This Is Why the Emmy Awards Don't Recognize Taylor Sheridan

By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 9, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 9, 2023 |

Taylor Sheridan’s bad writing continues to keep Paramount+ afloat, currently with Special Ops: Lioness, a show starring Zoe Saldana and featuring the likes of Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman. Saldana plays Joe, the badass head of a CIA unit that sends women undercover to get to their targets through wives, sisters, daughters, and mistresses. Saldana’s character is also married and has kids, and one of the storylines in the series is how she can co-parent when she spends much of her time overseeing missions in other countries. Her husband, meanwhile, is a surgeon named Neal played by Dave Annable, who played the older brother killed off in the pilot of Yellowstone (he’s also the husband of Odette Annable née Yustman).

I offer this as the setup for a scene that I cannot stop thinking about. Neal and Joe have a 14-year-old daughter. In the prior episode, Neal revealed to Joe — who, again, is gone for long stretches of time and not always involved in the parenting decisions — that boys were allowed to go under the shirt but not into the pants of their daughter. I don’t know how awkward this father-daughter conversation must have been, but I suspect it’s writer/creator Taylor Sheridan’s idea of setting sexual boundaries for teenagers by limiting one’s petting to certain areas of the body.

In either case, the boundary-setting apparently did not work. In this week’s episode, the daughter — whose name is Kate (Hannah Love Lanier) — is involved in a terrible car accident in which one of her friends is killed. Neal finds this out while he’s performing surgery when a nurse comes in to let him know that his daughter has been brought to the hospital after the accident. Neal leaves mid-surgery.

He subsequently finds out that his 14-year-old daughter is also pregnant. He’s livid. Nevertheless, he goes into his daughter’s hospital room to have a chat with her. Or rather, to lecture Kate, who is wearing a neck brace and is covered in cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Their conversation goes like this, and note that Neal delivers these lines in typical Taylor Sheridan fashion. It’s like David Mamet’s patter if the patter had been strangled to death on the page: Sober, quickly delivered, and in a monotone. It’s a real parent-of-the-year speech delivered at his daughter’s lowest point. And when he says “honey,” there’s no feeling in it. He’s dead in the eyes.

Kate: Where’s my clothes?
Neal: They cut your clothes off, honey.
Kate: I lost my phone. Don’t know what happened to everyone else.
Neal: You just worry about yourself for now, okay?
Kate: Do you know?
Neal: I know some. I know two of the girls went to a different hospital. I can find out, but, honey. Don’t expect good news.
Kate: What do you know?
Neal: What did I say were the two things that have the most likelihood of altering the course of your life? Cars and sеx. And they both did.
Kate: I wasn’t driving.
Neal: I’m not accusing you. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know whose fault it is, but I do know that cars kill more teenagers than any other cause combined. And it almost killed you, honey.
Kate: Did it kill anybody?
Neal: It did.
Kate: Who?
Neal: Holly.

Kate: ( cries ) Who else?
Neal: I don’t know. I’ll find out. I wish I could give you more time to process that, but we don’t have that today. So are you ready for the next one?
Kate: Next one what?
Neal: You broke our deal.
Kate: What deal?
Neal: With boys. You broke our deal. You’re pregnant.
Kate: What? No, that’s not…
Neal: That’s not possible? Are you gonna look me in the eye and lie to me? I have your blood work and urinalysis, honey. You’re going into surgery tomorrow. We test for these things, okay? Now it’s very likely that the trauma you’ve experienced terminated the pregnancy. And if it didn’t, it’s quite likely that the anesthesia would terminate the pregnancy. But if somehow the fetus survives all of this… you’re gonna have a very, very big decision to make.
Kate: This is… this is…
Neal: Too much to handle?
Kate: Yes.
Neal: That’s why you don’t have sеx at fourteen. And that’s why your mother and I forbid you from driving in a car with a teenage driver. And it breaks my heart that this is the way you need to learn these lessons.
Kate: I’m sorry.
Neal: No, you don’t apologize to me. You forgive yourself. Now at least you can learn consequences of actions while still benefitting from the lesson. Holly won’t get that chance. Do you understand me?

That’s some real kick-her-while-she’s-down energy. A tender moment between a compassionate father and his ailing daughter, who nearly died and lost one of her best friends.

Now, if you’re wondering why Yellowstone and Taylor Sheridan’s other shows never get Emmy recognition, here’s your answer. It’s the writing. His characters do not sound like real people. They all — regardless of profession — sound like Taylor Sheridan characters: Blunt, direct, and lacking in empathy. Maybe that works on a ranch, or even between soldiers or CIA agents. But between a father and his daughter? Ooof.