So far in its first season, Marshals has stuck firmly to its action roots with bullets, bombs, bikers, and a frankly questionable number of suspects killed. This week, though, the Yellowstone spinoff saw a slight shifting of gears as several hinted-at romances (and at least one unexpected one) had their moment in the sun—in between a few shoot outs and assassination attempts, of course.
Here’s the full rundown:
Family drama
For the sake of clarity, “Family Business” can be split pretty neatly between two halves—the Marshals team and their collective romantic entanglements (more on those below), and the case of the week. For the latter, things kick off when a federal judge and her husband are nearly killed by a car bomb. The team gets pulled in, with Calvin, Belle, and Miles on protection duty at the judge’s home with her, her husband Blake, and teenage daughter Fallon, while Andrea and Kayce work on tracking down a potential suspect who the judge sent to prison years ago.
It quickly becomes apparent that it’s not all hugs and puppies in Judge Ayers’s home: Blake, who heads up a charity that provides medical supplies overseas clearly resents her dedication to her job (if your Spidey senses are tingling, hold on to that instinct) and Fallon is resentful that her mother doesn’t want her to go to an upcoming music festival. Things only get more tense when a sniper takes a shot at Fallon through one of the windows, forcing the team to move the family—in the case of the judge, to Marshal HQ, while Blake and Fallon are taken “off the grid” to… Kayce’s house!
Paramount
Having determined their fugitive couldn’t be the assassin, Kayce and Andrea babysit Blake and Fallon while the rest of the team work a surprising new lead: Blake. After discovering that he had fake passports under false names hidden in the wall of their home, the team digs into Blake’s charity work, and (surprise!) it’s not on the up and up. In fact, he’s been helping smuggle weapons to revolutionaries in Equatorial Guinea, suggesting that he’s the real target, not the judge.
The team, of course, figures this out just slightly too late, as Blake has already slipped away from under Kayce and Andrea’s not-too-watchful eyes and met up with his would-be assassins, getting kidnapped in the process. With the help of some warrant signing from Judge Ayers (the legality of this seems sketchy) they manage to track down the mercenaries—a group of former Delta Force operatives—who conveniently own some nearby property. Though the team is en route, he has Fallon in the truck with him, and Andrea warns him that the Justice Department will want the suspects alive to interrogate, Kayce nonetheless rushes in on his own (duh) and rescues Blake from being tortured… killing all of the suspects in the process. (Again, duh.)
These due process issues aside, Judge Ayers’s family is safe and reunited, though they’re clearly going to need a lot of family therapy. Fallon, expressing her discomfort with the fact that her father’s gun running nearly got them all killed, asks Kayce and Andrea whether her father is a monster. Andrea admits that she has questions about whether her own murdered cop father was crooked, while Kayce gives the very Dutton answer, “No father is perfect.”
Get back on that horse
As for this week’s B plots, there’s clearly something in the air in Montana this spring, because romance seems to be on everyone’s minds—for good or ill.
For Kayce, it’s the return of Dolly Weaver, the daughter of the local rancher whom Kayce saved from a helicopter crash a few weeks back. Dolly was pretty direct in her interest at the time, and apparently she’s gotten bored waiting for Kayce to follow up, as she rides up to his house on horseback this week, asking for the “tour” he tentatively agreed to give her. They have a sweet psuedo-date riding around the property until Dolly’s father shows up offering to cook the three of them dinner.
It’s all very nice until Weaver makes it clear that he’s looking to buy Kayce’s ranch to add to his cattle operation—a suggestion that goes over like a lead balloon. Kayce all but kicks the father-daughter duo out, accusing Dolly of trying to soften him up for her father. She denies it, saying she was just as blindsided by the offer as Kayce, and apologizes, but when she makes a move to kiss him, Kayce pulls away.
Paramount
There’s clearly more than the ranch issue making Kayce feel conflicted, as he later admits to Andrea that spending time with Dolly felt like a betrayal of his late wife, Monica. Andrea tries to encourage him, pointing out that her mother was able to move on after her father’s death, not by replacing her father but by making a new place in her heart for someone and asking if Monica wouldn’t have wanted him to spend the rest of his life angry over losing her. Kayce is typically non-committal, but toward the end of the episode when Dolly once again comes to see him, he goes on another horseback ride with her, seemingly leaving the door open for more.
Elsewhere in the episode, Cal starts things out when he notices Jared (Belle’s husband, though I admit it took me 90% of the episode to realize who he was) in the parking lot of his doctor’s office kissing a woman who is decidedly not Belle.
He spends much of the episode conflicted about it, hinting frequently to Belle about family and issues within marriages until she finally confronts him (after several bourbons) and he admits what he’s seen. Belle sighs, then disconsolately tells him that Jared is supposed to be more discreet—their marriage was hit hard by her undercover work and now they’re only staying together for the sake of their son, Braxton. With her admission (and, again, several bourbons) the duo give in to the simmering chemistry that’s been present for most of the season and kiss, but Belle quickly breaks things off, joking that it’s a terrible idea. Prepare to see a lot more of this pairing goin forward!
The final bit of romance for our Marshals team comes from an unexpected direction. Early on in the episode the ex-girlfriend Miles briefly bumped into a few episodes ago prompts Bell and Andrea to ask Miles about his love life. Miles admits he’s interested in someone, but says it couldn’t work out because she’s not from the reservation and it would be too complicated. He’s vague about the woman’s identity, but at the end of the episode, with a bit of encouragement from Andrea and Kayce (!) he finally goes to ask out… Maddie! The bartender quickly agrees, applauding Miles for his bravery in asking out the daughter of his boss, and we briefly see Miles’s life flash before his eyes as he realizes that Calvin is her father. It’s an unexpected pairing, but they honestly seem very cute together and I look forward to seeing where things go.
Odds & Ends
During his not-exactly-a-date with Dolly, Kayce shares a story about stealing his brother Jamie’s clothes after going skinny dipping and him having to ride all the way home naked. It is, possibly the first and only cute story about Jamie’s childhood ever shared in the Dutton-verse.
After appearing in the last few episodes, Tate is once again absent this week—in fact, he’s not even mentioned, despite the numerous people who spend time at the Dutton house this episode. It’s kind of odd.
At the top of the episode, we see Calvin at the doctor complaining of longstanding neck and shoulder pain. We know he’s struggled with prescription drug use in the past, and has been seen more than once this season taking pills, so it’s hard to tell whether we’re supposed to perceive this as a legitimate issue or a warning sign of relapse.
I am increasingly concerned about the potential repercussions for Kayce killing absolutely every suspect he faces off with, but the show seems much less worried about it that I am.
The award for Most On the Nose Dialogue goes to this exchange at the end of the episode when Kayce is bucked off of Monica’s feisty stallion: “Gonna get back on that horse?” his new love interest, Dolly, asks, to which Kayce says, “Not sure I’m ready.”
Lauren Hubbard is a freelance writer and Town & Country contributor who covers beauty, shopping, entertainment, travel, home decor, wine, and cocktails.
