of choice) fascinated, he’s probably the most arrogant man that I have ever met in my entire life. Condescending. Misogynistic. Also 25 years older than you. Can you please explain the appeal?”

With a straight face and eyes never once leaving Travis on the stud she answers simply, “Have you ever seen him ride before?” We cut to quick but intense shots of Travis riding that stallion, to which Beth responds with raised brow. “Okay. Yeah, I get it.”

No matter the discipline there are countless examples of rude, arrogant and misogynistic older horsemen out there and just as many young women happy to “watch them ride.”

After his ride, Travis has enlisted a group of fake buyers to push up the price of the horse by $1 million. Beth later balks at Travis’s 10% commission and wants to know if the buyers got cheated. Another cowboy admits, “Travis is tricky. But a horse is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. There’s a lot of luck. It’s like lottery tickets – if lottery tickets bucked.”

Like the “what do women see in horsemen” quip, these scenes also made me chuckle. As anyone who has ever spent time in the horse industry among professional dealers, trainers, coaches and the like will know (and that’s pretty much anyone reading this), the character of Travis is spot on. Ethics are not something the horse world is known for – whether that’s a shady horse deal or scandalous trainers – so when Travis dupes a bunch of rich jerks into overpaying for the horse, it feels more like a documentary than a scripted drama.

All to say, for horse people, the horses are one of the appeals of the show and Sheridan is a real cowboy and horseman who clearly knows the industry, especially as owner of the 6666 Ranch.

And finally, the sour grapes thrown at Sheridan isn’t really fair: the man started his career as an actor (Sons of Anarchy, for one) and after delivering superb television for five years across several shows, he has earned the right to be a bit self-indulgent.