Taylor Sheridan Is About To Make Another Show About Men Being Sad In A Big Hat—And You’re Gonna Watch
Look, I get it. The country is on fire, the economy is held together with duct tape and prayers, and our options for escapism are basically “watch a reality show where people fight over a shrimp cocktail” or “stare into the abyss.” So it’s no surprise that Taylor Sheridan, the patron saint of “my wife left me so I bought a ranch and now I’m morally superior to everyone,” is about to drop another testosterone-fueled epic on our collective desktops. Because apparently, *Yellowstone* wasn’t enough. *1923* wasn’t enough. *Mayor of Kingstown* wasn’t enough. *Tulsa King* wasn’t even close to enough. And *Lioness*? That was just Sheridan’s attempt to prove he can write women, which he can’t, but we’ll get to that.
So what’s the new one? *The Madison*, or something equally vague and land-adjacent. It’s set to premiere on Paramount+ later this year, and if the teasers are any indication, it’s going to be about a family—shocker—who has to deal with the crushing weight of legacy, land, and a soundtrack that sounds like a depressed banjo. The plot, as far as anyone can tell, revolves around a matriarch named Madison (played by the always-excellent Michelle Pfeiffer, who deserves better than to be Sheridan’s human shield against “sexist” accusations). She’s a New York City financier who inherits a massive ranch in Montana after her estranged husband dies in a mysterious accident. Gee, I wonder if there’s going to be a stoic ranch hand who teaches her the value of hard work while she wears designer jeans and looks confused about the difference between a steer and a heifer. Spoiler: there will be. There’s always a ranch hand who looks like he’s been through three divorces and a drought.
Now, let’s be real: Taylor Sheridan has a formula, and it’s more predictable than a Taylor Swift breakup album. Step one: Find a rugged, emotionally constipated man (or, in this case, a woman who will become emotionally constipated). Step two: Place him on a piece of land that is somehow both breathtaking and soul-crushing. Step three: Introduce a conflict that involves either a greedy corporation, a corrupt government, or a family member who wants to sell the land to a greedy corporation or corrupt government. Step four: Have the protagonist stare off into the distance for an uncomfortable amount of time while a cover of a Johnny Cash song plays. Step five: Profit.
And profit he does. Sheridan is basically the King Midas of modern Westerns, except everything he touches doesn’t turn to gold; it turns into a streaming service’s quarterly earnings report. *Yellowstone* alone pulled in something like 11 million viewers for its season 5 premiere, which is more people than actually live in Montana. The man has created a whole cinematic universe, which I’m legally obligated to call the “Sheridan-verse” because that’s what the internet decided. It’s got cowboys, it’s got horses, it’s got Kevin Costner looking like he’s about to fall asleep mid-monologue. And now it’s got *The Madison*, which is basically *Succession* but with more manure and less witty dialogue.
But here’s the thing that makes me want to throw my phone into a river: I’m going to watch it. You’re going to watch it. We’re all going to watch it, because Taylor Sheridan has somehow tapped into the American psyche’s deepest, darkest desire: to own a piece of land and tell everyone else to get the hell off it. It’s the ultimate fantasy for a generation that can’t afford a down payment on a studio apartment, let alone a 3,000-acre ranch. We watch these shows and pretend that we, too, could be stoic and self-sufficient, that we could raise cattle and fight off land developers with nothing but a revolver and a sharp tongue. In reality, most of us can’t even keep a succulent alive.
And don’t even get me started on the dialogue. Sheridan writes dialogue like he’s trying to win a contest for “most philosophical thing a cowboy has ever said while branding a calf.” Every other line is some deep-cut aphorism about the meaning of family, the nature of power, or why you should never trust a man who wears a suit. It’s exhausting. It’s like if a fortune cookie and a Sons of Anarchy script had a baby, and that baby grew up to be a show about a horse. But damn if it doesn’t make you feel something. Even if that something is just “I should really call my dad.”
Then there’s the casting. Sheridan has a knack for finding actors who look like they were born on a horse, which is impressive because most of them are from Los Angeles and have never seen a cow up close. He resurrected Harrison Ford’s career, gave Helen Mirren a shotgun, and somehow convinced Sam Elliott to be in something that isn’t a Coen brothers film. The man has pull. But *The Madison* is going to be a test, because Michelle Pfeiffer is a goddess, but she’s a New York City goddess. Watching her try to navigate a world of chaps and cattle drives is going to be like watching a swan try to fight a bear. I’m here for it, but I’m also going to be cringing through every scene where she has to say “y’all.”
And let’s not forget the inevitable Reddit threads. The AITA posts are going to be legendary. “AITA for selling my late husband’s ranch to a solar farm despite my new cowboy crush telling me it’s ‘the only thing that matters’?” The comments will be a war zone of people arguing about land rights, indigenous sovereignty, and whether or not the protagonist is a “strong female character”
Final Thoughts
Given the sprawling, often contradictory nature of Taylor Sheridan’s work—from the razor-sharp modernism of *Wind River* to the increasingly soap-operatic sprawl of the *Yellowstone* universe—it’s hard not to see him as a brilliant but stubbornly limited craftsman. He’s built an empire on a simple, powerful idea: that the American frontier is a myth of sacrifice and violence, and that the only honest currency left is land. But the deeper he digs into that vein, the more his projects risk becoming a parody of their own machismo, mistaking melodrama for tragedy and mistaking sentimentality about a lost West for genuine insight into the one that’s still bleeding.