The Energy Absurdity of the Week: Ruminations on The Energy Politics of 'Yellowstone'

One scene in Episode 6 or 7 - I forget which - of Season 5 of Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” series begins with a home starting to shake and rattle in what appears to be an earthquake. I looked at the little wifey and said, “it has to be fracking.” But it turned out that, for once in the past dozen years - since the climate alarm lobby’s campaign to demonize hydraulic fracturing began - my assumption was wrong.

It turned out that all the shaking and rattling was caused by three big Sikorsky transport choppers flying at low altitude directly over the house. Those choppers were bringing a group of “Secret Service” personnel outfitted like a Los Angeles SWAT team who landed on the local reservation and immediately started shooting every stray dog in sight with AR-15s in preparation for a surprise visit by an un-identified “President”, whom the lead character played by Kevin Costner refers to as “that idiot” in a later episode. We all know who that president is, given the episode’s year of airing.

Well, hey, at least it wasn’t a frac job, I thought.

Give Sheridan credit - he at least has tried to stay away from Hollywood’s most tiresome and lazy tropes in his plot lines, which hasn’t prevented them from jumping the proverbial shark from time to time, but has at least kept them somewhat entertaining. There was a period of time, from about 2010 through about 2016, when literally every drama, and even some really bad comedies, on network television felt obligated to develop plots involving ridiculous scenarios about frac jobs destroying cities and killing hundreds of people. I’m at least grateful to Sheridan for avoiding jumping those particular Great Whites.