While this likely isn’t a universal truth, I feel safe in assuming that the Yellowstone coupling most beloved by fans has to be Cole Hauser’s Rip and Kelly Reilly’s Beth, and the case for that assumption is made every time they share a scene together. It may not be a relationship everyone would specifically want to be in, given the volatile behavior both characters are capable of, but it’s a delight to watch. Season 4 threw a wrench in the works by introducing Finn Little’s orphaned Carter as a potential dependent for Rip and Beth to care for in a quasi-parental style. Which naturally sparks the question: which character would be the better parent?
That’s precisely the question of the day for Yellowstone stars Jefferson White, Denim Richards and Ian Bohen, with a bonus off-season edition of Stories from the Bunkhouse. (Possibly tying into upcoming Mother’s Day celebrations, or possibly tying into nothing, and it happened just because Rip and Beth are awesome.) The western drama’s always hilarious stars set up a variety of different scenarios — such as “Who would you rather have as the chaperone at an 8th grade school dance?” — and gave their thoughts on whether they’d rather deal with Rip or Beth in each instance. To be expected, it’s a total hoot, and makes it clear that anyone being raised by those two will have a stress-laden childhood. Check out the video below!
At only five minutes, this edition of Stores from the Bunkhouse basically justified its potential as a standalone game show of sorts: Who Would You Rather? And let’s get all three of these guys to host, also, and to serve as the contestants. And then everybody wins. The best kind of game show.
For those unable to watch the “Beth or Rip: Parenting Edition” video (and my sympathies go out to you), the trio wastes no time in getting to the nitty-gritty, with the first scenario asking who they’d rather have “the birds and the bees talk” with. The consensus? Beth is going to make that sex convo a lot more fun and interesting, but for someone like Denim Richards who isn’t “trying to have a whole conversation” about it, Rip’s cut-and-dry approach is ideal. And for what it’s worth, Cole Hauser totally agrees with Rip’s take-no-shit stance on Carter.
As amusing as it already is just to ponder some of these debate topics by themselves, it’s so damned funny to hear Jefferson White, Denim Richards and Ian Bohen’s incredibly on-point answers. They may not watch the episodes as obsessively as some fans do at home, but they actually live in this world for months out of the year, so their insights — read as: killer impressions of their co-stars — are worthy of appreciation.
Such as White’s take on Rip hearing that someone failed a math test:
We don’t do the Pythagorean theorem on this ranch! . . . If you’re going to calculate the acute angle of a triangle, you calculate it with me! . . . I was gonna do more geometry jokes, but that one, we barely got over the finish line with. [Laughs.]
Other topics include who would be more strict about a kid watching TV (Rip doesn’t have any time for TV), who’d be better to go clothes shopping with, who gives the better motivational speech, and so on. To go back to the aforementioned school dance chaperone question, the trio unanimously declared Rip would be the better choice, because it automatically meant no one was getting pregnant at that dance, while they think Beth would spike the punch and talk people into taking their clothes off. As White put it, “everybody’s getting pregnant” if Beth is in charge.
Barring a medical miracle, Beth isn’t actually able to have biological children with Rip, which is a huge source of contention between Kelly Reilly’s character and Wes Bentley’s Jamie Dutton, who set his unwitting sister up to be sterilized as a teenager. That simmering seething will likely boil over in Season 5, even though Jamie is technically under Beth’s thumb now, given her knowledge of him killing his own biological parent. Jamie was introduced to his own offspring in Season 4, thanks to the return of Katherine Cunningham’s Christina. But maybe Carter will be enough of a positive domestic influence that Beth will forget about Jamie’s past transgressions and forgi… Yeah, okay, that’ll never happen.
Yellowstone Season 5 is set to go into production very soon, with the hopes that the new episodes will debut in late summer, though early fall seems like a safer bet, to account for any unforeseen issues. While waiting, head to our 2022 TV premiere schedule to see what other new and returning shows will be popping up in the meantime.
