1883 western Drama- prequel to kevin Costner Yellowstone

[Knight of Heaven]

I have been watching 1883, after seen Yellowstone. (Yellowstone has several seasons already), and i do feel every scene where Kevin Costner is, he just steals it.

But i got to say it, 1883 has blew me away. Its even better then Yellowstone in my opinion. Both Shows are written by Taylor Sheridan, btw.

"A prequel to "Yellowstone," "1883" follows the Dutton family as they flee poverty in Texas and embark on a journey through the Great Plains to seek a better future in Montana." In the typical western theme, pioneers and the journey to the west
If you like westerns and drama, and shows along the line of deadwood and such, 1883 is for you. It is as Epic, as it is Brutal.


Sam Eliot is in this, as well and makes a great performance, Tim McGraw and his Wife Faith Hill surprisingly are amazing actors.

Isabel May a young 21 year old actress is a big surprise for me. She has good role, and shines in it.

While i already liked Yellowstone, i think 1883 so far has been better as writing is concerned. Also it didn't feel like you needed to watch Yellowstone before hand at all.







The Yellowstone flashback in the last season

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Im on episode 7 and im loving it so far.

[John Doe]

I don't like Yellowstone, I gave it a good chance because of the presence of K Costner but it is too much of a soap opera.

On the other hand Y1883 is really enjoyable, it focused a little too much on the girl lately, but damn good show so far.

[Halie Satanus]

Yep, really liking 1883.

Gritty without being overly graphic, good characters and some great dialogue. Elsa's narration is dam near poetic at times, if a bit brutalist. Did have to laugh at the 'Million Ways to Die in the West' similarities in the early episodes. 'Girl bitten by snake, guy falls under a wagon ect..

Couple of details I really like, guns are not super accurate and experienced killers always shot bodies to make sure they're dead, the show is pretty consistent with both. Also minor cameo's from some big name actors, Tom Hanks, Billy Bob Thornton, adds to the overall quality.

[Knight of Heaven]

I don't like Yellowstone, I gave it a good chance because of the presence of K Costner but it is too much of a soap opera.

On the other hand Y1883 is really enjoyable, it focused a little too much on the girl lately, but damn good show so far.

I agree, Yellowstone is quite soup operish, and sometimes over the top with the violence considering the modern context.

[Halie Satanus]

So that ended exactly as they said it would.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As endings go, this one hit hard. They kept dangling hope only to snatch it away.

Apparently there will be a sequel set in 1932 (prohibition/depression).

[Lord Thesaurian]

I agree, Yellowstone is quite soup operish, and sometimes over the top with the violence considering the modern context.

I actually watched 1883 first. Since season 5 of Yellowstone just wrapped, I recently got around to watching Yellowstone and I made it through season four within a few weeks. Quality television, and better than the prequel IMO.

Pros: Although heavily dramatized of course, I appreciated the way Yellowstone presents the fight to save the ranch as a fight to the death, because in reality, it can be. America’s famers and ranchers are nearly twice as likely to die by suicide compared to the occupational average. Modernity is killing my people the way it killed the natives, and the show does an interesting job of presenting this as a kind of karma, folding nicely into the 1883 continuity. They really knew how to get the water works going with this scene:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I remember growing up on a ranch, sometimes the boys from North Texas would bring the herds up to our land in the summers, and if I ever thought I knew how to work horses and cattle, the days spent with them reminded me I didn’t know jack. They were like gods among men. Ross may feel like nobody saw him, but I sure did. I traded it all for the big city, but I’ll always wish I could have been a cowboy.

Cons: The operatic levels of drama in Yellowstone are totally unnecessary and detract from the more simple and pure moments that make the show great. It becomes a kind of modern rural Game of Thrones, complete with high profile bombings, shootouts and assassinations, in which the federal government never seems to take any interest. Plus, routinely murdering people for something as banal as being a disgruntled ex employee undermines the central theme of defending tradition from nihilism. You can’t have everything, but these plot-hole-sized flaws unfortunately make the show good, not great in my opinion.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These drawbacks are less prominent in 1883 than in Yellowstone, if only because of the time period. However, what makes the latter superior is that it still has more substance to its story. 1883 is just as much of a soap opera, only without the engaging context. Sure, we find out how the Dutton family came to own such a massive ranch for so long, but this seems to establish 1883 as a mere chapter in a bigger and better story. Perhaps that’s all it was meant to be. Elsa’s monologues were actually quite nice, which is difficult to pull off in a pop culture where exposition is done to death. My favorite bit was where she describes my homeland from her perspective encountering it for the first time, as I’ve since moved away to the musky soup:

The air was different. The air at home is heavy, like a musky soup. Here it is light. With a strange scent of pollen and smoke, like burning flowers... It smelled wild. Untamed. It was beautiful… If "possible" can describe a feeling, that's how I felt. The whole world felt possible. And I was ready for it.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

The first few episodes were good because they had Sam Elliot and that basketball player and then they started focusing on the whore Elsa, which if this was real her parents would have beat her with a wooden spoon, until she did it again and got disowned or learned the error of her ways and went back to Jesus or something. I didn't even know what Yellowstone was but I watched 1883 because I saw Sam Elliot in it. I didn't really sign up for some liberated woman power fantasy set in 1883 but the BASED and REDPILLED conservative producers at Paramount were able to bait me.

Yellowstone and the Yellowstone franchise in general can be described as: woah this is so based, finally a strong male character, also yeah we love whiny Native Americans, muh personal responsibility, muh land ownership the American dream, hahahaha California is gay, woah cool gun fights muh Second Amendment, screw the government, taxation is theft, based takes on how the Iraq War was bad. I'm so Conservative.

This whole franchise is just bait for boomers and then subverted casually with small insertions of Liberalisms. I would have said subtle but this is far from subtle. I am amazed that people are running around the internet and social media calling this based just because they have some throwaway lines about California. When the rest is pretty blatant. But then again the Boomer generation was never that Conservative to begin with.

Not to mention the fact that this entire premise is pants on head mentally retarded. The feds would have raided this farm already, put Kevin Costner and his band of sociopaths in prison for life, which mind you his cowboys are willing to risk the chair for like $11 an hour, confiscated this property the size of most countries and either sold it to the highest bidder, gave it to the National Park, or divided it to build public works, and put his infuriatingly annoying psychotic daughter in jail for cooking the books and probably as an accessory to how ever many murders.

But for the record I do think that this shows us the social changes in the past 10 years. Notably a decline in Conservatism, greater amounts of Liberal thinking even among Conservatives, a disregard for state authority and corporations, and more varied and nuanced positions being espoused among the political spheres. Unlike before when there were basically just two or three positions, now there is an entire mosaic of complex, and in many cases strange political beliefs. Yellowstone being proof of this, but also that guy who made the Yellowstone franchise and its spiritual spinoff Tulsa King. I think his name is Taylor Sheridan.

But also frankly a desire from a large chunk of the population to disconnect from the increasingly politicized and literally gay outside world. Obvious when you compare Disney+ metrics, and Netflix, with Paramount+ then we can see the difference. Notice that in Yellowstone there isn't even a mention of LGBTQ2SXXXL mutations in any episode.

It almost seems like Montana is the boomer paradise that was America in the 1950's. You know, disregarding the fact that it is actually a terrible state to live in unless you happen to be one of those wealthy California or New York elites... huh wait a minute I almost forgot who owns Paramount. VIACOM WHICH IS MERGED WITH MTV FFS. These people obviously don't have a stake in these political narratives which they show to gullible boomers.

Or does anyone actually think that the guys running Paramount are literally self made cowboy millionaires like JR from Dallas or something. My question is how long before they start inserting more of these Liberal narratives into Yellowstone? I give it a season maybe. Considering how 1883 was subverted into being a little girl's empowerment fantasy, and 1923 is full of Liberalisms like muh WW1 PTSD, an obvious reference to an actual event that happened with the British Royal family (yeah that Alex girl is so trad, very based). The fact that the show has more sex and nudity than any of the others so far. You can really see them slowly turning that dial. Yellowstone went from a boomer power fantasy to basically just HBO in only a couple years.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

But what did I think about 1883 as a TV show, as a story, and as entertainment. I actually watched 1883 first and then watched Yellowstone and then 1923. I realized that almost everything in 1883 is a reference to Yellowstone. That isn't a bad thing, but I didn't really care about the easter eggs. Still knowing from Yellowstone what happens in the story made 1883 and 1923 kind of anti-climactic.

Okay well the one thing it really had going for it was like this "hyper realism" survivalist thing going. It reminds me of that one Seth McFarlane movie but actually done well. Plus the basketball player (whose name I keep forgetting) and Sam Elliot were really good in this. While I didn't like Tim McGraw's Dutton character his performance was good. Those three you can keep but Elsa went from redundant to painful, albeit it took about five episodes to reach that point. So I guess I enjoyed the first five or so episodes. Then gradually it descended into stupidity and poorly written nonsense so that they could reach their ham fisted conclusion.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Episode 1 - Quite possibly the best episode in the series. It pretty much has to be to get people to watch it. This episode is so good compared to the rest of the show that I have to wonder if it is written by the same person. Anyway this episode is basically just bait. Brutal as hell, it was awesome. ALTHOUGH that stupid as hell opening where they show what happens in a future episode then go back to the beginning. I hate when shows do this, ruins all of the tension. Maybe the single worst part in the show to be honest.

Episode 2 - Another good episode. Billy Bob as the legendary DEPUTY sheriff Courtright was epic. The dumbest part in this episode is when that one lady shot herself though. I think it was way too soon in the series. I get that these people don't like Christianity but this was so forced. At least let her die somewhere on the Oregon Trail and for a better reason.

Episode 3 - Pretty good again. I was watching this with other people and this is when they started complaining. They took issue that the settlers were being decimated so quickly in a montage. They thought it lacked finesse from a story telling perspective and didn't like that it felt so cheap. Personally I had no problem with this because the point was that life was cheap. To the unknowing pioneer anything could kill you whether it is rattlesnakes, cholera, starvation, dehydration, bandits, and so on. Then there was the part about stealing food and they didn't like that Sam Elliot was "simping for a gypsy" and said that his psychotic outburst when he threatened to shoot people had to do with his depressive personality. I didn't really have an issue with this because the point was that Sam Elliot had to keep them from trying to kill each other, and then put on the mad dog routine to scare them into submission. I really don't think it was his "give me a reason" bit due to his depression that was the point here. It was really that he had calculated that he had to nip the dissent in the bud before it escalated, and the fact that these immigrants from Europe could barely use a gun. This is the episode that everyone else quit but I kept going.

Episode 4 - Another decent episode. The intricacies of crossing a river with a wagon train were pretty fun. Personally I did this once on horse back. Even without a wagon, and with the river being lower than usual it is scary as hell. You don't know how deep it actually is, you don't know if a random current will knock you off and get your foot stuck on the saddle, or you hit your head on a rock, heck you don't even know if the horse will slip on a rock. Even with little rain and the river being lower than usual, at the crossing that is normally used, the water was still above my knees and about up to my waste while I was on the horse.

Episode 5 - Not a bad episode but Elsa was starting to get on my nerves. Given that plot point with Elsa the ending was kind of hilarious in a meta way. WTF was Elsa doing with those bandits though? It was her own fault.

Episode 6 - Not bad either. I like the suspense building up before the crossing. The quiet before the storm. Again though, Elsa's outburst was so friggin stupid.

Episode 7 - The beginning of the end for what could have been a great series. So Elsa is largely the focus here as you might have realized. The Comanche were cool, but why did Elsa rebound so quickly and why with a Comanche? I can't say that this is even remotely believable. I'm pretty sure her parents would have started beating her with a boot strap or a wooden spoon or something. Anyway any episode where Elsa is the focus is basically a throw away episode. Elsa survives ANOTHER bandit attack??? Plus the tornado part... dumb as hell. Any credibility that this was going to be a gritty hyper realistic show is gone. Yeah gritty and dark it was, but it was done rather arbitrarily.

Episode 8 - Bad episode. Elsa heavy. The crew makes some stupid decisions all around. They could have gone to Salt Lake City or something... I can't really figure out an in universe reason for why they were being so stupid. Just seems like the writers wanted it this way cause they wanted to create depression porn.

Episode 9 - A cool over the top, action packed, if not stupid as hell episode. So previously our heroes were being dumb and made awful decisions. Everyone in this episode starts doing even dumber things. Again Elsa being a complete Mary Sue.

Episode 10 - Can't tell if Elsa was being punished for being incompetent and too adventurous or if she is a complete Mary Sue and this episode was just ironic. Whole show and its premise are completely derailed. Ending is terrible; basically just depression porn. Dumb as hell episode. There was no reward for enduring ten whole episodes of this.

Some more thoughts:
-Tim McGraw is such a Mary Sue in this, screw Tim McGraw I came here to see Sam Elliot.

-The narration is so annoying. Make it stop! No one I was watching this with wanted to keep hearing Elsa narrating her weird thoughts in every episode. The dumbest part is that Elsa is still narrating in 1923... somehow.

-I'm 50/50 on the cameos. Some of them are cool. The Indian at the end who is in everything was cool (I remember he was in Dances With Wolves). But the one I could do without was Tom Hanks, which didn't matter to me and the actual scene he was in was very forgettable.

-The mother is underrated. She is way more competent than Elsa, is basically always right, yet Elsa is somehow correct and can do everything. Okay fine, Elsa is a competent woman. But she is also like 16 years old or something. A hyper competent liberated 16 year old girl who can wrangle cattle, survive tornadoes, and fight Indians. Come on now, what is this stupid . Muh Liberated Woman IN 1883... I thought Yellowstone was conservative?

-Would have been way better if they kept the story on its rails and did what needed to be done, where the story was going and how it was suppose to end. Instead of derailing the survivalist wagon trail story by focusing on Elsa's liberation and her being a whore, and then literally derailing it again by not even focusing on the wagon trail in the last episode.

-Sam Elliot's depression low key ruined his character. Completely unnecessary. Is it too much to ask for Sam Elliot to be a bad ass and not constantly be upstaged by Mary Sue Tim McGraw and his idiot daughter? Does every Dutton have magic blood or something that they are hyper competent? I mean they do this in Yellowstone as well. This is borderline elitist, but it is completely unbelievable. Tim McGraw's character from Tennessee is somehow more competent at surviving in the West than two Pinkertons who make the trip regularly? Really???

-Wondering how much of this is accurate. There was a TV movie on HBO called "The Quick and the Dead" also starring Sam Elliot, and a lot of the same survivalist tropes are used in that movie. Especially the bit about wagons and all that. I am wondering if they intentionally made a call back to that because Sam Elliot was also in it, or if there is some kind of master guide to surviving in the West that these actors use.

-Elsa ruined this show.

-This was actually better than Yellowstone and the fact that it had to tell a Yellowstone prequel story weighed this down considerably. I didn't even know it was Yellowstone when I was watching this and just assumed that it was a story about surviving on the wagon trail or something. But nope we had to service Yellowstone and have the backstory to that show instead.

-Yellowstone is kind of average, but 1923 was actually just plain bad. Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren carry that show. Their acting is great, but acting isn't the only thing we need to actually tell a good story. 1923 is basically just season bait, they don't resolve anything and just bait you into watching the next episode, until you end up watching the next season and then the season after that.

While Yellowstone is already too long and the writers just make up whatever they want instead of having the story make sense at all. Look I'm glad that Yellowstone doesn't have any of the gays or that it is full of boomerisms that your dad and your grandad always told you (ie "taxation is theft", "never trust big government", "pull yourself by your bootstraps bucko", "become the alpha lobster that you were always meant to be", "clean your room", and "don't do crystal meth") but it doesn't actually make the Yellowstoneverse that good or that well written. Besides the show is already subversive enough in that regard, like how they kill people and throw them into a ravine, or how basically everyone on the Dutton Ranch is a sociopath.

-In Conclusion: Yellowstone is average, 1923 is bad, 1883 is decent until it derails. Alhough I assume that most people will just consume it and not really think about it either way.