Why Does Kevin Costner Have to Use Such Salty Language on Yellowstone?

By Dolores G., Age 73
Paramount Plus Subscriber Since April

I’ll be honest, I just got “the streaming” a few weeks ago. My grandson Liam gifted me something called Paramount Plus, which, near as I can tell, is television from the cloud. The cloud! Can you believe it? We used to avoid clouds because they meant bad weather, and now they’re delivering gritty dramas directly to my living room like some sort of digital milkman.

Anyway, the first show I decided to watch was Yellowstone because everyone at my church book club keeps whispering about it like it’s scandalous. And boy, were they right. I thought it was going to be a nice Western, maybe something like Bonanza with better hats. But from the very first episode, Kevin Costner opened his mouth and out flew a string of language that could peel paint off a barn.

Now, I’m no prude. I’ve lived through three wars, four husbands, and one time I accidentally attended a burlesque show thinking it was Riverdance. I’ve seen some things. But I draw the line at Mr. Costner, a man I trusted after Field of Dreams, walking around a ranch shouting F-words like they’re cattle he needs to round up.

I don’t remember him talking like that when he built a baseball field for ghost men. In fact, not once did a spirit walk out of that corn and say, “Is this heaven? No? Well then f— me sideways, let’s play some damn baseball.” And yet here he is, stomping around Montana, cussing out ranch hands and business partners like a sailor who just lost a poker hand.

And it’s not just him. Everyone on this show swears. The women, the children, the livestock handlers. One man even cursed at a horse. A horse! That poor animal didn’t deserve that kind of verbal abuse just because it spooked at a helicopter. I had to pause the episode and do a word search in the Bible just to center myself.

Whatever happened to shows where people said things like “Gosh darn it” or “Heavens to Betsy”? These new phrases are so violent. “Rip his throat out” this, “shove it up your whatchamacallit” that. There was a time when rugged men got their point across with a glare and a well-timed “You better skedaddle.” Now it’s “F this land,” “F your brand,” “F the entire Bureau of Land Management.” I’m not even sure that last one was metaphorical.

I’ll keep watching, of course. The story’s very gripping, and the man who plays Rip could chop wood on my patio anytime, no cussing required. But I’ll be watching with the subtitles on and the volume low, just in case Marv comes back from his fishing trip early and thinks I’ve joined some kind of cowboy cult in the cloud.

So, to the creators of Yellowstone, if you’re reading this — and I suspect you are, because this article is now also in the cloud — I respectfully ask you to clean it up a bit. Kevin Costner doesn’t need to swear to command respect. All he needs is a good hat and maybe a meaningful glance across a prairie. That’s how we did it in my day, and frankly, it worked just fine.