Yahoo Lifestyle 1923: Death Comes for the Duttons in Season 2’s Penultimate Episode — Read Episode 6 Recap
It would seem that Taylor Sheridan and everyone involved in making 1923 is done with giving us glimmers of hope. Because after last week’s episode ended on a (for this show) lighter note, putting Spencer on a train that might bring him home to Montana, that trajectory — much like the train! — stops dead in its tracks in Sunday’s hour.
And then it backs up and runs over two characters, leaving us to grieve their lifeless bodies. Next week’s finale is going to HURT, isn’t it?
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Read on for the highlights — and the death toll — of “The Mountain Teeth of Monsters.”
ALL HANDS TO YOUR STATIONS! | The poultry coop has been repaired, Cara has a line on a chicken dealer, and she’s sick of beans being the main source of protein at every one of the family’s meals. Zane thinks he can go riding again, though it’s only been a week since his DIY brain surgery. Elizabeth has a case of the giggles. This is what’s going on as Jake looks fondly around his dining room table and realizes that, with the addition of Zane and his family, every seat is filled for the first time since before the war. “I wasn’t sure you noticed,” he says softly to Cara. “I noticed,” she replies, smiling.
Just then, a car pulls up in front of the house; it’s Sheriff McDowell with news that Spencer is on his way home — and that Whitfield probably knows, given how much switchboard operators like to talk about what they overhear. The domestic calm from the dinner table is gone as Jake tries to figure out how soon his nephew will arrive and the best method for intercepting him before Whitfield does. “Cooler heads, Jacob!” McDowell yells, to no avail. “If Whitfield finds out, he’ll kill him, Bill,” Jake says. “And if he does, I swear to God, I will burn his f—kin’ house to the ground with him in it!”
Jake strategizes which of his men will be stationed where; he’s going to the station, and he wants Jack to stay home and protect Cara and Elizabeth. “Bring him home, and bring yourself home. Promise,” Cara tells her husband, who says he can’t promise. “You’re gonna make it, or I’m riding with you,” she pushes. “I promise I’ll try,” he replies, but that’s not good enough. “In 56 years, you’ve never broken your word to me. I don’t expect today to be any different,” she says. He promises, and I love how even with this heavy, terrible thing happening, Harrison Ford sneaks in a little smile to show us how entertained Jake still is by his spunky wife. They embrace, and he leaves with the men.
Elsewhere, Banner rounds up Whitfield’s thugs and gives them a clear directive: “Get to the train station. If this Spencer Dutton steps off, put a hole in him.” And after they’ve done away with Spencer, he adds, “we kill the whole lot of them.” Then, for reasons I can’t discern, Banner later comes by Whitfield’s house to… tell him that Spencer is a war hero? Or is it to give the show a reason to show boobs/dive back into whatever it’s trying to do with its Whitfield-is-a-sadist storyline? Yeah, no, it’s definitely the latter.
Lindy has her frightened new ladyfriend, Mabel, pantsless and in a sort of stockade-thing, tied to the bed, when she brings Whitfield into the bedroom. He orders her to engage in some play that feels highly non-consensual, given how the captive blonde is panting in fear. “If she will surrender her body to you,” he says, sitting down to watch, “then you can make her do anything.” Lindy is really getting into her task as Banner arrives; Whitfield invites him into the room, and Banner does his best to ignore the writhing and spanking as he tells his boss about Spencer’s imminent arrival. Whitfield’s all “history is written by the victors” or some BS, and by that point, the Scotsman has had enough. “That’s someone’s daughter,” he says, offended on Mabel’s behalf, as Lindy takes a leather paddle to the young woman’s backside. “That she is,” Whitfield agrees placidly, “and if her mother were here, I’d do the same to her.”
TEONNA’S TRAGEDY CONTINUES | That sad goodbye Teonna and Pete had in the previous episode turns out to be their last: The gunshot we heard at the end of Episode 5 was from Marshal Kent’s gun, and it meant the end of Pete. Renaud is angry that Kent keeps killing indiscriminately, and he’s done. “Your path is the walkway to perdition, and I shall not walk it with you,” the priest says, seemingly having grown a conscience on the road. Or maybe not? Because when Kent tells him to go eff himself, Renaud shoots him three times, killing him right then and there.
Runs His Horse and Teonna worry when Pete doesn’t return to them that evening. The next morning, circling vultures lead them to the spot where Pete and Kent’s bodies lie. “He gave his life to free you,” Runs His Horse tells Teonna as she sobs. “Now, we go home.” Little does he know: Father Renaud is right. on. their. heels.
The evil priest sneaks up on them while they’re sleeping. Runs His Horse tries to grab for his gun, but Renaud shoots him first. Then, with a gun trained on Teonna, Renaud tries to get the girl to confess her sins before he kills her. But she screams at him that she’s not sorry for anything she’s done. “Then to the devil with you!” he yells, pulling the trigger… but THANK GOD the gun doesn’t fire. Teonna uses the moment to grab a handful of coals from the fire, smash them in Renaud’s face, then stab him repeatedly with her knife. Once he’s down and moaning, she takes her father’s weapon and repeatedly fires into the priest’s body. Then she collapses over Runs His Horse, who is no longer alive, and screams as she cries.
JACK’S LAST MISTAKE | Elizabeth and Cara are spending a sleepless night at the ranch when Zane pops in with some bad news: Jack rode off to Livingston, alone, to meet up with Jacob. A worried Cara grouses that her great-nephew is a “stupid boy,” and that bears out: Jack is on the road, alone, when Banner’s men — who are also livestock agents — intercept him. He thinks they’re friendly. So he’s not on guard at all when Clyde shoots Jack right off his horse, then steps down and kills him with a second bullet. The two men drag Jack’s body (and his furry pants!) off into the trees, then head into town to wait for Spencer.
THE COLD ACTUALLY BOTHERS ME QUITE A LOT, ANYWAY | Spencer’s train, like Alex’s, is delayed because of a massive snow drift. He books a new ticket from Sioux Falls to Billings, which will take a while but not as long as waiting for the drift to be cleared.
Elsewhere, Alex regales her new companions, Paul and Hillary, with the story of her adventures so far. “That’s the most fantastic thing I’ve ever heard,” Paul observes when she wraps her story. Alex is still super bummed that the snowdrift has halted her westward progress: “I’ve overcome everything else,” she says, “but these acts of God are annoyingly effective.” Good news, though: Paul a) has a car, and b) is the kind of rich who’s just bored enough to be hungry for a little road-trip adventure. He estimates that it’ll be a three-day drive, and both he and Hillary are very excited. “We journey the path of pioneers, in the name of lost love, soon to be found,” he says, which I shall now announce every time I squeeze into a ZipCar to visit my in-laws in Jersey.
The trio make their way toward Montana, with Paul teaching the ladies how to drive along the way. So many laughs! Fun Champagne toasts and wild horses on the run! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY FALL APART IN SPECTACTULAR FASHION?! Near Buffalo, Wyo., it starts to snow hard, and they stop for gas and chains for the tires. The shopkeeper the women chat with is surprised they’re going to the remote Emigrant, Mo., aka the name of the town on the postmark on Cara’s letters to Spencer. She suggests catching a train from Sheridan, instead, because there are precious few paved roads in that part of the country.
But the group soldiers on, with Alex wrapping herself in blankets in the backseat and Paul and Hillary nipping from a flask to try to stay warm. “Quite the adventure,” Paul whispers lightly to his wife, but they’re both clearly worried. “Quite indeed,” she says.
Spencer gets on a train bound for Deadwood, Sheridan (!) and all points west. That’s good, right? Know what’s SO, SO, SO BAD? Elsewhere in the snowy tundra, Alex wakes to find the car stopped, the gas tank on empty, Hillary frozen to death in the front seat and Paul’s corpse half-buried in the snow a short distance away. And then, just in case we didn’t feel despondent enough as the camera pulls back to show us Alex alone in a snowy hell that goes on forever, Elsa drops this banger of a voiceover:
“Earth is not a benign rock, condemned to endure countless little rapes from its inhabitants. It is a living, evolving, interactive being capable of wiping all existence by the simplest of wobbles on its axis. There have been five mass extinctions on this planet, where almost all life was eradicated, its occupiers cleansed from this place. It only stands to reason that a sixth one is coming.”
See you next week!
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? What hopes/fears do you have for next week’s finale? Hit the comments with your thoughts!
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