The '1923' Misery Index: A Real Life Death Contributes to The Premiere's Misery

1923 is back for a second season because we somehow survived an entire month without a new Taylor Sheridan series. 1923, if you need a refresher, is the Yellowstone prequel starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Despite its flaws, it’s the second-best Sheridan series (after Landman). But like 1883, it is miserable. I’ve been watching The Walking Dead — a show once labeled “misery porn” — since 2010, and it has nothing on 1923, which often feels less like a show and more like a catalogue of human suffering.

Here’s the briefest of season one recaps: Jacob and Cara Dutton (Ford and Mirren) run the Dutton ranch, which will one day become the setting of Yellowstone. A lot of bad shit went down last season, and now the Duttons are on the verge of losing their ranch for non-payment of taxes, which would hand it over to Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton) and his henchman, Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn). They send for Spencer Dutton (the newly famous Brandon Sklenar of It Ends with Us), a lion hunter in Africa. Spencer, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Alex (Julia Schlaepfer), a high-society Brit, and the two of them set off for America. Along the way, they nearly die a half-dozen times before being separated when Alex’s ex — during a fight with Spencer — goes overboard on a ship. Spencer is blamed, taken off the vessel, and left stranded.

Meanwhile, Teonna Rainwater, a Native girl, escapes from one of those Catholic boarding schools for Indigenous children, basically state-sanctioned torture camps. But Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché) and his men are hellbent on tracking her down and killing her.

That’s the short version. Now, here’s the catalog of miseries in the second season premiere:

—- The Duttons in Montana — Jacob, Cara, Jack (Darren Mann), and his wife, Michelle (Elizabeth Strafford) — are barely surviving the winter after selling off most of their livestock just to pay last year’s taxes. Now they have to figure out how to pay this year’s. They’re living on stew and stale bread. Jacob has a tax hearing looming.

Honestly, they get off easy in this episode. Michelle is nearly mauled by a mountain lion before Cara shoots it, but other than that, they’re just waiting for the inevitable bad news at the hearing.

—- Donald Whitfield. Ugh. This guy again. Sheridan’s go-to shortcut for villainy is abusing women, and Whitfield is no exception. We don’t see much of him in the premiere — just enough to remind us that he’s the absolute worst. He and his girlfriend keep a woman chained up in a closet and bring her out only to force her into their sadistic sex games. Mostly, she just gets beaten. If she doesn’t show enough enthusiasm for her nonconsensual suffering, she gets beaten some more. “If you try really hard,” the girlfriend tells the sex slave, “we’ll give you a surprise.” I promise you that she will not like the surprise.

—- Separated from Alex, Spencer is working on an Italian ship, shoveling coal to earn passage back to America. There, he meets a younger Italian boy, Luca (Andy Dispensa), who is being raped below deck by an older, stronger shipworker. Spencer beats the hell out of the man. When the Italian police on board confront him, Spencer tells them the man was raping Luca. They shoot the man dead on the spot and then force Spencer to clean up the blood.

But hey, there’s a glimmer of something resembling good news? Spencer talks Luca out of killing himself, and Luca, in turn, starts running bets on Spencer’s fights against other men to raise enough money for Spencer to travel from New York to Montana once they arrive in America.

—- Marshal Kent (Jamie McShane) and Father Renaud, still hunting Teonna, come across a group of Natives, shoot two of them, and threaten to kill a small child just to terrorize them into revealing Teonna’s whereabouts. They don’t know where she is.

Teonna — who endured unspeakable brutality last season — is miraculously spared any fresh violence this episode. She even falls in love with Pete Plenty Clouds (Jeremy Gauna). They learn they’re in Texas, hopefully far from Marshal Kent and Father Renaud. But let’s be real: this is 1923. Teonna’s happiness is on borrowed time. She’ll probably have Pete Plenty Clouds’ baby (since the Rainwater surname persists in Yellowstone), but Pete himself? He’s doomed to be killed in some grotesque, nightmarish fashion.

I should note here that Jeremy Gauna replaced Cole Brings Plenty in the role of Pete. Brings Plenty, the nephew of Mo Brings Plenty, an actor and consultant on Yellowstone, died last year at the age of 27. He was found dead a week after he was reported missing; he left after being involved in an alleged domestic violence incident. His cause of death remains under court-ordered seal due to the wishes of the family, but no foul play is suspected.

— Alex is back in England, miserable, and hatching a desperate plan. With the help of her best friend Jennifer (Jo Ellen Pellman), she pawns her jewelry to afford a second-class ticket to America. She manages to escape, but she’ll be traveling alone, among thieves and beggars, which means Sheridan undoubtedly has more horrors in store for her.

And there you have it: another season of 1923, where happiness is fleeting, suffering is inevitable, and any brief moment of relief only exists to make the next round of torment hit harder.

This Week’s Misery Index: 7.8 out of 10 for violent sexual abuse, rape, and the senseless murder of two Natives.