‘Yellowstone’ Pits John Against Beth in the Most Emotional Scene of Season 4 (RECAP)

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowstone Season 4 Episode 9 “No Such Thing as Fair.”]

Kevin Costner and Kelly Reilly deliver such powerful performances in the latest Yellowstone episode that will (once again) have you wondering why they have yet to get any Emmy recognition four seasons in.

The episode begins with Beth (Reilly) a bit peeved that her fiancé Rip (Cole Hauser) let her father (Costner) walk into a diner filled with armed robbers. But as Rip points out, no one can stop John from doing anything. He also notices she wasn’t worried about him. “I never worry about you,” she says. “I know nothing’s happening to you.” He disagrees.

Beth then confronts her father — beginning by throwing a mug of coffee at the wall over his head. She reminds him that she was the one who watched him almost die after he was shot at the end of last season. “For 60 f**king days, I had to watch the life leak out of you and then you looked for a way to lose it again. You f**king seek it,” she tells him. “Well, I’m not doing that again. I am not willing you back to life the next time you die.” As she sees it, yes, he should’ve ignored the people in danger in that diner, “because when you die, everything that you fought for and everything you had me fight for dies with you.”

“I’m not made like that,” he argues. “Then get f**king remade,” Beth yells. “I fight so hard for you, dad, and you do nothing to help me.” Furthermore, she can’t help but notice that he hasn’t done anything about the man who caused the burns on her back, so certain it was Jamie (Wes Bentley). But that’s when John tells her it was Riggins, serving life in prison (because he doesn’t know that his cell mate was none other than Jamie’s biological father, Will Patton’s Garrett).

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Things take a turn when John receives a collect call from Park County Jail from Summer (Piper Perabo). As he learns when he visits, she’s facing life in prison due to what went down at the protest at the site of the airport. Then she shocks him with, “I should have never listened to your daughter,” and he promises to help her. After all, the judge owes him a favor.

That night, John decides they’re moving dinner back to the dining room — and Beth isn’t going to like what’s about to go down. Rip — “quitter,” Beth says to him — and Carter (Finn Little) quickly escape to the bunkhouse as she braces herself for a fight (even if John says it’s not one). “Don’t treat me any different” from her brothers, she says. “You want to brawl, let’s brawl.”

But John’s not having it, warning her against getting into “a contest about who can lose their composure the most” because “I’ll put this table through the f**king wall!” They’ll sit and talk like adults, he says. When he calls her out on what she did to Summer, however, Beth just shrugs it off. “I’d do anything to hurt your enemies. If I hurt others, so be it,” she explains. “I don’t care. I don’t care if she dies in prison. I don’t care if she gets out. I do not f**king care. I care about you. I care about Kayce. I care about Rip.”

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As John sees it, “if you care about them, then you need to care about having some morality and the way you fight.” And while she doesn’t think morality exists in their kingdom, “my kingdom, my rules,” he says. “We fight with dignity. You aren’t. You start or find another fight.” Meaning? “No more collateral damage. We don’t kill sheep. We kill wolves. What you did was cruel.”

Why, exactly, Beth wants to know, “because you f**ked her?” But he turns it back around on her, asking, “did you do it because I f**ked her? Because that is cruel. Goddamn, Beth, I never thought I’d feel this way about you, but you really disappointed me.” She didn’t, either. But as hurt as she looks then, it’s nothing compared to her reaction after he tells her, “maybe it’s best if I fight this alone. Maybe it’s best if you go somewhere else while I do it.”

“This is my home,” Beth says, perhaps as vulnerable as we’ve ever heard her. “Might be time to find another one,” he tells her before walking out. That was easily the most emotional scene of Season 4 so far, with extraordinary acting from both Costner and Reilly.

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After that, Beth needs to break down, but as she explains to Walker (Ryan Bingham) when asking him to play a sad song — “I just lost the one thing I spent my entire life fighting for” — she’s incapable of crying for herself. Rip can only watch as she sobs as the ranch hand does what she asks.

Elsewhere in “No Such Thing as Fair”:

• Christina (Katherine Cunningham) thinks it’s time for Jamie to distance himself from John and introduce the world to Garrett … until she finds out his dad went to prison for murdering his mom. Jamie argues no one needs to know. “How can someone so brilliant be so f**king stupid?” she asks. Someone will find out doing a background check. While Garrett offers to make himself scarce, Jamie says he doesn’t want that.
• John and Garrett (finally) come face-to-face, with the latter blaming the former for not speaking on his behalf and the time he spent in prison. While John can’t stop him from undoing the way he raised Jamie, “if your plan is to get me back for what you did to yourself, I will treat you like everyone else who showed up with the same idea and I’ll rid the f**king world of you,” he warns Garrett.
• Kayce (Luke Grimes) tells Chief Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) and Mo (Mo Brings Plenty) about the wolf he’s been seeing. While wolves and men are supposed to destroy each other, this one is protecting him for some reason. He’ll have to ask the wolf, Rainwater explains, and he and Mo prepare him for a vision quest, four days and nights without food or water. To understand his purpose in life, he must stand on the edge of death.
• Jimmy (Jefferson White) finishes up his time with the 6666 and emerges a cowboy — but he doesn’t want to leave Emily (Kathryn Kelly) behind. In fact, he decides “I’m keeping you,” and she tells him she’ll wait while he keeps his promise to John.

Yellowstone, Season 4 Finale, Sunday, January 2, 2022, 8/7c, Paramount Network