Not only is the patriarch of the rough-and-tumble ranching family willing to kill or be killed to safeguard the land that was entrusted to him by his father, but the newly minted governor of Montana would do the same for his children. Well, three out of four of ’em, anyway. (Sorry, Jamie.)
John would be quick to tell you that a part of him died with his fierce and feisty wife. Those who have known him since way back when would be hardpressed to disagree — or to say that it wasn’t the best part of him that had died.
It’s just John’s luck that the one of his kids who was the most like him would be the one that he’d lose. Oldest boy Lee was killed in the series premiere while working with the Livestock Commission to retrieve some rustled cattle.
John and Evelyn’s daughter, as likely to throw a punch as hurl an insult, is as cunning and dangerous as she is devoted to Daddy. John’s secret weapon, the human tornado knows as much about business as he does about ranching.
We would never say that Beth’s lifelong love “tamed” her. But the ranch’s gruff-but-tender foreman did finally make an honest woman of her in Season 4. And not for nothing, but he’s the only person who can tell her to put away the crazy and live to tell the tale!
A pro-grade brooder, John and Evelyn’s youngest son has spent years torn between his two families, the one that he has at the ranch and the one that he has off of it. Complicating matters: the fact that it ain’t easy being a good man who has to do bad, bad things.
A world of heartache has befallen Kayce’s earnest better half because of her association with the Duttons. But if the couple hadn’t bridged the gap between their different worlds and gotten together, there would be no…
Gotta hope the kid is in constant therapy, what with his traumatizing kidnapping, the shock of killing a man who was attacking his mother at the ranch and the fact that she seemed to still be giving him baths all the way into puberty. (WTH?)
John doesn’t even consider his and Evelyn’s adopted son one of his children at this point — with good reason; he’s a pretty treacherous screw-up. As for Beth… her hatred of the brother who left her unable to have kids runs deeper than bone marrow.
The apple of the politician’s eye is his namesake son with his former campaign manager, who, perhaps wisely, refused to let him be a part of the boy’s life so long as he lived under his father’s thumb. Then again, the other option seemed to be…
No sooner had Jamie discovered that this no-account scumbag was his biological father than the ex-con had ordered hits on all of the Duttons and wound up being killed himself… by Jamie… on Beth’s orders. It was a whole thing.
Though Beth has a soft spot for the foul-mouthed orphan that she convinced Rip to take in, hell will freeze over before she lets him call her Mama. Or so she says. (Come on — kid feeding a baby cow? Does it get any cuter?)
Despite their polar-opposite belief systems, John seems to have fallen for the righteous activist, whose prison sentence was commuted almost as fast as his ass hit the seat in the governor’s office.
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